Hamilton Road
44 Hamilton Road, East Finchley, North London was where my mother Elsie Trusler,[1] spent most of her childhood. A simple street, it had a Stonemasons on one corner, which I found a bit scary, because looking down through the glass windows were marble angels surrounded by crosses and tombstones.
On one side of the road was a high wall all the way down to the end and this was the boundary of the Good Shepherd Convent.[2] From No. 44, Elsie’s house,[3] you could see the nuns feeding the chickens they kept on the other side of the wall. Across the road were a row of terraced houses, most of which had their windows draped with lace curtains while the first few properties had picket fences and panelled front doors with heavy black knockers.
One of the houses had the front room turned into a little shop, known then as Davies’ and a favourite for children. It smelt of paraffin, candles and Sunlight Soap,[4] with sweets in glass jars along the counter. Mrs Davies was a nice elderly lady with grey hair swept up in the fashion of the day, her crystal dropped earrings twinkling in the light as she made squares of paper into cones and tipped sweets from the brass scale into them, folding each very carefully.
A few houses on was Blakey’s Yard and I think they made nails or shoe studs on the premises. Next to the yard was an electric generator which would give a gentle humming sound day and night, and you would not know it was there if not for the high green doors with a notice on the front. Of course, before electricity, all the houses in the area were lit by gas and oil lamps, and my mother could remember the lamp lighter coming around at dusk with the long pole; usually the time the children came in from playing in the street.
After the generator was Mr Dors’ butcher’s shop with sawdust on the floor and sausages hanging up with sides of beef and pork. And then there was No. 44 itself, the residence of the Trusler family, my nanny and grandad’s house and home to my mum, her five sisters[5] and two brothers. Lace curtains draped at the window, while upon a Victorian whatnot and a wooden pedestal, the leaves of a dark green aspidistra plant pressed against the glass.
The same sort of houses carried on down to the end of the road, which ended at Manor Park Road, all looking neat with ornamental iron railings and gates, some of which were taken away during the Second World War for scrap metal to make guns and ammunition. The little gardens were full of flowers in the summer, with geraniums, roses, asters, all brightening up the street.
[2] Figure 2 – Map showing Hamilton Road and Good Shepherd Convent.
[3] Figure 3 – Number 44 (left) Hamilton Road, East Finchley c2018, with the generator, on the right, still present today.
[4] Figure 4 – Sunlight Soap advert.
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