A community group in Bowes Park has been awarded more than a quarter of a million pounds by the government to go towards a project to reopen a once thriving local bar that served as a community hub. The ultimate success of the project will require local people to take shareholdings in what would become a true community-owned asset.
The rebirth of Myddleton Road
The Miss Havisham-like window display at George Moore's in the early 2000s
The shopping parades on both sides of the road at the western end of Myddleton Road were built at the time of the transition from the Victorian to the Edwardian era - you can see some fascinating photographs of the shops taken in 1902 on the We Love Myddleton Road website. However, a hundred years later, the street had gone decidedly downhill - nothing illustrates this better than the Miss Havisham-like window display in the long closed George Moore's menswear shop that greeted me when I first visited the street in 2007.
Part of Andrea Aste's Myddleton Road mural inside the Bohem Taproom
George Moore continued to live above his shop until 2011. That year was probably the turning point for Myddleton Road, because it was when the Step opened and quickly became a successful community hub. It was followed two years later by the start of the monthly Myddleton Road Market (first Sunday of the month, apart from January) and the We Love Myddleton Road group. Since then many interesting new shops have opened on the street (some have come and gone, but that's just par for the course), and it now boasts delicatessens, bakeries and a classy piano shop and music academy that also operates a cafe. A Greek restaurant near Bowes Park station plays host to a monthly folk club, and just across the railway line is Shaftesbury Hall, a splendidly reconstructed "tin tabernacle" owned by the Samaritans and also used for community events.
A notable business on the street is the Bohem Taproom. serving the most authentic Czech-style beer this side of the Bohemian Forest. Petr Skoček set up the brewery in a converted shop in nearby Whittington Road, but increased demand for its products led to the brewery relocating to an industrial estate in Tottenham.
In 2015 four shopfronts were rebuilt to their original designs, having been modernised in an unsympathetic way previously.
One of four shopfronts restored to their original designs
The degree to which the street had been turned round was confirmed when Myddleton Road was declared winner of the London section of the 2016 Great British High Street of the Year awards. Then, in 2017, artist Gabriela Schutz's pencil-drawn panorama of the shops and houses in Myddleton Road went on show at the Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham - see the video below.
