Plans to demolish a group of workshops and other industrial premises mid-way between Barnet and Whetstone has revived family memories of how it was once the site of a well-regarded laundry serving customers in and around North London.
Meadow Works, just off the Great North Road, was established as a hand laundry by Sidney Morris early in the 1900s and his descendants have compiled a history of what became a flourishing local business.
An application to build a new self-storage depot on the site – see aerial view above — is to be submitted to Barnet Council in mid-February by Compound, a development company, which is opening self-storage facilities around London and the south-east.
Currently the site is occupied by a range of workshops, small garages, and vehicle repair firms many of which would be displaced.
Co-working spaces will be provided as part of the redevelopment and the application proposes new premises, fronting on to the A1000, for the well-known Hole in the Wall Cafe.
A sales brochure for the Meadow Hand Laundry shows how it looked soon after the business was opened by Sidney Morris who bought the site in 1901.
Laundry was hung out to dry in the surrounding meadows. Hampers of washed and ironed laundry were delivered by horse-drawn carts to customers in London and nearby towns and villages in Hertfordshire.
A photograph of the laundry staff indicates the scale of the business.
Much of what has since become the Meadow Works industrial estate is hidden behind large hoardings alongside the Great North Road.
These were erected by the Finchley Bill Posting Company to serve as advertising space, and they had the added advantage of preventing dust blowing from the road onto the laundry drying in the meadows.
Sidney Morris – seen above, standing far right – was born in Finchley. He was one of five brothers and a blacksmith and mechanical engineer by trade.
The photograph, which was taken outside the laundry, shows the rural nature of the land around Meadow Works as it was in 1910.
After first purchasing land for a laundry business at New Southgate, Sidney opted instead for the Great North Road and bought a meadow and house then known as Whelm Villa.
After the property was destroyed in a fire in 1910, he built the Meadow Works main building which was completed in 1914 together with a family home.
He created extra space by rebuilding and converting a former green tin church moved from its site in Athenaeum Road, Whetstone.
Buildings on the site were requisitioned by the Army during first and second World Wars and as the laundry business declined, Sidney encouraged his sons to build up an alternative enterprise as bakery engineers.
For a time, the factory was let out to a tailoring firm called Taylors but by the early 1970s Morris Brothers (Bakery Engineers) was well established by brothers Jack and Dan Morris (Jack is second from the right, above).
When Sidney Morris purchased Whelm Villa it was the only building on the Great North Road between Barnet and Whetstone and it was thought originally to have been a coaching inn or hotel.
Traffic along the main road has continued down the years to offer plenty of business opportunities.
In the 1920s there was a coffee stall at the corner with Lyonsdown Road which was owned by a Mr and Mrs Francis.
After criticism from local councillors about the appearance of their stall, which was a caravan on wheels, they rented space from the laundry and opened what became the Hole in the Wall Cafe – named because it was hidden behind the advertising hoardings.
Recollections about the history of Meadow Works, and those who lived and worked there, have been collected from members of the wider Morris family by Jane Polledri (left) and Barbara Vallé, great granddaughter, and granddaughter of Sidney Morris.
Jane said the demolition of buildings on the site, including The Whelm, which was the original home of the Morris family, had prompted her to start compiling a record of what they could all remember.
“It is sad to think that a place which holds so many happy family memories is about to be demolished.
“I have learned so much about the history of the place. The original building, Whelm Villa, was thought to have been a coaching inn or hotel on the Great North Road.
“Family legend has it that Dick Turpin or even Charles Dickens stopped off there.
“We know there was stabling for horses and one of my uncles remembers seeing bricks on the porch floor which outlined the name ‘Whelm Hotel’.
“We are not sure where the name Whelm came from. It could be a corruption of the word elm, after the elm trees alongside the Great North Road, and well – after the well behind the house.
“Between the wars a man stored a small aeroplane in the field at the back of the house and used take off flying in the direction of the Odeon cinema.”
Jane’s mother Barbara, who is 85, says she spent her school days visiting with her mother Doris and grandmother Kate Morris at Meadow Works.
“My mother worked in the laundry with her two sisters. There was always so much to do and see.
“There was a large greenhouse, stables for horses and carts, styes for four pigs, chickens and fields with a large pond where grandfather’s children used to swim.”
After buildings were requisitioned by the Army requisitioned during the Second World War – and used to store furniture for people whose homes had been bombed – Barbara remembers seeing soldiers there and sometimes sitting on their knees.
After the war German prisoners of war were assigned to work at Meadow Works before returning home. They helped feeding the horses, pigs and chickens.
“Now the fields and meadows that I remember – and a house where I spent such a happy time – is about to become a distant memory,” said Barbara.
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