Lifelong local resident Frank Bayford on some of the stories included in his new book about Enfield

Frank Bayford (right) has written a book called Visits and Reminiscences — Frank Bayford (right) has written a book called *Visits and Reminiscences*

In 1988, I took an early retirement from my post of principal pharmacist at Chase Farm Hospital. I had worked there for nearly 24 years, during which time I had been in daily contact with many people such as other staff, patients and their relatives.

I knew that I would miss that company and would need to have some form of other social activity to compensate for it. One aspect of my work that I had enjoyed was giving lectures to student nurses and junior doctors about the use of medications and so I decided to give other types of talks elsewhere to, hopefully, interested audiences.

I owned a wide collection of photographic slides which I had taken whilst on holidays around the UK as well as many of Enfield, my lifelong home town. I contacted several local clubs and associations and soon started to receive invitations to speak to them; reassuringly, repeat bookings followed.

However, with the arrival of the Covid pandemic, all that ceased as every one of those organizations had to end holding meetings and my services were no longer required.

I felt that it would be a shame to let the many pieces of information that I had put together for those talks go to waste, and so I decided to write a series of books incorporating them all, with the title Visits and Reminiscences, A Personal Travelogue.

Two previous publications written by me were already in print and had provoked interest, especially the one about the history of Chase Farm. Encouraged by that, I completed the first volume of the new series in 2022. It was about East Anglia and included lesser-known stories about places there, for example, the bizarre tale of the life-size mechanical elephants that were manufactured in Thaxted (and later at Goldhanger) in the 1940s and 50s.

The second volume was issued last year and is solely about Enfield, where I have now resided for the past 84 years. During that time, many changes have taken place and, to illustrate some of them, I have included stories about my childhood and school days as well as other tales passed on to me by my grandparents and other long-standing Enfield relatives, such as my grandmother’s memories as a pupil at the former Church School of Industry in Silver Street, and my aunt’s recollections as a Land Army girl working at Mapleton Nursery that used to be in Hoe Lane.

Workers at the former Mapleton Nursery with their tomato harvest in Hoe Lane, taken in the late 1940s

What I did not want to do was rehash material that had already been covered by other authors. In my previous talks, I had always incorporated little-known facts and this I have done in my book. Here there are pictures of a part of the New River rarely seen by the general public as it wends its way through the grounds of the Lower Grammar School; some are of minor and almost forgotten little buildings such as the Wellhouse Café and the headquarters of the Canon Brewery, both once in Canonbury Road and now no more.

There also a section included about pillar boxes, items of street furniture much taken for granted but which remind us of our national history in the Royal ciphers exhibited on them, from Victoria to Elizabeth II.

I particularly wanted to pay tribute to the many cultural societies which Enfield possesses but never seem to get mentioned in the reference books. The final chapter mentions some of the local orchestras, choirs, art circles, photographic and drama groups that are active in the area.

Sometimes, when I had spoken to a local club, a person would talk to me afterwards and offer to give me items of interest relating to their own families.

One lady’s father had once owned an ironmonger’s shop in Baker Street and among the gems I received from her were two licences, one for employing ‘a male servant’ on the premises and the other authorising ‘the keep of one horse or a mule’. Both were dated 1870; the first cost fifteen shillings (75p) and the other ten shillings and sixpence (nearly 53p). At one time, the shop sold gunpowder and shot; bar, hoop and sheet iron; baths on sale or on hire; and offered the service of a ‘bell hanger’. All were echoes from a past time now virtually a mystery to today’s younger generations.

One of the aims of my book was to gather similar little snippets of information before they became irretrievably lost, for ‘the past’ continues to hold a fascination for many people.

Visits and Reminiscences, A Personal Travelogue (Vol 2: Enfield), by Frank Bayford, priced at £15, is available to buy through The Enfield Society and is also on sale in the visitor centre at Myddelton House Gardens. To buy a copy online:
Visit enfieldsociety.org.uk/product/visits-and-reminiscences

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