The NUMBER 41 Route

Tottenham Hale Bus Station to Archway  

Thursday June 6 2019

I (Jo was walking in Germany - her turn this time)   emerged at Tottenham Hale still waiting for its upgrade to be completed completed but thus far the bus access remains spacious (whereas in many other locations it has been reduced) and accessible. I watched a 41 depart but did not have too long to wait and was pleased to see that the journey was billed as 40 minutes only as I knew my second bus would prove to be a marathon.

The first call is the Retail Park, which is not really a shopping mall or centre nor an outlet so feels a bit basic, though well used. The station is not the only part of Tottenham’s regeneration with two cranes visible and tall buildings completed.

A modest brown sign points you towards the Markfield Beam Engine which was part of the sewage works. Though Tottenham Hale can look uncompromisingly urban it is a good place to start exploring the River Lea.

Back to the bus which has turned its back on modernity and is heading into the older parts of Tottenham with small terraced houses, some set back behind generous strips of grass.  The Mannions Prince Arthur Pub seemed a bit of an anomaly as I could not recall a brewery called Mannions but it turns out it was re-named for the last landlord.

Then suddenly Seven Sisters station was announced but this route cuts across the busier arterial roads and it continued along West Green Road. The shops all indicated the range of ethnic communities that have settled in Harringay; so lots of plantains and other fruits, many rice cookers and those tall stacks of pans which look like families and are designed to feed families. West Green Lane proved to be quite long and sinuous with most of the commerce the Tottenham end . Boarding which involved the trio of buggies, shoppers and walking frames took a while but this was clearly a popular route.  As the shops started stocking Turkish pastries and the lampposts had banners related to Ramadan. A Bakery proclaimed: 'Taste the Best - Forget the rest' One of the stops hereabouts is called Blackboy Lane, and as this article says Africans in Britain  certainly predate the arrival of the Windrush generation.  

Eventually the 41 comes out at Ducketts Common which is the common area near to Turnpike Lane station, and again a large interchange of passengers.  The bus continues its route west over railway lines and the New River and into Tottenham Lane. Passing a very shabby Hornsey Station made me realise we were lucky to have one that had benefitted from the arrival of the Overground and thus some degree of renovation.  This part of the journey, again on an undulating road, heads past various other institutions belonging to Hornsey, like the police station, though we were in fact getting into Crouch End, always recognisable due to the central clock tower and the fact it has two cinemas and a Broadway parade. In spite of its popularity as a residential area the residents are largely dependent on bus routes to get them to any useful Underground or rail line. And it takes barely 40 minutes.

Leaving Crouch End behind the route gets surprisingly green, especially at this time of year before the trees have had a chance to dry out – and it was beginning to rain.

Hornsey Lane takes you over the Parkland Walk – to be recommended: it follows a disused railway line and is now a nature reserve and trail, easy and pleasant to follow. It skirts the edge of other green spaces and what must have been wooded hills, now suburban side roads.

Having followed a pretty straight route the 41 takes a sharp right into Hazleville Road, where there are social housing homes and a Community Centre . Religion is catered for at the rather handsome building that is the Citadel.  

It seems likely that the 41 follows this approach to Archway to avoid tangling too much with the major road junctions that all converge here but some merging is called for to arrive at the final stop just opposite Archway station.

I really enjoyed the 41 which steers shy of the many of the major routes but manages to follow an interesting cross country link between Tottenham and Archway, almost entirely within Harringay Borough and giving one the feeling of moving from one ‘village’ to another along the lanes that have been thoroughfares joining different communities in London for centuries.