Elegant residences that have come down in the world.

This is from Thomas Burke's 'The Outer Circle: Rambles in Remote London', published in 1921

'If you start from Holloway and pursue Seven Sisters Road to its end you will come to Tottenham. You may exclaim: " Who on earth wants to come to Tottenham ? " Well, quite a number of people live at Tottenham, and thousands of strangers go regularly to Tottenham, not to see the parish church, or the room where Queen Elizabeth slept, but to see the game of football played at the ground of the Tottenham Hotspurs. 

I first went to Tottenham one fine Saturday, when I had nothing better to do. I had not meant to go to Tottenham. A tramcar, labelled Waltham Cross, attracted me at Tottenham Court Road by its bright colour and firm lines. I boarded it. Until then my journeys along Seven Sisters Road had ceased at Finsbury Park. There seemed no just cause for going farther. 

At Finsbury Park was The Manor House, and at The Manor House was a large concert-room, with tables and chairs negligently scattered about it ; and there family parties would gather and order refreshment of alert waiters and listen to a string band, which afforded  fluent music. So here one rested and speculated in security on what lay beyond of peril and mis- chance, and possible benightment. But that day there was no such lure. The Manor House music-room was closed, and I suffered the car to bear me away. 

I took the hazards of the road. From Holloway to Finsbury Park Station, Seven Sisters Road is a long line of poor shops that have not quite made up their minds what produce they shall stock, and elegant residences that have come down in the world and are now addresses for little mail-order businesses. The very road is vacillating in character, and seems not to know whether it should be reticent and grave, or rude and matey.

 It seems to have relaxed all effort, and to have yielded to any external influence that may beat upon it. 

It seems almost too tired to go anywhere; and I was astonished when I discovered how far this wounded snake had dragged its slow length along, shedding, on the way, some half-hundred desultory by-streets. It has suffered two terrible gashes ; one in the tail and one near the head. The length between is bright and whole. 

You are shocked when this meagre street changes to solid prosperity, as it does between Finsbury Park and Amhurst Park Road; and shocked again when the opulence crumbles to decay in its final section ; and shocked yet again when you escape from these squalors at Seven Sisters Corner into High Road, Tottenham; Tottenham, which, according to Domesday Book, a Countess Judith held of the King for five hides. Here are the seven beautiful sister-trees that commemorate the original seven.'

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