Tonight's the night that Tottenham Hotspur's new saucerlike stadium officially opens, heralding a new era of traffic congestion and matchday experience. It'll no longer be called White Hart Lane, and soon neither will the adjacent station, but White Hart Lane itself still exists, and I've been out walking its full two-mile length.
White Hart Lane was already in existence four hundred years ago, when North London was mostly fields, although under a different name. The main roads hereabouts were Green Lanes and the High Road, running north/south, with a handful of country lanes strung out connecting the two. Linking Wood Green to Tottenham were Berry Lane (now Lordship Lane) and, a bit further to the north, the meandering wiggle that concerns us here. For most of its length it was originally called Apeland Street, but it made sense for the Tottenham end to be known as White Hart Lane after the local coaching inn where the lane branched off, and that name eventually spread. The White Hart pub has been rebuilt several times since the 1600s, most recently around 1900, but ironically had to be demolished to make way for the stadium that would no longer bear its name. [map 1619][map 1856][map 1894][66 pages of pub history]
I'm starting my walk in Wood Green, not at the modern hub down by the tube station but at the historic focus a short distance up Church Hill. White Hart Lane begins opposite Haringey Civic Centre (built in the 1950s on the site of the Fishmongers' and Poulterers' Almshouses), close to St Michael's church, adjacent to Crescent Gardens. The first building on the corner used to be the Kings Arms Hotel, opened in 1870, but there's less call for assembly rooms and beer these days so upstairs is now the Grand Palace banqueting suite and downstairs serves coffee.
White Hart Lane is a phenomenally varied road, though in an understated way. It kicks off with some decent three storey Victorian terraces, their internal subdivision made clear by a plethora of tacked-on meter boxes and a multitude of bins out front. Beyond Ewart Grove we say goodbye to anything pre-20th century and hit a brief postwar estate, plus what looks like a sports pub on the corner but on closer inspection is now flats. Opposite is the green space of White Hart Lane Recreation Ground, which was taken over last summer to host the somewhat undersold Labour Live rally. The park's verdant aesthetics are diminished somewhat by a large drained scar down one side which used to be a model boating lake, recently pencilled in by Haringey council to become an ecology pond and turfed play area.
Wolves Lane has veered off here for centuries, and has no footballing connections, but there are heck of a lot of sporting facilities ahead. Welcome to New River Sport and Fitness, formerly White Hart Lane Community Sports Centre, whose extensive leisure opportunities include 22 kickabout spaces for Total Football (cash no longer accepted, debit or credit cards only). At the heart of the complex is the New River Stadium, home to the London Skolars, the capital's premier Rugby League team, or you can drop in at the London Boxing Academy for combat gym and martial arts. Users appear to be skewed very much towards the male end of the spectrum, but I did spot some football widows chatting in the car park.
On the bend ahead, where the TottenhamPotteries used to be, is the St George's Industrial Estate, now home to Tool Station, Plumbing Trading Supplies and Sema Cash & Carry. In September 2017 the Safehouse self storage facility turned out to be anything but safe as its warehouse went up in flames, and the locked site still looks despondently empty. Meanwhile across the road, beside the allotments, is the only football league club whose ground genuinely has a White Hart Lane address. Coles Park is home to HaringeyBorough FC, formerly Wood Green Town, who are currently riding high in the Bostik League Premier Division. Their bijou yellow and green grandstand seats 280. I note that the admission price for home games is only £10 but, cannily, the price for matchday parking when Spurs play at home is set at £15.
It's somewhere around here that the house numbers suddenly go into reverse, because White Hart Lane is numbered from each end for entirely postal reasons. At 500 is the only 21st century private housing development along the entire two miles, called Matrix, a generic six-storey stack on a brownfield site, and currently at the floors-but-no-walls stage. Local facilities include TS Wizard, the home of Haringey Sea Cadets, and a tiny Asda at the Texaco garage. The road ahead is suspiciously straight, which it turns out is because it isn't the original White Hart Lane but a diversion when the next bit was council-estated. WHL's original route was via what's now Compton Crescent, to the south, which remains less austerely regimented.
Wham, we've reached the Great Cambridge Road, the dualled highway which draws the A10 away from Tottenham proper. It's quite the intrusion. An unbroken parade of shops stretches south on both sides, separated by a footbridge, offering diverse takeaway, mobile and haircare services. Unbelievably this 100 metres of polluted retail also used to be White Hart Lane, back when it was a double-bend dawdle between open fields, before road planners in the 1920s decided otherwise.
And then we're back onto the original alignment for the rest of the way. The main feature ahead is Tottenham Cemetery, a much extended burial ground which reached White Hart Lane by spreading north of the River Moselle in 1913. Up one end is the 'Garden of Rememberance', with its ornamental lake and hundreds of small blocks commemorating the ashes of a loved one. It makes for a pleasant wander. The remainder of the northern cemetery is more open, with semi-higgledy plots and the occasional silent bouquet-leaver.
It's time for White Hart Lane's last wiggle, also straightened by a new road but this time not renamed. Most through traffic thus continues past the mini-roundabout along an addition called Creighton Road, while White Hart Lane bends left, right and eventually right again. The central bypassed 'island' started out as pasture, then became the site of Tottenham Grammar School, a historic establishment which moved to the site in 1938. Alas it had to close in 1988 due to falling rolls, so what we find today is a monotone housing estate that's a bit younger than the housing to either side. This is not the road's most characterful stretch.
We must be almost at the new stadium because this is where the road improvements start. The final section from Creighton Road has recently been upgraded with fresh tarmac, dropped kerbs and a series of block-edged flower beds (as yet incompletely cultivated). It's all part of a plan to prepare White Hart Lane for heavy footfall from supporters pouring off the Overground, as indeed they were at the weekend, heading en masse for a test event. Gents in blue, their blue mates and blue offspring marched merrily towards Spurs' redeveloped temple, over-eager to finally get the chance to see inside. Meanwhile takeaway owners watched patiently from their doorways, hoping that somebody would drop in for something Caribbean or a pre-match kebab.
The stadium looks amazing from the end of White Hart Lane, hovering like a silver spacecraft above a Georgian terrace on the High Road. On match days the scarf sellers are out in force, and the Metropolitan police, and a phenomenal number of zero-hours-contracted stewards. This hi-vis army blocks all access to the raised concourse until kick-off draws closer, leaving supporters to walk around at pavement level and chatter about the good old days, or brave the security arch to gain access to the club shop. A new lilywhite dawn approaches, and the community of N17 will have to get used to this massive invasive amphitheatre in its midst. The club may have abandoned White Hart Lane, but this old country track will always lead towards.
