Potty History!

The iconic public conveniences building near the railway bridge in Bruce Grove is Grade II listed and has been on the Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. Dating from c.1910-20, the structure is considered a rare survival of an early 20th century public toilet, retaining many of its original features. In the history of loos, it is among the 90 or so listed toilets in this country.

Public toilets had originally begun to appear on the streets of London from 1852, with the expansion of new sewer works and pipes. But they were designed for use by men and not for women. The scarcity of public toilets for women was described as the’urinary leash’- a restraint for keeping women at home and limiting their independence so that they were unable to travel. The Ladies Sanitary Association campaigned about the problem from 1878.

These toilet facilities were designed to be below ground and are for both men and women. It was the 1891 Public Health (London) Act that allowed underground facilities to be built, granting access to the subsoil under roadways for the first time. The subsequent replacement of street-level pissoirs was soon to follow. It also helped with enabling more provision of facilities for women.

The Bruce Grove Toilets were built around the period of the First World War at a time when more women were out working and there was therefore a greater demand for public conveniences for them. Tottenham Urban District Council had been gifted the site by the Howard family to allow toilets to be built. Its location near to Bruce Grove Station was convenient for workers travelling by rail in and out of the City as well as for those conducting business or shopping in the nearby High Road. Another set of public conveniences from the same date were also established by the High Cross (now the High Cross Pub).

The toilets deteriorated considerably over the last few decades of the 20th century after closing their doors in the 1980s. Recent years, however, have seen a transformative programme of restoration and adaptive works to help bring the Bruce Grove Toilets back into use as a community café with publicly accessible toilets, as well as pioneer a new community wealth building lease.

To get to this point, the local community campaign group The Last Elm, led by Geraldine Turvey, had been founded to save the loos, with the driving aim to restore and revitalise the listed building. Once funding was secured a project team worked with The Last Elm to capture and protect the significance of the small building, both above and below ground, to ensure it comes off the Historic England ‘at risk’ register.

The accompanying project ‘Bruce Grove Stories’ showcased a new short film by BBC documentary-maker Alex Jones about the community and neighbourhood of Bruce Grove and a specially-commissioned poem by Tottenham-born poet Abondance Matanda.