Two hundred members of Facebook group meet to celebrate life in the ‘good old days’ when they ‘grew up in Islington’

Published: 21 January, 2011
by TERRY MESSENGER

‘Remember when we let a lion loose at the Silver Jubilee celebrations?’ 

THEY came from as far afield Germany to tell stories and share memories – of how a dead body on a bomb site turned out to be a sleeping tramp or how pranksters let a lion loose into celebrating crowds at the 1935 Silver Jubilee fair in the Royal Agricultural Hall.

This was the third get-together of the internet social networking group “I grew up in Islington.” 

More than 200 members of the 5,000-strong Facebook group gathered for a party at Browns restaurant, Islington Green, on Saturday to wax nostalgic about “the magic” of the old days.

Peggy Dent, 58, came from Barnet to meet up with her childhood pal Barbara Doolan, 57, who still lives in the borough – on the Barnsbury Estate.

Perched on bar stools and rocking with laughter, they recalled their childhood days growing up in an alley off Chapel Market, long since demolished.

Both their dads had stalls – Patrick Doolan was renowned for the huge eggs he sold – “ideal for soldiers” – and fruit stallholder Nobby Dent was famous for practical jokes.

Peggy recalled: “My dad and my uncle went to prison for letting a lion loose at a fair in the Royal Agricultural Hall. It wasn’t very responsible but no one got hurt so we can laugh about it now. They were a couple of characters”

Peggy, the youngest of 12 children, was told by her oldest brother, now 80, how the prankster pair opened a gate separating the tunnel into the arena from the crowd, to let the lion through.

Her dad and uncle Henry were each sentenced to a month in prison.

Brian Field, 56, originally from Popham Street, travelled from Hertfordshire and spoke about the “magical days” playing on bomb sites still scattered across the borough 20 years after the Blitz.

He said: “They were great places to explore for us kids. We’d be in and out the derelict houses and the overgrown gardens – there was always something fascinating to find.

“One day, we got a shock, though. We thought we found a dead body and we called the police, who recognised him as a local tramp.    They woke him up and sent him on his way.”

Dave Reeve, 53, came from Lancashire to press the flesh with friends through the website.

He left his home in Grosvenor Avenue, Highbury, in 1981 and now lives with his partner Wendy in her home town of Preston.

One homesick evening while surfing online, looking for info on old pals, he came across “I grew up in Islington.”

“It’s absolutely worth it coming down here,” he said. “It’s been a blast.”

Painter and decorator Peter Ackerman, 53, came all the way from Peiting, a little town in the Bavarian hills south east of Munich.

He did an Auf Wiedersehen Pet, moving from Madras Place in Highbury to Germany in 1992 to find work – and a wife.

They tried to settle back in London and, unable to afford Islington, they bought a house in Walthamstow.

“But I didn’t like the schools round there,” he explained. And so he and his wife took their family back to her native Germany.

He said: “I still love Islington. I love walking around the old places. I’ve got no bad memories at all of this place.

“There were three cars in the whole of our street when I was a kid and it was perfectly safe to play in the street.”

Rose Fields, 83, of Denmark Grove, was at the party with her daughter Jackie, 50, from Highbury.

Rose, who brought up her family in Gee Street, Finsbury, said: “It’s not the same anymore. In the old days, families lived together in the same blocks of flats and streets – nans, aunts, uncles and all the kids playing together and going to school together.

“But it’s difficult to get housing now – private or council. It’s not too bad for us because Jackie’s fairly nearby – but so many families I know have been split apart.”

Whittington Hospital finance manager Mandy Whittaker, originally from Gardener Court, Highbury Barn, but now living in Borehamwood, said: “I would have loved to have had a nice council property in Islington which I could have bought under Right to Buy, but I had no chance and I couldn’t afford to buy privately in Islington either.”

The group typically consists of homesick exiled Cockneys, unable or unwilling to secure social housing, and priced out of the private sector as richer people moved in.

But what was notable at the party was the absence of resentment towards incomers – whether bankers from the Home Counties or asylum seekers from Somalia.

The “I grew up in Islington” get-together was a celebration – and anything but a rally of the aggrieved.