Events

Free, all welcome. Refreshments included.

What we eat has changed so much over the years, as well as how and where we bought and stored our food. The High Road’s larger grocery stores, with their separate counters and freshly wrapped food gave way to supermarkets, and we started to shop weekly with the benefit of our new fridges. The thriving corner shops in the side streets – dairies, grocers, butchers and bakers – gradually closed, as did the once numerous fruit and veg stalls parked on convenient side streets off the High Road.

Free, all welcome. Refreshments included.

Tracing the family tree or writing a family memoir has become increasingly popular, and for many of us there is a fascination in finding out more about who we are and where we come from. There is a wealth of variety for us Londoners, with forebears from across the British Isles and the World helping to shape our unique identities.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Come along to Bruce Castle for a special Christmas themed reminiscence cafe and share your stories of yuletides old and new.

Do you have memories of Christmas shopping along the High Road? Perhaps you recall Burgess' iconic festive window displays? What traditions have defined the holiday season for you?

Let's get together and reminisce over a cup of tea and a mince pie. 

For any queries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk

Join us at Bruce Castle once a month for morning tea and the opportunity to look at our collections and share stories. You’ll be able to chat and enjoy refreshments in a safe and welcoming environment.

This month, we will be looking at sports. From Spurs to skating, we have so many objects and stories at Bruce Castle relating to Haringey's sporting history. We hope to see you there!

You will also have exclusive access to the Museum's galleries. 

Free, all welcome. Refreshments included.

1950s brought Rock and Roll to these shores, and shocked our parents and teachers. Elvis and Little Richard gave us a new and exciting sound that made us want to move and dance. The sixties took us on to soul and skiffle, Bob Dylan, with his guitar and folk, and the new pop groups, the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Seventies, and the flamboyant Glam Rock, with Queen, Abba and Bowie. Punk, hip hop and rap all followed, musical genres growing from previous generations and ever more inventive.

Join us at Bruce Castle for morning tea and the opportunity to look at our collections and share stories. March's theme is music, so we'll be sharing objects and images from the collection that tell the exciting history of Haringey's music scene.

You’ll be able to chat and enjoy refreshments in a safe and welcoming environment.

You will also have exclusive access to the Museum's ground floor gallery spaces. 

Free, all welcome. Refreshments included.

Free, all welcome. Refreshments included.

Modern gadgets can be a bit of a challenge for some of us, for all their usefulness. Those we used in the past were often so much more simple and trustworthy. The telephone, firmly fixed to the wall so it was never lost and never ran out of charge like those all-singing, all-dancing mobiles.

The history of our local communities can be read in our buildings, the different styles of architecture and the stories they tell. Some may still be with us, others vanished with changing fashions. The handsome Wood Green Empire and the Tottenham Palace are evidence of past entertainment pleasures – music hall, theatre, bingo and cinema. The 1930s Muswell Hill Odeon, on the other hand, with its beautiful Art Deco architecture, still survives.

22 June is Windrush Day, and Windrush has its own London Transport rail line to celebrate, recognising the contribution immigrants made to the country. It doesn’t go through Haringey, but we have our Weaver and Suffragette lines. Weaver, from Liverpool Street to Enfield/Cheshunt/Chingford, acknowledges the immigrant French silk weavers and the Jewish ‘rag trade’. It brought migrants from the East End to Tottenham and provided residents with the easiest route to the Essex seaside.

Since the 19th century, Haringey’s fields and woods have been steadily covered in bricks and concrete. But through foresight and community action, some green spaces have survived. Tottenham Marshes to the east and Highgate Woods to the west edge a borough with parks, greens, allotments and commons poking holes in our urban jungle. Today, children play in the parks, walkers patrol the larger areas, with runners and cyclists weaving round them, football and tennis players find their places and for fitness there are the outdoor gyms.