Memoirs from Lynn R., Honouring Peggy Wells of Village Road

Having celebrated the life of “Goon”  and one-time Finchley resident, Spike Milligan, it seems appropriate to honour another important “local” – Peggy Wells.

Support from a Peggy Wells bequest has enabled the Finchley Society to install local blue plaques honouring not only Spike but Tube map creator Harry Beck, the clown Joseph Grimaldi, the old site of St. Mary’s C.E. Primary School and the Toll Gate which was sited at what is now the junction of Regents Park Road and East End Road.

Peggy Wells was born on June 10, 1911, the only daughter and middle child of Joseph and May Wells and lived in Village Road almost all her life, at No46 and 50 after a short stay in Lyndhurst Gardens.

The move back to Village Road was a sad time for the family as it was brought about by the death of her father from a heart attack, in his early 50s and the need to move back to a smaller house.

Peggy will have made the most of her return to ‘the Village’. Archive photographs show sports and socials held on the green in years between the wars and these traditions have been carried on by the new generations of residents.

She worked at the Bank of England until retirement, never married but once quipped that, having observed the friends of her brothers, decided that men were “a bit of a waste of time.”

She was a keen gardener with an appreciation of all things “green and beautiful”. This included her passion to preserve the identity of a village in a city. She was among those who supported the conservation of Finchley Garden Village, as it had been called back on its creation in 1904.

Peggy penned a short memoir of the first 90 years of Village Road: “Between Two Hedges” which she published in 1998. The book details the origins of Village Road and contains photographs taken through the decades, plus anecdotes of village life.

Hopefully copies are still available so I can share more facts about this precious gem on our doorstep.

— Lynn Radnedge