![[Lower Edmonton]](../images-odds/header-left.jpg)
The domain names for many towns have been registered in bulk by companies who use them for pathetic sites based on standard templates and often provide little or no local information at all. I consider this an insult to those places and I decided to save lower-edmonton.co.uk from the same fate.
This site is about Lower Edmonton, a Middlesex town in the northern suburbs of London. I use my own definition of Lower Edmonton and I generally stick to it but I occasionally stray across the borders if I feel it is appropriate. Observant readers may notice that being appropriate has a tendency to coincide with my having a photo to add to the site ;-)
I do not have a great master plan for this site and it tends to be driven by my coming across new snippets of information or having some more photographs to include. I am aware that the site probably dwells more on the past than the present and might have less appeal for younger readers unless they have some interest in the history. I don't really know how to correct this imbalance.
There are two main reasons:
To expand on the first reason, it may seem very pedantic but I have a thing about referring to Lower Edmonton rather than just Edmonton. It bugged me that the Post Office, or whatever they are called this week, had just Edmonton in the full postal address when they themselves have two postal areas - N9 for Lower Edmonton and N18 for Upper Edmonton - and indeed have probably defined it as a place in some ways. Historically Edmonton is a parish and as well as Lower Edmonton and Upper Edmonton and some smaller settlements, it actually included Winchmore Hill, Palmers Green and Southgate until 1881. Parts of Bush Hill Park were also in Edmonton and came under the Edmonton Urban District Council and municipal borough which lasted until the 1960s. So lumping just Lower Edmonton and Upper Edmonton together under the Edmonton brand isn't as straight forward as it may seem. As someone from Lower Edmonton I don't feel any particular tie to Upper Edmonton at all. It is just one of the adjoining towns like Ponders End or Winchmore Hill.
You hardly hear the name used these days. You still hear Upper Edmonton referred to but Lower Edmonton seems to be ignored. Edmonton Green is mentioned but you would barely know it was part of Lower Edmonton. And don't get me started on Lower Edmonton station being renamed Edmonton Green after only 100 years or so under the old name? Why? To help promote Edmonton Green Shopping Centre it seems. Did they consider making it a nicer place or encourage some decent shops? No they just stuck some flag poles up outside and renamed the train station...
It is interesting (or maybe it isn't!) to note that Winchmore Hill and Palmers Green seem to have their own identities though they were part of Southgate and before that they were all part of Edmonton. Yet Edmonton remains as the name used for the smaller area at the expense of its constituent parts.
I should note that on the older maps I have seen (pre-19th century) it is often the case that Lower Edmonton isn't referred to by name. Rather it often seems to be left nameless as the obvious major settlement in the parish while the much smaller Upper Edmonton and Bury Street are clearly identified. Maybe "Lower" is a relatively late addition to the name or an invention of map makers or administrators. I defer to those who are better informed.
Having said all that it is often easier to say "Edmonton" than "Lower Edmonton" and, whisper it quietly, I have even been known to concede it is part of "Enfield" now. Curiously though I do call it "London" and not "Middlesex", but thats another story...
I have collected photographs and scans from various sources so if I have been naughty with copyright then I apologise and I will add or amend credits and acknowledgements or remove offending material on request from the copyright holder. Generally I have tried to take my own (usually inferior) photographs rather than reproducing other contemporary images.
At the time of writing there are in excess of 1300 images on the site and around 1100 of them are my own photos. If you wish to use any of my images on 'not for profit' web sites then please ask my permission first as I'd like to know where they are (if my photos are useful to you then perhaps your site is of interest to me). It seems unlikely that I would say no provided that you acknowledge my copyright and make local copies of the photos rather than link to them but I do reserve the right. Any other form of publication would need more discussion. I would ask you to bear in mind that the majority of my photos on the site have been reduced in size from 1280x960 pixels or greater and that there has also been a deliberate reduction in quality to reduce file sizes (that is why photos of things like buses look so blotchy). You might wish to consider asking for the originals and working with those instead.
If you wish to link to this site then again I would appreciate knowing about it as you may have a site of interest to me. In an ideal world I would ask you to use the URL http://lower-edmonton.co.uk/ to refer to the home page and that is certainly fine by me, and indeed I still encourage it for your own bookmarks and for quoting the name of the site to others. However because I use the same webspace to host multiple websites that URL used frame based hosting and that doesn't really work that well with search engines. So I have reluctantly switched to exposing the URL http://anidea.co.uk/lower-edmonton/ for this site and I encourage the use of it in linking from other web pages. You may link to other pages if you so wish, although I wouldn't encourage it, but bear in mind I offer no guarantees that I will not remove, rename or drastically alter the pages at any time.
I have now introduced a Fotopic gallery to support this site at the URL http://fotopic.lower-edmonton.co.uk/. This allows me more flexibility in presenting images at larger sizes and with less compression without worrying about the bandwidth usage on this site. It is also arguably a better tool for the job.
This site uses HTML 4.01 Transitional, CSS2 and JavaScript but nothing too exotic so it should work fine in any modern standards based browser. It is really only the use of the <iframe> element to keep adverts under control, and for occasional use with Google Maps, that is a real stopper as far as using 4.01 Strict is concerned (quality, consistent support for the <object> element that I could use instead has been taking its time to arrive).
Following a reluctant switch to authoring on Windows the site will now primarily be tested on the latest release versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox on Windows (I've never liked Opera so don't install it any more). There will be occasional secondary checks on Safari, Camino and Firefox on the Mac (and iCab once it implements CSS2 properly). I don't have the resources available to me to test on older versions of any of the browsers. IE5.5 on Windows has a badly broken CSS implementation so there could be some cosmetic problems there (if not worse) but with Microsoft having withdrawn security fixes from that at the end of 2003 and IE7 now being available it really is time to update. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the site failed to display at all on something like Netscape 4.7. I don't have it around to test it and am not really moved to worry about it either.
Unless I have overlooked anything, all onsite links (this colour) and offsite links (this colour) will reuse the same window so if you want pages to appear in a new window or tabbed page you may use your browser controls to achieve this. As the lower-edmonton.co.uk domain uses frame based hosting and I kept the site in the frame for many years a targetted link had to be used to break out of the frame for external sites. This is deprecated in the latest versions of HTML so it was implemented in JavaScript which meant those who prefer to browse without JavaScript enabled would not have broken out of the frame. This has ceased to be an issue now the site has been taken out of the frame.
The font sizes used on the site are all relative to the body font size with this text you are reading being set at 100%. The default size for the text is whatever you have selected in your browser. This is considered best practice by purists even though it is probably true that many (most?) users aren't used to changing the text size for themselves and the browsers don't make it as transparent as they might. Unfortunately many site authors decide that the default is too big and scale down so those users who use smaller defaults on their browsers get to see teeny weeny text and this can deter users from changing the defaults. For this reason I allow override of the default font size on the site settings page (this uses JavaScript and a cookie).
It is considered "a good thing" to give the user control over the width of the page rather than imposing a fixed width on them. This is something I tend to support but unlike some of the purists one encounters I do not consider it a case of one way being right and another way wrong. As this site is very much based around photos that vary from 640px to 720px in width when displayed full size I consider that there is an obvious minimum useful width and I have chosen to implement one. Those who have not upgraded to version 7 of Internet Explorer will find this doesn't work and I have now removed the script I used to work around this.
The site sends a P3P header out which was used to keep Internet Explorer 6 happy when the site was framed (it blocked the cookies by default because of the frame). Any other cookies that appear will be third party ones from the banner advertising.
Suggestions, corrections, additions etc are welcomed either via the message board where others can see them and add their supports and comments, or they can be sent via e-mail.
