Preserve and Restore the Wards Department Store Building at Seven Sisters

The former Wards Department Store building on the corner of Seven Sisters Road and the High Road, in the London Borough of Haringey, has stood empty since the 1970s but retains many interesting features and from visual inspection still appears structurally sound.

It is an early twentieth century example of a steel-framed three-storey structure with large internal spaces -- the only example of such a building in Tottenham and thus a significant part of Tottenham's architectural heritage.

It could easily be brought back into public use -- for example, as a restaurant or an exhibition space, and to provide a new location for the Colombian market which currently occupies part of the site. However, the building is now threatened with demolition as part of a plan for the general redevelopment of the "Wards Corner" site above Seven Sisters underground station.

This redevelopment would replace the existing mix of Edwardian-era buildings and the local businesses occupying them with two eight-storey apartment blocks which would be out of scale with other buildings in the area, a "leisure opportunity" of an undefined character, a roof garden which could not be overseen from the High Road (and thus likely to become a hotspot for anti-social behaviour), and a set of retail units the rents for which would be unaffordable by local businesses.

The Tottenham Civic Society has therefore set up this e-petition to collect the signatures of those who consider that the Wards Department Store building should be preserved, restored and brought back into use as part of the redevelopment, in order to ensure that the site's history and character is not lost.