The planning application for redevelopment of the site of the former Cock Inn envisages 54 flats accommodated in three blocks. The proposals would retain the former pub building, but dwarfed by the new construction and rebuilt incorporating two of the original facades and reduced to its original 1885 dimensions; the supermarket would occupy the ground floor, while the first floor would accommodate a restaurant.
A planning application for the construction of a mixed retail/housing development incorporating 54 homes at a key site in Palmers Green was submitted last month, but the documentation submitted with the application reveals that the developers have been in dialogue with council planning officers since at least 2016, in the course of which their proposals went through a process of evolution.
The summary description of application reference 21/01230/FUL relating to 88 Green Lanes N13 5UP gives little clue to its significance:
Redevelopment of site and erection of a part 3, 8 and 12 storey buildings comprising retail and restaurant on ground and first floor level and residential on upper floors together with basement car parking and associated works.
Probably few people would recognise 88 Green Lanes as the address of the TFC (Turkish Food Centre) supermarket which occupies the north-east corner of one of Palmers Green's key road junctions - that between Green Lanes and the North Circular Road. But very many will know that the supermarket is housed in what was until a decade ago a local (though latterly rather unloved) landmark - a pub with a history going back several centuries and known for most of that time at the Cock Inn.
The original Cock Inn, which survived until 1885, may have dated back to the 15th century
The Cock that we remember was built in the late 19th century, when it replaced an inn of the same name housed in a timber-framed former farmhouse. The inn goes back to at least 1611, but possibly as far back as the 16th or even the 15th century (the documentation for the planning application includes interesting historical information, including pictures and maps). The square plan 1885 building was extended to the south in the 1930s. In the 1970s the Cock was advertising itself as North London's Premier Home of Entertainment, but from the 1980s on it went through a series of changes of name and theme until its last manifestation - a Polish sports bar - closed in 2009 and it was subsequently converted for its new role as a food outlet with restaurant attached.
The rebuilt Cock in 1910, with the centuries-old stables and outbuildings still in situ. The developers propose to rebuild the former pub to its 1885 footprint, without the extension to the south that was added in the 1930s.
As well as having deep historical roots, the Cock was significant as one of PG's very few pubs and because it was a large building at an important road intersection - the North Circular Road's Clockhouse Junction (named after the building on the south-eastern corner). It was one of the last to survive out of several large pubs along the North Circular, outliving the Crooked Billet, Cooks Ferry Inn, Cambridge, Green Man, Manor Cottage and others that I've forgotten or never knew about - all of them demolished in the vain hope of abolishing congestion on the North Circ.
However, when both the original and the 1880s Cock were built they were not situated at a particularly important road junction. While a lane going west - the predecessor of the Bowes Road section of the A406 - had been there for a long time, the inn was not situated as a crossroads as there was no road going off to the east until the North Circular was built in the 1930s.
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