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The Beale family have been serving Hadley Wood and the surrounding area for 76 years since March 1945 when my father moved to West Lodge Park with his parents. There have been economic ups and downs of course, but nothing could have prepared us for the shock of the last 12 months.

In 1769 John Beale, a master baker from Royston in Hertfordshire, set up shop in Oxford Street. Four generations later, William Beale moved into a 5-storey building in the Holloway Road to accommodate a bakery, groceries, banqueting and a restaurant, the largest such enterprise in North London. In 1945 his grandson, Edward Beale, took the lease on West Lodge Park from Enfield Council and gradually turned the unlicensed premises with permanent residents from the war years into a modern hotel. He started planting fine specimen.