page_title: Seven Sisters, London
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Seven Sisters, London / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: The seven sisters of Tottenham, 1790, England, by John Greenwood. The house on the right was used by John Greenwood and his family as a summer residence.
context_page_description: Seven Sisters is a sub-district of Tottenham, north London in the United Kingdom, formerly within the municipal borough of Tottenham, which on 1 April 1965 was subsumed into the new London Borough of Haringey. It is located at the eastern end of Seven Sisters Road, which runs from Tottenham High Road to join the A1 in Holloway. It is within the South Tottenham postal district.
context_section_description: The Dorset map of 1619 shows the area known today as Seven Sisters named as Page Greene. However, by 1805 the first series Ordnance Survey map was showing the area as Seven Sisters.
  The name is derived from seven elms which were planted in a circle with a walnut tree at their centre on an area of common land known as Page Green. The clump was known as the Seven Sisters by 1732.
  In his early-seventeenth-century work, The Briefe Description of the Towne of Tottenham Highcrosse, local vicar and historian William Bedwell singled out the walnut tree for particular mention. He wrote of it as a local 'arboreal wonder' which 'flourished without growing bigger'. He described it as popularly associated with the burning of an unknown Protestant. There is also speculation that the tree was ancient, possibly going back as far as Roman times, perhaps standing in a sacred grove or pagan place of worship.
  The location of the seven trees can be tracked through a series of maps from 1619 on. From 1619 they are shown in a position which today corresponds with the western tip of Page Green at the junction of Broad Lane and the High Road. With urbanisation radically changing the area, the 'Seven Sisters' had been replanted by 1876, still on Page Green, but further to the east. Contemporary maps show them remaining in this new location until 1955.
  The current ring of hornbeam trees was planted in 1997 in a ceremony led by five families of seven sisters.
caption: The seven sisters of Tottenham by John Greenwood (1790)
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