Moselle River - Highgate
Moselle River
A number of tributaries to the Moselle rise in this area and generally flow eastwards as the Cholmeley Brook
Post to the north Highgate
A number of tributaries to the Moselle rise in this area and generally flow eastwards as the Cholmeley Brook
Post to the north Highgate
Post to the west not done
Post to the south Dartmouth Park
Angel Yard
Cottages and mews buildings in the old stable yard of the Angel Inn. There are granite setts and a coach house which was open-sided with a workshop in the roof plus stables and accommodation. It has been converted to flats and a fitness studio.
Archway Road
Cholmeley Brook – the brook crossed archway road from Causton Road – and work in the 19th to culvert it may have led to later subsidence. Many of the buildings on this stretch have been owned by the Department of Transport and subsequently sold to property companies
Cholmeley Evangelical Church. In 1886 as ‘Christians who assemble at the Cholmeley Mission’ met over a shop at in Archway Road. Money was given by Mr. Boake and a church for the brethren built at no. 272. The church expanded both in religious and social work. In 1986 the church had to be rebuilt, but as a result a new congregation was set up, the current building dates from 1989 by Noel Isherwood Associates.
206 The Winchester Tavern. This was previously called The Winchester Hall – and the name remains on the facade. Site of a brick 18th mansion house of the same name
Highgate Hill Merugan Temple. The Hindu Temple Trust bought the site in 1979 following a struggle to get people interested and with help from a temple in Wimbledon
179 –corner shop with lighthouse on the gable.
Bacons Lane
The road is named after Francis Bacon who lived in the area. A small group architects' own houses have views over the cemetery. They were built in the kitchen gardens and orchard of Old Hall and were designed to fit around existing trees.
1-2 is by Peter Cocke of the Architects' Co-Partnership,
4 was built in 1955 by and for W.L. Youille of Design Research Unit,
5 was built in 1955 for Anthony Cox of the Architects' Co-Partnership,
6 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh. In the garden is 'Youth', a sculpture by Daphne Hardy-Henrion (Mrs Koestler), made in 1951 for the Festival of Britain to stand outside the Manasseh’s '51 Bar. Manasseh designed the raised garden in which it is set.
7 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh
8 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh for himself
Bisham Gardens
Built on the site of Bisham House c. 1891, which In the 1820s was the home of Capt. Peter Heywood, midshipman on the Bounty. A house had been on the site since 1565 and the grounds stretched from High Street to Swain's Lane. It was demolished in the 1870s.
Broadlands Close
Built in the late 1960s.
Broadlands Road
A building lease for large houses here was given to an architect called John Groom, in 1878. Both sides were built in the 1880s.
1 Misshapen bricks with glazed surfaces are used in the garden wall. Maybe from the brick kilns on Hampstead Heath
2a The old Post Office
Pillar box marked “ER” - Edward VII, It is an early cylindrical freestanding “pillar” box and, like many others, marks the site of a former post office
14 Apollo House – flats on the site of home of grocer John Sainsbury
16 Enderleigh. Built in 1879, it is claimed as the first house built in the road. It is a Gothic style 19th stone house.
Castle Yard
Opened up as a road in 1894
Name from pub called The Castle which stood on the south corner until about 1900, when it was a tea room/working men’s club
Late 19th houses
Infants school here between 1833-1852
Causton Road
Cholmeley Brook – the brook flowed form Cholmeley Crescent into a lake, where a hollow is now and then went along the south side of the road
Built up by the 1890s although some plant nurseries still survived in the area.
Cholmeley Crescent
Cholmeley Brook – the three branches of the brook converge here. There are gaps in buildings in the road which indicate its path. It then flows eastwards along the line of the rear gardens on the inner bend
The road was built up in the late 1930s
7 concrete and brick Brutalist house with north-light studio above
Cholmeley Park
Victorian Lodge which was on the drive to Cholmeley Lodge, now demolished
Cholmeley Lodge. Art Deco flats built in 1934 and designed by Guy Morgan. These replaced a house of that name which had itself replaced the Mermaid Inn on the corner with High Street
Furnival House, built 1916 and designed by J. H. Pitt, used by female domestic staff of the Prudential Assurance Co. Above the entrance is the date of 1916 in Roman numerals. There is also a plaque with the company's arms and a female head. Inside arms include the motto 'Fortis qui Prudens'- Strength to the prudent. After 1928 it was used as a home for nurses from the Whittington hospital and is now student accommodation
55a Harington Scheme. A project teaching horticultural and other skills to young people.
Cromwell Avenue
Middle class housing by the Imperial Property Investment Company built after the demolition of Winchester Hall.
65 Savarkar – blue plaque to Indian philosopher
Highgate Presbyterian Church. This building at the corner of Hornsey Lane dates from 1887. In 1967 it became part of Highgate United Reformed Church and this building was used until 1982 when it was converted to flats.
Dartmouth Park Hill
Part of the old main road.
Highgate Mental Health Centre. This is in the buildings of what was Highgate Hospital – which was the St Pancras Union Infirmary. It opened in 1869 on the St Pancras side of Dartmouth Park Hill with advice from Florence Nightingale. It was later sold to the Central London Sick Asylum District but in 1893 returned to St Pancras as North Infirmary. In 1930 it was taken over by the London County Council as Highgate Hospital and grouped with other hospitals nearby and in 1948 joined the NHS. It is now the Highgate Mental Health Centre but many original buildings remain. The Whittington cat motif is on the entry doors.
Dartmouth Park Lodge. Gatehouse to Waterlow Park
Duke’s Head Yard
Studio House. Built in 1939 for artist Roger Pettiward aka the cartoonist Paul Crun. It is an early work by Herbert Tayler & David Green and it is a Tower because of the confined site at the end of the owner’s garden. It has a roof garden with great views.
Fitzroy Park
The area evolved around aristocratic houses from the 17th including one built by General Charles Fitzroy. This section of road leads to the area where most were sited.
Highgate
The village was essentially the hill top meeting place of roads – including the main route north out of London which met an older track along what are now Hampstead Lane and Southwood Lane, while skirting woodland. At the top of the hill were a pub and a chapel.
Highgate Avenue
Developed in the 1890s on the land of Oak Lodge.
Highgate Close
Built in 1968 on the site of the Highgate Vicarage.
Highgate High Street
The raised pavement offers protection against a dirty road.
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near Southwood Lane
1 Fairseat. Channing School for Girls. Junior School. In the Great War this was occupied by Russian Grand Duke. It was built by Sydney Waterlow in 1872 as his home and on the site of earlier house.
10 White House. Late 17th building with 18th additions
16 Duke's Head pub
17-23 terrace built 1733 with raised ground floors and original staircases
23 Englefield House 1710
33 Prickett and Ellis. This firm have been estate agents in Highgate since 1767. Frederick Prickett, wrote a ‘History of Highgate; published in 1842.
36a 17th house
37 Angel Inn. The pub was established here by the 16th but was rebuilt in 1880 and altered.
38 has a low oak-beamed interior and was perhaps a small 16th house
39-45 Old Forge. The earliest reference to this site is in 1664, when Thomas Sconce blacksmith built a house here and a forge which stood at the corner of Pond Square, facing Angel Row, called Dodd’s Corner until 1896. It was replaced by a printing works, and became a turning ground for trolley-buses in 1947
42 house built 1830 with arms over the front door which came from Ashurst House on Highgate West Hill, removed by Thomas Townsend in 1832.
46 18th door case.
Townsend Yard. This is a public right of way and goes to a garden centre. The land has been cultivated from at least the 17th. It is named for Thomas Townsend
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near Townsend yard
53 Prince of Wales Pub, This has an entrance both back and front. Leslie Compton the cricketer was a licensee in the 1960s.
55 this was the shop for Attkins successive generations of pork butchers until 1972
60 weather-boarded 19th shop, at one time a corn chandler's, hence a hoist over the yard.
61 on this site was the Cage or "lock-up" and the Watch House until 1811.
62-66 built by Townsend in 1833. This was a pharmacy founded in 1802 and the post office.
Mineral Water factory - this stood behind the pharmacy. This closed in 1889, and unearthed during building works in 1977. The factory site, the 'grinding house' for pharmaceutical preparation and the warehouse are now offices. A cistern for water supply is preserved in the basement.
82 shops with wooden canopies in front, originally to shade perishable wares. This was a butcher’s shop where many fittings and implements remain. The slaughter-house, with beams and pulleys, is behind and in the garden a low building with calf pens.
86 Rose and Crown. A pub was here in the 18th. The name symbolises the union of York and Lancaster in the marriage of Henry VI and Elizabeth of York.
93 Barnhouse. Modernist building by Taylor Hussey
Highgate graveyard. This was the burial ground of the old chapel. The tomb of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, was moved from here into St. Michael's church in 1961. The boundary wall is listed, is 18th and 19th in brick.
Site of chapel of St.Michael, when the Bishop of London was given the Manor of Haringey by William the Conqueror, this part of the estate was a hunting-park He appointed a priest and gave some eight acres at the very top of the hill as a chantry. The chapel was built and became the chapel of the village. In 1564 an Act of Parliament abolished all chantries and confiscating their lands. So in 1565 the school was founded, there was no chapel and the lands had all been sold. It took them five years to recover the property. In 1578 Bishop Sandys built at his own cost a chapel on the hilltop site on school properly. It was a substantial brick building with a square brick tower and a timber roof supported on oak columns. It was pulled down in 1833.
Parish markers. On the pavement and show the boundaries of St.Mary's Hornsey and St. Pancras. This is the ancient boundary of manor, parish, and remain as that between the boroughs of Camden and Haringey.
St.Pancras/Finchley boundary marker. Oval Plate at the Gatehouse marked 'S P x P 1791'.
Cable house for the tramway was on the east side at the top of the hill
Highgate Hill
This is a bypass of 1386, since the old Roman road went through Kilburn. It was the main road out of London until 1813 and very difficult because of the hill. There is a Norman legend of a thief caught in a maze trying to get up the hill – and it is a sort of ziggurat. It also had the first cable tramway in Europe. At the summit five roads meet at a junction and three boroughs converge here as did their predecessor parishes.
Retaining wall which is listed. This is between the pavement and the higher paved walk going to 104 – 110s. It is 18th red brick with 19th Wrought iron railings
Channing School for Girls. Channing House Built at the top of the hill and opened in 1885 in what was then Sutherland House. Channing was an American Unitarian and the school was opened Rev. Robert Spears for daughters of Unitarian clergy. The School owns and used many buildings in Highgate Hill and has others it has built since. Haigh House was built in 1954 to replace bombed buildings of Channing School. There are also sports grounds and playing fields.
104 Cromwell House. This was used as an Ormond Street Hospital convalescent home and then the Ghana High Commission. It was originally a free-standing country house, built in 1637-8 by Richard Sprignell, a trained band captain. It is one of the best of surviving examples of the 'artisan style' of City craftsmen whose hallmark is the elaborate treatment of brick detail. A bay over a carriageway was added in 1678-9 by the da Costas, the first Jewish family to own such property in England since the Middle Ages. The roof and cupola were restored after a fire in 1865. In 1987-9 it was converted to offices by Garden & Godfrey and a matching extension was added. Inside stairs run around a narrow open well with carving of military trophies, and replica statuettes in military costume.
106 Ireton House. This is half of what was originally a single 18th building with Lyndale House as the other half.
108 Lyndale House. This is a farm rebuilt in 1720. It was originally a single building with Ireton House as the other half.
110 Margaret House from 1730 in red brick but the top of it was rebuilt following bombing,
120 Slingley part of Channing House School which bought it in 1921.one of a 19th pair,
122 Westview. Part of Channing House School which leased it in 1885 and bought it in 1901.one of a 19th pair in brick
128 Ivy House, 17th house which was the home of Victorian publisher, Charles Knight. Its pair is Northgate House. Leased for dormitories and offices by Channing School in 1885.
130 Northgate House the pair of Ivy House, also 17th
Hampden House was acquired by Channing School in 1925
Arundel House acquired by Channing School in 1930;
Entrance gates and walls to Lauderdale House. 18th wrought iron Gates with stone capped brick gate piers with stone urns. Red brick park wall.
Plaque on the wall to Andrew Marvell's cottage, demolished in 1867, it says: ‘Four feet below this spot is the stone step, formerly the entrance to the cottage in which lived Andrew Marvell, poet, wit, and satirist; colleague with John Milton in the foreign or Latin secretaryship during the Commonwealth; and for about twenty years M.P. for Hull. Born at Winestead, Yorkshire, 31st March, 1621, died in London, 18th August, 1678, and buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
This memorial is placed here by the London County Council, December, 1898’.
K2 telephone kiosk, at the junction with Dartmouth Park Hill. This dates from 1927 and was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott
90 Old Crown. This originally stood where medieval Hornsey Lane was crossed by Highgate Hill. It was re-built in 1898 on a site higher up the hill
St Joseph's Retreat. Built as the chief clergy house of the Passionist Fathers and it was added to the church in 1874-5 by F. W. Tasker. It is modelled on a rustic Italian villa and wraps round the end of the church. It is in white brick with Doulton dressings.
St.Joseph's RC. Monastery on the site of the Black Dog Inn. Opened by Cardinal Manning 1888. The monastery was built before the church which is the Passionists' motherhouse in England
St.Joseph’s Church. Large prominent landmark on the hillside at the meeting of two major roads. Originally E.W. Pugin was approached, but his design was too expensive and in 1861, a church to the design of J Bird was opened, in 1863. It was demolished in 1888, and replaced in 1889 with the present church by Albert Vicars. It was built to celebrate Pope Leo XIII’s Jubilee. It has a dome on an octagonal drum. Inside the light from the dome’s lantern sheds a dramatic light on a baldacchino. It contains carvings, and paintings and much else. The altar in St. Michael's Chapel had been shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. The Reliquary was designed by Cardinal Wiseman. A Crucifixion painting is attributed to Lord Leighton.
Orchard – there is an orchard and other grounds to the rear.
Winchester Hall, this stood on the corner of Hornsey Lane and was demolished in the 1880s and sold to a housing development company
Highgate West Hill
Once known as Highgate Rise. Numbering has changed for many buildings and is in any case eccentric
40 private health clinic with a plaque about its predecessor, the Fox and Crown. The pub landlord saved Queen Victoria from a runaway horse, and so got the Royal Coat of Arms. It was demolished by the 1930s
47 Apothecary House. Built around 1730 with 19th additions. It was leased by William Wetherell, an apothecary, in 1788, and it was later the home of the geologist Dr. Nathaniel Thomas Wetherell. It is a brick house and there is a rainwater cistern is dated 1789.
48 Gatehouse. Half-timbered pub reconstructed in 1905. It is on site of the gateway which went over the road as an archway. It had been built in 1386 – a wall plaque describes it. A toll was payable here to the Bishop of London as Lord of the Manor. In the old inn an upstairs room was used in the 19th as a magistrate's court and previously the manor court. It was here that 'swearing on the horns' started - the horns were on the door to welcome drovers. The tradition began when herds of cattle were driven through Highgate on their way to slaughter in Smithfield. Highgate was an overnight stop for drovers and travellers were, for a small fee, required to take an oath and become 'a freeman of Highgate'. The visitor stood before a 'judge' and a 'clerk' – who held the horns - and promises 'not to eat brown bread when white is to be had; nor drink small beer when strong ale is available; nor kiss the maid when the mistress is about, but, sooner than miss a chance, kiss then both'. A 'freeman' who is drunk and sees three pigs in the gutter has the right to kick the middle one out of the way and lay down between the other two The gateway itself was demolished because it was too low for high wagons. It was also the site of one of the three gates that into the Bishop’s park.
49-50 was originally one house, built in 1850 as Highgate's new police station.
53 Grove House. This is a large house next to the Reservoir and standing on what was the old course of Hampstead Lane before it was moved further north in the late 18th. 18th with an attic storey added in 1858. It was used as Grove House School for boys in 1825 and lasted, under only three successive headmasters, until 1930 It became well known as 'Fenner's' after its first principal, Zachariah Fenner, whose sister conducted a girls' school and who retired in1872.
54 Pond House is 18th
77 The Flask Tavern. Despite the plaque on the building it cannot be dated earlier than the 18th. The earlier building was used for the sessions of the manor court of Cantelowes. The outside is modest late 18th but inside appear earlier. It is named because flasks of Hampstead mineral water could be bought here in the 18th taken from the Hampstead wells. . In the 1970s a discreet ‘Georgian’ extension was added by E. W. Edwards.
79 is on a site noted in 1493, and the site of the White Hart in 1664, which was the easternmost of a row of cottages
80 Cutbush's Nursery. This was their shop before 1918.
Holly Terrace. Eleven houses, built in 1807 on the site of a larger house, with balconies and gates facing towards London over the former grounds of the Holly Lodge Estate which sold them in 1922 and
South Grove House. Sold by the Holly Lodge Estate in 1922
Mound over the Reservoir installed by the New River Company in 1845, bringing the first piped water to Highgate. Pavilion built at the same time Pavilion: brick with painted stucco, the New River Company water reservoir, which acquired the land upon which the reservoir stands in 1844. Also listed railings with lotus flower terminals set each seventeenth upright.
Witanhurst. Largest private house in London after Buckingham Palace. Its nucleus is an 18th house called Parkfield and it was built in 1913 for the Sunlight soap millionaire Sir Arthur Crosfield by George Hubbard. It is a neo-Georgian mansion with an interior designed in a variety of styles by Percy McQuoid, and includes a ballroom. The grounds were the scene of annual tennis parties which Lady Crosfield gave from the 1920s to her death in 1963 at which many famous Wimbledon players came to meet members of the aristocracy and royalty. The house has been semi derelict for many years.
Lodges of Witanhurst. Made of reused materials. Neo-Georgian style by Seely & Paget, 1929.
40 The Summit. Private health clinic
Hillcrest
Hillcrest. Built 1946-9 by T. P. Bennett for the Borough of Hornsey seven blocks of local authority flats - one of the first British post-war housing schemes, and formally opened in 1949. Built among trees on part of the site of the Park House penitentiary. The blocks are named after the leading British Commanders of the Second World War. For a cost-conscious council the blocks are generously laid out, preserving trees from the grounds of Park House, with the lower buildings at the front – ‘a municipal version of Le Corbusier's vision’. But although they were built only ten years after Highpoint Two, ‘they are separated from it by the years of war and austerity'.
The flats are on a mound which has been suggested to be the site of a fortification built during the Napoleonic Wars as part of a defensive line along the Northern Heights. Probably a windmill there in the past.
Holmesdale Road
The road was built up by 1896
Jackson’s Lane
Medieval road from Highgate to the village church at Hornsey, This was a bridle way across the common, with a narrow roadway
Bank Point. house edged in the fork
Flats - part of the development on the Southwood House site from the 1950s. This is a development with communal gardens.
Kingsley Place
Houses. Yellow brick houses of one, two or three storeys, stepping down a steep slope, by the Architects' Co-Partnership, c. 1967. Also won a Ministry of Housing design award in 1968 and a Civic Trist Award.
33 Southwood Lodge. Late 18th house in stock brick. Fire insurance sign on the 1st floor. Now divided into two and with a hidden garden laid out last century on a steeply sloping site
North Hill
The Great North Road descends North Hill to meet the 'lower road' of the cutting.
Highpoint One. International modern by Lubetkin and Tecton built in 1936 & 1938 for Sigmund Gestetner to house employees at his Tottenham Hale factory. The outstanding modern movement building of its day which even Le Corbusier praised. It is in a double cruciform shape with eight flats on each floor and small rooms for maids below. It is built of reinforced concrete in a special system devised by Ove Arup, reusing the shuttering as the building grew. The flats have two living rooms and three bedrooms. From the entrance there are steps to a raised landing and the tearoom overlooking the garden. It was built on the site of previous houses called The Cedars and some trees remain in the front of the house.
Highpoint Two. This was also for Gestetner by Lubetkin and Tecton. The entrance appears, but is not, supported on copies of the Erechtheum caryatids on the Acropolis which Lubetkin wanted to be a controversial talking point. As the weather was not good to cement render finish this is brick and tile. The flats are larger - three living rooms and four bedrooms - arranged in Corbusian fashion so that the living rooms are double-height. Lubetkin himself lived in the penthouse and it has been restored to include his original furniture. - The door to the living room has an enlargement of a drop of plankton; the gardens at the back however are not modernist. They were designed by Clarence Elliott, who founded Six Hills Nursery at Stevenage in 1907, a specialist in Alpine plants.
4 This house is thought to have been the superintendent’s house for Highgate Brewery replaced by Park House and then used for the superintendent of the penitentiary. Excavations nearby showed cellars related to the brewery a d a series of tunnels for beer storage
Kiplings. A grocer's shop from the 1840s till the 1970s; now an Indian restaurant.
6 St George's House 19th house.
13 The Bull Inn 18th roadside inn of two storeys. It is said that it is where painter George Morland used to stay – when it was called The Black Bull. In the 21st it had the most alarming zoo related wall paper.
Highgate Brewery. This was extant in the 1670. It was bought 1806-9 by John Cooper from a John Addison who had himself purchased it from the Southcote family and then moved the brewing to Homerton. John Cooper dismantled it and turned the lands into his Town House Estate. It was sold later in the 19th and became a special school. The London Diocesan Penitentiary had been formed following a donation in an 1853 for a house for the “reformation of penitent fallen women". In 1855 a lease had been taken out on Park House and it was bought outright in 1861. In 1900 it was taken over by the Clewer Order of Sisters and, then became the House of Mercy. It was closed in 1940. Hillcrest flats are on the site.
North Road
Old trunk route. This was an Elizabethan road which led through a gate into the Bishop's park. In 1767 it was a wooden causeway which was renewed, trees cut down and levelled. Up to about 1890 the road was lined with shops which on the east side stretched past Castle Yard as far as Park Walk - Houses have replaced all of them.
Highgate School. Founded by Roger Cholmeley 1565. He was once Recorder of London, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Lord Chief Justice of England – but at odds with Mary Tudor and retired here. Elizabeth gave him permission to found a free school on common land – the Hermitage - given by the Bishop in 1565. In his will he provided for a school to be built. However most of the buildings between Southwood Lane and North Road date from 1866. Ex-pupils - called Old Cholmeleians - include Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Betjeman and Anthony Crosland. T.S. Eliot taught here.
Old School Building. Now the schools’ principal hall, with classrooms underneath. Built 1865-7 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell for the Reverend Dr. Dyne, headmaster in Red brick. It is a first-floor hall with a stage, with external stairs and an imperial stairway added as war memorial in 1949. The main facade has a sundial inscribed 'Vera Loqui aut Silere'. The lead parapet is inscribed 'R S 1565'. The stage was set up in 1933 with panelling donated 1934 by Edward Jeudwine
Highgate School Chapel. Designed 1865-6 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell in red brick and inside polychromatic coloured bricks with stone and tiles. Built as a memorial to G.E.Crawley, a governor and benefactor. In the undercroft is a pump, wooden benches and a First World War Memorial. There is a Boer War Memorial at the entrance door. There are two organs, stained glass, including
memorials. One window was replaced in 1953 after bomb damage.
War Memorial at Highgate School. Erected in 1921. The design is the 'Cross of Sacrifice' of 1919 by Reginald Blomfield. Portland stone cross on octagonal plinth with a bronze sword.
1-7 19th. Cottages with characteristic long front gardens of 1829
6 early 19th with a curved Tuscan porch
9 discreetly tucked away behind a small entrance courtyard the first house built by Walter Segal for himself in 1962-8. In the garden is the temporary building used while the house was under construction, a prototype for Segal's lightweight self-build houses developed later elsewhere
10 villa with Gothic windows
13 Byron House. 18th house with 19th stuccoed front. It was Byron House School 1897 -1962 –a co-educational prep school
15 Hampton Lodge. 18th house of 3 storeys with iron gate.
St.Michael’s Church of England Primary School. The early years of this school demonstrate an important step in primary educational planning, involving greater Government spending and the provision of a wider range of facilities. It had been set up in Southwood Lane as an alternative to the expensive Cholmeley School. In 1850 by Harry Chester of South Grove, assistant secretary to the Privy Council committee on education, and the Rev. T. H. Causton who lived locally got an unprecedentedly large government grant. They opened a school here designed by fashionable architect Anthony Salvin and this opened in 1852. There were also three teachers' houses and twelve dormitories and land for a farm. It was managed by a distinguished committee and was a showplace. However idealism waned and parents demanded a more conventional education, there were many vacancies and it was reorganised in 1922. The Infants' playground is in front and reached by a narrow driveway. A new junior department by architects Barren & Smith was opened in 1972 by Margaret Thatcher, then Minister of Education –there is a plaque in the entrance porch.
Fire station for the Borough of Hornsey, jolly, half timbered. Became an ambulance station, now flats. 1981 Chas Palmer of Timothy Brice Dick Associates. Half-timbered with a tower from 1896. Station rebuilt in 1906 according to inscription on building. Date of original unknown Frank van der Weerden - Originally Hornsey MB. In use as a substation by Hornsey MB, station closed before WWII but reopened during the Blitz
19 Sycamores. Brick house with a big front door and weather-boarding on the side. In the 18th this was the Bear Inn. Thomas Bennett architect of the Saville Theatre lived here from 1932
17 The Sycamores Byron Cottage. It has a G.L.C. blue plaque placed there in 1969 to commemorate the residence here of A.E. Housman, during which he wrote "A Shropshire Lad". It is where he lived while teaching University College
21 The Sycamores 18th brick house
25 Red Lion and Sun. Not to be confused with the since demolished Red Lion coaching inn. This was made up of three old cottages. Rebuilt 1928.
28 Garner Maths Block of Highgate School, This block was opened by Lord Garner in 1983. In the paving of the courtyard behind are preserved the granite setts that formed the floor of stables kept there by a job master.
31 Petrol Station in what was the Bell and Horns Pub
45 Old Forge. This is the site of a shoeing forge which operated from c.1800 until the last proprietor, Thomas Hayhoe, died in 1926
47-49 started as a single grand 18th house. Urns on the parapet.
51 Gloucester House, was a grocer's in the first half of the 19th, then a boys' preparatory school
53-55 originally one house, which in the 1870s was a girls' school called Claremont House.
57 Grimshaw Close. Highgate United Synagogue
Grimshaw Close. Council flats built 1933 on the site of demolished cottages
59 Northfield Hall. An Athenaeum was proposed in 1859 only partly realized with the opening of Northfield hall in 1878 which included a house and two committee rooms. The Territorials in the shape of the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment) moved to the new Northfield hall, to which a commemorative stone was taken. It was also used as a gym by Highgate School and in the 1880s for petty sessions. It has been sold and redesigned as offices and flats.
92 is next to the site of the Red Lion. The Dickens family stayed here in 1832 to escape creditors. .
98 Wrestlers Tavern. Pub goes back to 1547 and there is a plaque on it about the horns ceremony, the present building is 1921. In 1961 the publican restarted the the 300-year-old ceremony of 'swearing on the horns'.
109-117 Prospect Place, pleasant group of 1811. Raised up on a bank.
193-215 enclave of two-storey red brick terraces early council housing of 1902 by the Hornsey Borough Engineer, E.J. Lovegrove, similar to Hornsey's other early estate but also including some cottage flats.
Gateway and bell of Highgate School. The 19th brick archway and bell are remnants of the time when Sir Roger Cholmeley's Grammar School was a virtual charity school. The wrought iron gates to the forecourt were erected to mark the school's tercentenary in 1865. From Castle Yard to the High Street the land between North Road and Southwood Lane is owned by Highgate School, as it has been for more than 400 years.
Wrought iron gates for Cholmeley School’s tercentenary 1865
Northwood Road
Cholmeley Brook –goes along this road having crossed Archway Road
2c Northwood Road Practice
Park House Passage
Footpath which connects North Hill and Talbot Road
A raised grassy bank is the site of the village pound for stray animals
Park Walk
Footpath which went alongside the women's penitentiary between Southwood Lane and Jackson Lane. Part of the Park House estate, hence the name.
Pond Square
So called because there was a pond there which was filled in in 1864. It is a registered 'town green' with mature plane trees and managed by the local authority. It is on the Site of Pond’s Farm by William Paterson founder of the Bank of England. Features in David Copperfield as his first married home. Said to be haunted by the ghost of the chicken which killed Francis Bacon.
1-5 18th houses
6 Rock House. Built in 1777 and named from a Mr Rock lived there in the 1840s. In the 1870s it was the Highgate Dispensary.
45-46, houses with rainwater head dated 1729.
47 18th house
Somerset Gardens
Housing developments. With pitched roofs and timber cladding built by architects, Andrews Sherlock & Partners. An extension of Kingsley Place,
South Grove
Pond Square Chapel. United Reform Church – also used as a nursery and for arts events. Erected in 1858 by Architect T. Roger Smith. In 1967 the Highgate Congregational Church merged with Highgate Presbyterian Church on Pond Square to form the Highgate United Reformed Church. Funding from the sale of the Presbyterian Church allowed for a major refurbishment of Pond Square Chapel which re-opened in 1984
9 Russell House 18th house,
10 Church House. Detached 18th house in brick, The house grew from a 17th cottage, was at one time owned by Roger Cholmeley and a previous resident was Sir John Hawkins. Thought to be the model for Steerforth’s home in Dickens’ David Copperfield. It was the residence of the Jewish school master Leopold Neumegen first professor of Hebrew at London University. A Jewish academy was established here by 1802 under Hyman Hurwitz, The premises on the west were converted into Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution in1840
10a belongs to the Highgate Society and was the Jewish school schoolroom. The Cottage was the sleeping quarters. Now used by the Highgate Society
11 Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. This Lecture hall was built in 1879 in what was previously the stable yard of Church House. It was inspired by Harry Chester, later chair of RSA. It is a members-only club with a private library, a reading room-meeting hall founded in 1839 to promote 'useful and scientific knowledge. The original building was previously used as a school; the front and porch from 1882. Behind is the lecture hall with high timber roof and central lantern, added by Rawlinson Parkinson in 1879; the original hall at the back became the library - Victoria Hall and Coleridge Room.
12 Old Dairy
14 Moreton House. The house of 1715 was originally one of a pair, and only one room deep until the 19th and it was subdivided into floors soon after it was built. Dr.Gillman and Coleridge lived there and it was Coleridge’s first Highgate home - the two top left-hand windows of the old house marked his room. It was burnt down 1983 and rebuilt by Julian Harrap.
16 is by Leonard Malmo c. 1961, on older foundations, and with a later roof
17 Old Hall. Probably rebuilt 1691, which is the date on the rain head. It is the remains of Arundel House where Elizabeth was prisoner on her way to the Tower. It was the home of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel 1585-1646, and where Sir Francis Bacon died and the incident of the refrigerated chicken happened. Arbella Stuart was also here. Lead pipes were installed for water in 1626. It is a brown and red brick building with an iron gate. The grounds were divided up in the late 17th; on the site of the banqueting house and Sir William Ashurst, Lord Mayor in 1693, built a grand house with pediment and cupola. This was demolished for St Michael's Church; its grounds became Highgate Cemetery. Novelist Rumer Godden lived in the current house until 1998.
18 Voel House. 17th house with a later top storey.
Milestone standing in front of 18
30 18th
Angel Row cottages which were behind the Angel Inn
St. Michael's church. Built on the site of Ashurst House, home of Thomas Townsend in 1832. It was built to replace the old school chapel and became the centre of Highgate's first ecclesiastical parish in its own right. The architect was Lewis Vulliamy who produced a landmark spire and three bare wooden galleries. There are memorial tablets to Coleridge and the Gillmans on the north wall and Coleridge was re-interred under the central aisle in 1961is mentioned by Dickens in David Copperfield. The east window was done by Evie Hone before she died in 1955.
Parish centre. Completed in 1988 by architect Melville Poole.
Highgate Dairy Terrace. At the corner of Swain's Lane brick terrace with roughcast gables, built by Ernest H. Abbott
Traffic Island: a horse chestnut tree planted by Sir Yehudi Menuhin, the violinist, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Highgate Society, founded in 1966, of which he was President.
Southwood Lane
The road follows a right of way across Highgate Common along the eastern side of the Bishop of London's park. It provided an alternative route northwards for those who did not want to pay the toll. It also led to the Mus Well – a curative spring - which was also on one of the main medieval roads to the north. The east side of the lane between the High Street and Kingsley Place is lined with Georgian town houses. Some of them are on the foundations on earlier houses with some timber-framing.
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near the High Street
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises near the site of the former Southwood hospital
Graveyard wall .The Southwood Lane frontage is higher, as the land falls away, and includes 19th cast-iron railings, with spear tops and classical urns. The wall is attached to Highgate School chapel
2-8 18th
10 18th house in brick.
12 Late 18th brick house
15 19th brick house with older building behind
18 probably 17th.
20 19th house
20a 19th house
22 Avalon, Plaque put in place in 1975 to Mary Kingsley who blew up the garden with gunpowder. The Plaque says ‘traveller and ethnologist, lived here as a child'.
50 Arthur Waley translator of Chinese and Japanese literature lived here
68 St.Michael’s Vicarage until 1972
70 Linear House. Single storey house with sustainable features. Built on part of the Hospital gardens. Its western side is sunk into the hillside so the house is almost invisible from the north and west. Most of its roof is covered with meadow flowers and grass.
70 Southwood Court - Southwood Hospital Opened in 1953 for female geriatric patients, the hospital was enlarged from a former orphanage and occupied a previously private mansion called The Limes built before 1815. In 1921 The Limes it had been bought by the Furniture Trades' Provident and Benevolent Institution, who converted it as a children's home "for fatherless children of members". They named it Radlett House, after their former children's homes in Radlett, Herts, which had been established in 1905. In 1940 the orphanage moved and Radlett House was leased to the Middlesex County Council, and it became a hospital for chronically ill patients. In 1948 Radlett House joined the NHS. The Hospital closed in 1991 with 22 beds. The Hospital building is now called Southwood Court. In 2004 it was converted by Cityshape into a terrace of six large family houses of 5 bedrooms each.
87 with a date plaque of 1883. For many years Highgate School's sanatorium.
Highgate Baptist Tabernacle. 19th stuccoed building if 1836 with cast iron lamp holders. It was originally founded by Presbyterians just after the 1665 Act forbidding nonconformists to preach within a five mile radius of the City. It was acquired for Highgate School’s sixth form in 1977.
Dyne House. Five-storey Highgate School arts block by Architects Ansell & Bailey. Opened in 1967 by Yehudi Menuhin, then a local resident, and has a fine underground auditorium. It was named after Rev. J.B. Dyne the Headmaster who was a 'second founder'.
Highgate British School founded in 1852, as a result of nonconformist disillusion with St.Michael's. In 1859, it was in cramped premises in Southwood Lane. It was replaced by Highgate Board School in the 1890s and moved to North Hill. The old premises were sold to Cholmeley's school, as to become laboratories.
Highgate postal sorting office, built in 1888. Now in other use.
99 site of Hornsey local board offices. They used the old highway board offices, until in 1869 when they moved into the purpose built offices here on land leased from the London Diocesan Penitentiary. They were considered unsuitable and replaced by the Town Hall in Crouch End in 1934-5 and demolished in 1968.
Stone bollards marking the site of the public well from which some of Highgate's drinking water was drawn before the piped supply came.
123 Well Cottage. Deep well in the front garden and Sun Insurance Co. insurance mark. Named after the village well which was outside. The mid-18th house was originally two Bow Street Runners' cottages.
Woolaston-Paunceforth Almshouses. Founded in the 17th a single storey row with taller centre for a girls' charity. The houses date from 1722 when the original almshouses were re-built and enlarged. The Pauncefote Charity School for Girls was in the centre house. An inscription over the door gives tells of their foundation by Sir John Woolaston in 1658 and their rebuilding to double the number by Edward Pauncefort in 1722. Until 1988 the almshouses had outdoor sanitation only, and each dwelling a single tap, but they have been modernised for the six old ladies instead of twelve.
Southwood Lawn Road
Southwood Park. Two brutalist, redbrick blocks built 1966 by Douglas Stephen & Partners. Built on the site of Southwood Court,
Southwood Court was demolished in 1965, and had been the home of Lord Southwood Chairman of Odham's Press. Landscaped grounds kept for residents.
Old gateway to Southwood Court. On the wall the Johnson family crest of a winged spur and the motto nunquam non paratus (Always be prepared). John Grove Johnson, an assayer to the Bank of England, lived in Southwood Court from about 1880 when it was built.
Swains Lane
Was probably Swine Lane originally, since pigs were driven up it to be slaughtered.
Transmitter. This dates from 1937 and is associated with early TV broadcasting from Alexandra Palace. Buildings on the north side were associated with it.
Highgate Cemetery. The cemetery was built on the site of Highgate Parish Farm. It was one of seven cemeteries built between 1831 and 1841 as a result of public concern on the insanitary state of London's churchyards. These cemeteries were modelled on the garden cemeteries of Napoleonic France. It was built by a joint-stock company founded by Act of Parliament. The architect was Stephen Geary, who otherwise built pubs and is buried here. The Lodge is now demolished. There are Chapels at the Gate in ‘Undertakers Gothic’, which were closed in 1956. There is an Egyptian Avenue and an Egyptian inner circle in a line of cedar trees. Bunning built catacombs but the Portland cement used did not last, they included a Hydraulic bier. Beer mausoleum closed in 1975. Traitors Hill was subsumed in the cemetery. Until 1939, both this, and the southern extension, were maintained on formal lines as grassed areas landscaped with flower beds and specimen trees. In the 1940s maintenance stopped and it was closed in 1975. In response the Friends of Highgate Cemetery was formed. Ownership was acquired by a small company in 1981, and was transferred to the Official Custodian for Charities in 1988. The cemetery is mainly secondary woodland consisting of stands of sycamore or ash. Large mature trees hint at the original layout.
85 In 1982 architect John Winter designed the Winter House here. After thirty years it was clear it would need complete reconstruction. In 2005 it was demolished and replaced by a new residence, built on the footprint of the previous, designed by Eldridge Smerin Architects
Gates and Lodge to Waterlow Park. Castellated lodge of 1840. This was at the carriage entrance to Waterlow Park when it was part of a private estate
81 three-storey house on southern sloped overlooking cemetery, plain, contrast to local Gothic follies,
91-103, a neat terrace of pale yellow brick, Haxworth & Kasabov, 1970-2; living rooms on the top floor.
The Grove
The road is set back from the side of the green with a Georgian terrace and views over London.
1-6 once known as Quality Walk built 1688 on the site of Dorchester House. Dorchester House had been home to courtier. Henry Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. The houses were built by City by merchant William Blake to fund a charity school and an early example of an urban terrace.
1 handsome gate. This was joined to No.2 in.1900 for use as a school. Subsequently in the 1930s home of actress Gladys Cooper and Neville Pearson. From 1959 home of violinist Yehudi Menuhin until 1983.
3 Plaque to Samuel Taylor Coleridge who lived here from 1823 until his death. Coleridge was addicted to laudanum, and came to Highgate in 1816 to seek a cure. He lived here with Dr. Gillman and his family. Plaque to J.B. Priestley novelist and playwright who lived here in the 1930s - He bought it with the money he made from The Good Companions.
4 Two-tiered garden with formal upper garden; view across Heath; orchard in lower garden.
5 Roger Fry the painter and art critic, was born here. The house was rebuilt by H. James in the 1920s. Fire insurance plate
6 remains of Dorchester House garden walls with bastion and niches in the garden. Fire insurance plate.
7 house built in 1832 and had a garden with conifers and other trees.
12 built in the 1970s by Lush & Lester,
St.Pancras/Finchley boundary marker. Plate of an oval design marked 'S P x P 1791'.
Waterlow Park
Park of 26 acres given to London County Council by Sir Sidney Waterlow. Waterlow, the printer was also Lord of the Manor and Chair of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. Waterlow gave the grounds to the people of London as a 'garden for the gardenless'. The grounds include what is said to be Nell Gwynn's bath marble bath and fireplace and old iron support. There is a hollow and a pond garden first noted in the 17th, Statues and exotic trees. More ponds have been built since the park was opened and there is a bridge over a cascade linking the upper and lower lakes. .
Wall – said to be to Andrew Marvell’s garden, and there is a plaque to this.
Sundial with dedication by Andrew Marvell, whose cottage stood only a few yards from here in the late 17th
Sir Sydney Waterlow statue with hat, bronze umbrella and keys - the key to the park to be given to the public. As relaxed as if he was going for a walk. Believed to be the only statue in London which features an umbrella. He was the last owner of Lauderdale House. He is surrounded by late 19th planting by F.M Taubman.
Lauderdale House. The beginnings of Lauderdale House are unclear. Neither the name of the architect or the builder is known, or indeed the date. A young London goldsmith, Richard Martin, lived here in the late 1580s. In the course of the restoration work in the 1960s, the skeleton of a chicken and demonological objects were found in the external walls. At the end of the 16th John Povey, a lawyer lived there and – was host to Arbella Stuart. It continued to have number of distinguished owners, mainly lawyers. In 1649 it was leased to John Ireton a Cromwellian future Lord Mayor. Lauderdale returned there at the restoration and became Secretary of State for Scotland. At some stage Nell Gwynne may have lived there. In the 18th it was a school, and Later Sir Sidney Waterlow acquired it and leased it to a hospital before presenting it to the London County Council with the park. Since 1968 it has been a centre for exhibitions, concerts and other events. There is a Cafe at the front and tables outside. The house itself is a much-altered remnant of a partly timber 16th house but there is little to see. Despite its appearance the house is Elizabethan. The cellars survive and there is some other restoration and repairs after damage by fires in 1963 and 1968.
The Elms. The house and garden were part of what is now Waterlow Park in the 19th when it was home to Sir James Pennethorne the architect.
Image. Sculpture on bonded bronze by Naomi Blake. On the Upper Lake. Hollow oval form with a solid ball at the top. Sited on an island.
Winchester Road
Solid middle class housing by the Imperial Property Investment Company after the demolition of Winchester Hall
Witenhurst Lane
Bromwich House. Completed after a planning enquiry in 1996 but Planned in 1986 by Elena Keats. Interiors by Conley & Webb. Living rooms at the top level, and a diamond- shaped swimming pool
Sources
Blue Plaque Guide
British History. Hornsey web site
British Listed Buildings web site
Camden History Newsletter
Chelsea Speleological Society newsletter
Cholmondeley Church web site
Clarke. In Our Grandmothers Footsteps
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. Place Names of London
Fitzroy Park web site
Four Highgate walks
Greater London walk: Through Highgate to Highgate Wood
Headley and Meulenkamp. Follies
History of Middlesex County Council
List of buildings at risk, English Heritage
London Borough of Camden web site
London Borough of Haringey web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Transport Country Walks
Lost London Hospitals web site
Lucas, London
Merugan Temple Web site
Modern Houses in the London Borough of Haringey web site
Muravyoya and Sivolap-Kaftanova, Lenin in London
Nairn, Nairn’s London
Nairn. Modern Buildings,
Pevsner & Cherry. London North
Pinching and Dell. Haringey’s hidden streams
Port of London
Sexby. London Parks
Smith. Florence Nightingale
Smyth. City Wildspace,
Stevenson. Middlesex
Summerson. Georgian London
Symonds. Behind Blue Plaques
The Kingston Zodiac
Tindall. The Fields Beneath
Walford. Highgate to the Lea,
Webster. Great North Road
Wikipedia, Channing School web site
Wikipedia, Holly Estate web site
Willats. Streets of Islington,
Angel Yard
Cottages and mews buildings in the old stable yard of the Angel Inn. There are granite setts and a coach house which was open-sided with a workshop in the roof plus stables and accommodation. It has been converted to flats and a fitness studio.
Archway Road
Cholmeley Brook – the brook crossed archway road from Causton Road – and work in the 19th to culvert it may have led to later subsidence. Many of the buildings on this stretch have been owned by the Department of Transport and subsequently sold to property companies
Cholmeley Evangelical Church. In 1886 as ‘Christians who assemble at the Cholmeley Mission’ met over a shop at in Archway Road. Money was given by Mr. Boake and a church for the brethren built at no. 272. The church expanded both in religious and social work. In 1986 the church had to be rebuilt, but as a result a new congregation was set up, the current building dates from 1989 by Noel Isherwood Associates.
206 The Winchester Tavern. This was previously called The Winchester Hall – and the name remains on the facade. Site of a brick 18th mansion house of the same name
Highgate Hill Merugan Temple. The Hindu Temple Trust bought the site in 1979 following a struggle to get people interested and with help from a temple in Wimbledon
179 –corner shop with lighthouse on the gable.
Bacons Lane
The road is named after Francis Bacon who lived in the area. A small group architects' own houses have views over the cemetery. They were built in the kitchen gardens and orchard of Old Hall and were designed to fit around existing trees.
1-2 is by Peter Cocke of the Architects' Co-Partnership,
4 was built in 1955 by and for W.L. Youille of Design Research Unit,
5 was built in 1955 for Anthony Cox of the Architects' Co-Partnership,
6 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh. In the garden is 'Youth', a sculpture by Daphne Hardy-Henrion (Mrs Koestler), made in 1951 for the Festival of Britain to stand outside the Manasseh’s '51 Bar. Manasseh designed the raised garden in which it is set.
7 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh
8 built in 1961 by Leonard Manasseh for himself
Bisham Gardens
Built on the site of Bisham House c. 1891, which In the 1820s was the home of Capt. Peter Heywood, midshipman on the Bounty. A house had been on the site since 1565 and the grounds stretched from High Street to Swain's Lane. It was demolished in the 1870s.
Broadlands Close
Built in the late 1960s.
Broadlands Road
A building lease for large houses here was given to an architect called John Groom, in 1878. Both sides were built in the 1880s.
1 Misshapen bricks with glazed surfaces are used in the garden wall. Maybe from the brick kilns on Hampstead Heath
2a The old Post Office
Pillar box marked “ER” - Edward VII, It is an early cylindrical freestanding “pillar” box and, like many others, marks the site of a former post office
14 Apollo House – flats on the site of home of grocer John Sainsbury
16 Enderleigh. Built in 1879, it is claimed as the first house built in the road. It is a Gothic style 19th stone house.
Castle Yard
Opened up as a road in 1894
Name from pub called The Castle which stood on the south corner until about 1900, when it was a tea room/working men’s club
Late 19th houses
Infants school here between 1833-1852
Causton Road
Cholmeley Brook – the brook flowed form Cholmeley Crescent into a lake, where a hollow is now and then went along the south side of the road
Built up by the 1890s although some plant nurseries still survived in the area.
Cholmeley Crescent
Cholmeley Brook – the three branches of the brook converge here. There are gaps in buildings in the road which indicate its path. It then flows eastwards along the line of the rear gardens on the inner bend
The road was built up in the late 1930s
7 concrete and brick Brutalist house with north-light studio above
Cholmeley Park
Victorian Lodge which was on the drive to Cholmeley Lodge, now demolished
Cholmeley Lodge. Art Deco flats built in 1934 and designed by Guy Morgan. These replaced a house of that name which had itself replaced the Mermaid Inn on the corner with High Street
Furnival House, built 1916 and designed by J. H. Pitt, used by female domestic staff of the Prudential Assurance Co. Above the entrance is the date of 1916 in Roman numerals. There is also a plaque with the company's arms and a female head. Inside arms include the motto 'Fortis qui Prudens'- Strength to the prudent. After 1928 it was used as a home for nurses from the Whittington hospital and is now student accommodation
55a Harington Scheme. A project teaching horticultural and other skills to young people.
Cromwell Avenue
Middle class housing by the Imperial Property Investment Company built after the demolition of Winchester Hall.
65 Savarkar – blue plaque to Indian philosopher
Highgate Presbyterian Church. This building at the corner of Hornsey Lane dates from 1887. In 1967 it became part of Highgate United Reformed Church and this building was used until 1982 when it was converted to flats.
Dartmouth Park Hill
Part of the old main road.
Highgate Mental Health Centre. This is in the buildings of what was Highgate Hospital – which was the St Pancras Union Infirmary. It opened in 1869 on the St Pancras side of Dartmouth Park Hill with advice from Florence Nightingale. It was later sold to the Central London Sick Asylum District but in 1893 returned to St Pancras as North Infirmary. In 1930 it was taken over by the London County Council as Highgate Hospital and grouped with other hospitals nearby and in 1948 joined the NHS. It is now the Highgate Mental Health Centre but many original buildings remain. The Whittington cat motif is on the entry doors.
Dartmouth Park Lodge. Gatehouse to Waterlow Park
Duke’s Head Yard
Studio House. Built in 1939 for artist Roger Pettiward aka the cartoonist Paul Crun. It is an early work by Herbert Tayler & David Green and it is a Tower because of the confined site at the end of the owner’s garden. It has a roof garden with great views.
Fitzroy Park
The area evolved around aristocratic houses from the 17th including one built by General Charles Fitzroy. This section of road leads to the area where most were sited.
Highgate
The village was essentially the hill top meeting place of roads – including the main route north out of London which met an older track along what are now Hampstead Lane and Southwood Lane, while skirting woodland. At the top of the hill were a pub and a chapel.
Highgate Avenue
Developed in the 1890s on the land of Oak Lodge.
Highgate Close
Built in 1968 on the site of the Highgate Vicarage.
Highgate High Street
The raised pavement offers protection against a dirty road.
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near Southwood Lane
1 Fairseat. Channing School for Girls. Junior School. In the Great War this was occupied by Russian Grand Duke. It was built by Sydney Waterlow in 1872 as his home and on the site of earlier house.
10 White House. Late 17th building with 18th additions
16 Duke's Head pub
17-23 terrace built 1733 with raised ground floors and original staircases
23 Englefield House 1710
33 Prickett and Ellis. This firm have been estate agents in Highgate since 1767. Frederick Prickett, wrote a ‘History of Highgate; published in 1842.
36a 17th house
37 Angel Inn. The pub was established here by the 16th but was rebuilt in 1880 and altered.
38 has a low oak-beamed interior and was perhaps a small 16th house
39-45 Old Forge. The earliest reference to this site is in 1664, when Thomas Sconce blacksmith built a house here and a forge which stood at the corner of Pond Square, facing Angel Row, called Dodd’s Corner until 1896. It was replaced by a printing works, and became a turning ground for trolley-buses in 1947
42 house built 1830 with arms over the front door which came from Ashurst House on Highgate West Hill, removed by Thomas Townsend in 1832.
46 18th door case.
Townsend Yard. This is a public right of way and goes to a garden centre. The land has been cultivated from at least the 17th. It is named for Thomas Townsend
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near Townsend yard
53 Prince of Wales Pub, This has an entrance both back and front. Leslie Compton the cricketer was a licensee in the 1960s.
55 this was the shop for Attkins successive generations of pork butchers until 1972
60 weather-boarded 19th shop, at one time a corn chandler's, hence a hoist over the yard.
61 on this site was the Cage or "lock-up" and the Watch House until 1811.
62-66 built by Townsend in 1833. This was a pharmacy founded in 1802 and the post office.
Mineral Water factory - this stood behind the pharmacy. This closed in 1889, and unearthed during building works in 1977. The factory site, the 'grinding house' for pharmaceutical preparation and the warehouse are now offices. A cistern for water supply is preserved in the basement.
82 shops with wooden canopies in front, originally to shade perishable wares. This was a butcher’s shop where many fittings and implements remain. The slaughter-house, with beams and pulleys, is behind and in the garden a low building with calf pens.
86 Rose and Crown. A pub was here in the 18th. The name symbolises the union of York and Lancaster in the marriage of Henry VI and Elizabeth of York.
93 Barnhouse. Modernist building by Taylor Hussey
Highgate graveyard. This was the burial ground of the old chapel. The tomb of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, was moved from here into St. Michael's church in 1961. The boundary wall is listed, is 18th and 19th in brick.
Site of chapel of St.Michael, when the Bishop of London was given the Manor of Haringey by William the Conqueror, this part of the estate was a hunting-park He appointed a priest and gave some eight acres at the very top of the hill as a chantry. The chapel was built and became the chapel of the village. In 1564 an Act of Parliament abolished all chantries and confiscating their lands. So in 1565 the school was founded, there was no chapel and the lands had all been sold. It took them five years to recover the property. In 1578 Bishop Sandys built at his own cost a chapel on the hilltop site on school properly. It was a substantial brick building with a square brick tower and a timber roof supported on oak columns. It was pulled down in 1833.
Parish markers. On the pavement and show the boundaries of St.Mary's Hornsey and St. Pancras. This is the ancient boundary of manor, parish, and remain as that between the boroughs of Camden and Haringey.
St.Pancras/Finchley boundary marker. Oval Plate at the Gatehouse marked 'S P x P 1791'.
Cable house for the tramway was on the east side at the top of the hill
Highgate Hill
This is a bypass of 1386, since the old Roman road went through Kilburn. It was the main road out of London until 1813 and very difficult because of the hill. There is a Norman legend of a thief caught in a maze trying to get up the hill – and it is a sort of ziggurat. It also had the first cable tramway in Europe. At the summit five roads meet at a junction and three boroughs converge here as did their predecessor parishes.
Retaining wall which is listed. This is between the pavement and the higher paved walk going to 104 – 110s. It is 18th red brick with 19th Wrought iron railings
Channing School for Girls. Channing House Built at the top of the hill and opened in 1885 in what was then Sutherland House. Channing was an American Unitarian and the school was opened Rev. Robert Spears for daughters of Unitarian clergy. The School owns and used many buildings in Highgate Hill and has others it has built since. Haigh House was built in 1954 to replace bombed buildings of Channing School. There are also sports grounds and playing fields.
104 Cromwell House. This was used as an Ormond Street Hospital convalescent home and then the Ghana High Commission. It was originally a free-standing country house, built in 1637-8 by Richard Sprignell, a trained band captain. It is one of the best of surviving examples of the 'artisan style' of City craftsmen whose hallmark is the elaborate treatment of brick detail. A bay over a carriageway was added in 1678-9 by the da Costas, the first Jewish family to own such property in England since the Middle Ages. The roof and cupola were restored after a fire in 1865. In 1987-9 it was converted to offices by Garden & Godfrey and a matching extension was added. Inside stairs run around a narrow open well with carving of military trophies, and replica statuettes in military costume.
106 Ireton House. This is half of what was originally a single 18th building with Lyndale House as the other half.
108 Lyndale House. This is a farm rebuilt in 1720. It was originally a single building with Ireton House as the other half.
110 Margaret House from 1730 in red brick but the top of it was rebuilt following bombing,
120 Slingley part of Channing House School which bought it in 1921.one of a 19th pair,
122 Westview. Part of Channing House School which leased it in 1885 and bought it in 1901.one of a 19th pair in brick
128 Ivy House, 17th house which was the home of Victorian publisher, Charles Knight. Its pair is Northgate House. Leased for dormitories and offices by Channing School in 1885.
130 Northgate House the pair of Ivy House, also 17th
Hampden House was acquired by Channing School in 1925
Arundel House acquired by Channing School in 1930;
Entrance gates and walls to Lauderdale House. 18th wrought iron Gates with stone capped brick gate piers with stone urns. Red brick park wall.
Plaque on the wall to Andrew Marvell's cottage, demolished in 1867, it says: ‘Four feet below this spot is the stone step, formerly the entrance to the cottage in which lived Andrew Marvell, poet, wit, and satirist; colleague with John Milton in the foreign or Latin secretaryship during the Commonwealth; and for about twenty years M.P. for Hull. Born at Winestead, Yorkshire, 31st March, 1621, died in London, 18th August, 1678, and buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
This memorial is placed here by the London County Council, December, 1898’.
K2 telephone kiosk, at the junction with Dartmouth Park Hill. This dates from 1927 and was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott
90 Old Crown. This originally stood where medieval Hornsey Lane was crossed by Highgate Hill. It was re-built in 1898 on a site higher up the hill
St Joseph's Retreat. Built as the chief clergy house of the Passionist Fathers and it was added to the church in 1874-5 by F. W. Tasker. It is modelled on a rustic Italian villa and wraps round the end of the church. It is in white brick with Doulton dressings.
St.Joseph's RC. Monastery on the site of the Black Dog Inn. Opened by Cardinal Manning 1888. The monastery was built before the church which is the Passionists' motherhouse in England
St.Joseph’s Church. Large prominent landmark on the hillside at the meeting of two major roads. Originally E.W. Pugin was approached, but his design was too expensive and in 1861, a church to the design of J Bird was opened, in 1863. It was demolished in 1888, and replaced in 1889 with the present church by Albert Vicars. It was built to celebrate Pope Leo XIII’s Jubilee. It has a dome on an octagonal drum. Inside the light from the dome’s lantern sheds a dramatic light on a baldacchino. It contains carvings, and paintings and much else. The altar in St. Michael's Chapel had been shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. The Reliquary was designed by Cardinal Wiseman. A Crucifixion painting is attributed to Lord Leighton.
Orchard – there is an orchard and other grounds to the rear.
Winchester Hall, this stood on the corner of Hornsey Lane and was demolished in the 1880s and sold to a housing development company
Highgate West Hill
Once known as Highgate Rise. Numbering has changed for many buildings and is in any case eccentric
40 private health clinic with a plaque about its predecessor, the Fox and Crown. The pub landlord saved Queen Victoria from a runaway horse, and so got the Royal Coat of Arms. It was demolished by the 1930s
47 Apothecary House. Built around 1730 with 19th additions. It was leased by William Wetherell, an apothecary, in 1788, and it was later the home of the geologist Dr. Nathaniel Thomas Wetherell. It is a brick house and there is a rainwater cistern is dated 1789.
48 Gatehouse. Half-timbered pub reconstructed in 1905. It is on site of the gateway which went over the road as an archway. It had been built in 1386 – a wall plaque describes it. A toll was payable here to the Bishop of London as Lord of the Manor. In the old inn an upstairs room was used in the 19th as a magistrate's court and previously the manor court. It was here that 'swearing on the horns' started - the horns were on the door to welcome drovers. The tradition began when herds of cattle were driven through Highgate on their way to slaughter in Smithfield. Highgate was an overnight stop for drovers and travellers were, for a small fee, required to take an oath and become 'a freeman of Highgate'. The visitor stood before a 'judge' and a 'clerk' – who held the horns - and promises 'not to eat brown bread when white is to be had; nor drink small beer when strong ale is available; nor kiss the maid when the mistress is about, but, sooner than miss a chance, kiss then both'. A 'freeman' who is drunk and sees three pigs in the gutter has the right to kick the middle one out of the way and lay down between the other two The gateway itself was demolished because it was too low for high wagons. It was also the site of one of the three gates that into the Bishop’s park.
49-50 was originally one house, built in 1850 as Highgate's new police station.
53 Grove House. This is a large house next to the Reservoir and standing on what was the old course of Hampstead Lane before it was moved further north in the late 18th. 18th with an attic storey added in 1858. It was used as Grove House School for boys in 1825 and lasted, under only three successive headmasters, until 1930 It became well known as 'Fenner's' after its first principal, Zachariah Fenner, whose sister conducted a girls' school and who retired in1872.
54 Pond House is 18th
77 The Flask Tavern. Despite the plaque on the building it cannot be dated earlier than the 18th. The earlier building was used for the sessions of the manor court of Cantelowes. The outside is modest late 18th but inside appear earlier. It is named because flasks of Hampstead mineral water could be bought here in the 18th taken from the Hampstead wells. . In the 1970s a discreet ‘Georgian’ extension was added by E. W. Edwards.
79 is on a site noted in 1493, and the site of the White Hart in 1664, which was the easternmost of a row of cottages
80 Cutbush's Nursery. This was their shop before 1918.
Holly Terrace. Eleven houses, built in 1807 on the site of a larger house, with balconies and gates facing towards London over the former grounds of the Holly Lodge Estate which sold them in 1922 and
South Grove House. Sold by the Holly Lodge Estate in 1922
Mound over the Reservoir installed by the New River Company in 1845, bringing the first piped water to Highgate. Pavilion built at the same time Pavilion: brick with painted stucco, the New River Company water reservoir, which acquired the land upon which the reservoir stands in 1844. Also listed railings with lotus flower terminals set each seventeenth upright.
Witanhurst. Largest private house in London after Buckingham Palace. Its nucleus is an 18th house called Parkfield and it was built in 1913 for the Sunlight soap millionaire Sir Arthur Crosfield by George Hubbard. It is a neo-Georgian mansion with an interior designed in a variety of styles by Percy McQuoid, and includes a ballroom. The grounds were the scene of annual tennis parties which Lady Crosfield gave from the 1920s to her death in 1963 at which many famous Wimbledon players came to meet members of the aristocracy and royalty. The house has been semi derelict for many years.
Lodges of Witanhurst. Made of reused materials. Neo-Georgian style by Seely & Paget, 1929.
40 The Summit. Private health clinic
Hillcrest
Hillcrest. Built 1946-9 by T. P. Bennett for the Borough of Hornsey seven blocks of local authority flats - one of the first British post-war housing schemes, and formally opened in 1949. Built among trees on part of the site of the Park House penitentiary. The blocks are named after the leading British Commanders of the Second World War. For a cost-conscious council the blocks are generously laid out, preserving trees from the grounds of Park House, with the lower buildings at the front – ‘a municipal version of Le Corbusier's vision’. But although they were built only ten years after Highpoint Two, ‘they are separated from it by the years of war and austerity'.
The flats are on a mound which has been suggested to be the site of a fortification built during the Napoleonic Wars as part of a defensive line along the Northern Heights. Probably a windmill there in the past.
Holmesdale Road
The road was built up by 1896
Jackson’s Lane
Medieval road from Highgate to the village church at Hornsey, This was a bridle way across the common, with a narrow roadway
Bank Point. house edged in the fork
Flats - part of the development on the Southwood House site from the 1950s. This is a development with communal gardens.
Kingsley Place
Houses. Yellow brick houses of one, two or three storeys, stepping down a steep slope, by the Architects' Co-Partnership, c. 1967. Also won a Ministry of Housing design award in 1968 and a Civic Trist Award.
33 Southwood Lodge. Late 18th house in stock brick. Fire insurance sign on the 1st floor. Now divided into two and with a hidden garden laid out last century on a steeply sloping site
North Hill
The Great North Road descends North Hill to meet the 'lower road' of the cutting.
Highpoint One. International modern by Lubetkin and Tecton built in 1936 & 1938 for Sigmund Gestetner to house employees at his Tottenham Hale factory. The outstanding modern movement building of its day which even Le Corbusier praised. It is in a double cruciform shape with eight flats on each floor and small rooms for maids below. It is built of reinforced concrete in a special system devised by Ove Arup, reusing the shuttering as the building grew. The flats have two living rooms and three bedrooms. From the entrance there are steps to a raised landing and the tearoom overlooking the garden. It was built on the site of previous houses called The Cedars and some trees remain in the front of the house.
Highpoint Two. This was also for Gestetner by Lubetkin and Tecton. The entrance appears, but is not, supported on copies of the Erechtheum caryatids on the Acropolis which Lubetkin wanted to be a controversial talking point. As the weather was not good to cement render finish this is brick and tile. The flats are larger - three living rooms and four bedrooms - arranged in Corbusian fashion so that the living rooms are double-height. Lubetkin himself lived in the penthouse and it has been restored to include his original furniture. - The door to the living room has an enlargement of a drop of plankton; the gardens at the back however are not modernist. They were designed by Clarence Elliott, who founded Six Hills Nursery at Stevenage in 1907, a specialist in Alpine plants.
4 This house is thought to have been the superintendent’s house for Highgate Brewery replaced by Park House and then used for the superintendent of the penitentiary. Excavations nearby showed cellars related to the brewery a d a series of tunnels for beer storage
Kiplings. A grocer's shop from the 1840s till the 1970s; now an Indian restaurant.
6 St George's House 19th house.
13 The Bull Inn 18th roadside inn of two storeys. It is said that it is where painter George Morland used to stay – when it was called The Black Bull. In the 21st it had the most alarming zoo related wall paper.
Highgate Brewery. This was extant in the 1670. It was bought 1806-9 by John Cooper from a John Addison who had himself purchased it from the Southcote family and then moved the brewing to Homerton. John Cooper dismantled it and turned the lands into his Town House Estate. It was sold later in the 19th and became a special school. The London Diocesan Penitentiary had been formed following a donation in an 1853 for a house for the “reformation of penitent fallen women". In 1855 a lease had been taken out on Park House and it was bought outright in 1861. In 1900 it was taken over by the Clewer Order of Sisters and, then became the House of Mercy. It was closed in 1940. Hillcrest flats are on the site.
North Road
Old trunk route. This was an Elizabethan road which led through a gate into the Bishop's park. In 1767 it was a wooden causeway which was renewed, trees cut down and levelled. Up to about 1890 the road was lined with shops which on the east side stretched past Castle Yard as far as Park Walk - Houses have replaced all of them.
Highgate School. Founded by Roger Cholmeley 1565. He was once Recorder of London, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Lord Chief Justice of England – but at odds with Mary Tudor and retired here. Elizabeth gave him permission to found a free school on common land – the Hermitage - given by the Bishop in 1565. In his will he provided for a school to be built. However most of the buildings between Southwood Lane and North Road date from 1866. Ex-pupils - called Old Cholmeleians - include Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Betjeman and Anthony Crosland. T.S. Eliot taught here.
Old School Building. Now the schools’ principal hall, with classrooms underneath. Built 1865-7 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell for the Reverend Dr. Dyne, headmaster in Red brick. It is a first-floor hall with a stage, with external stairs and an imperial stairway added as war memorial in 1949. The main facade has a sundial inscribed 'Vera Loqui aut Silere'. The lead parapet is inscribed 'R S 1565'. The stage was set up in 1933 with panelling donated 1934 by Edward Jeudwine
Highgate School Chapel. Designed 1865-6 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell in red brick and inside polychromatic coloured bricks with stone and tiles. Built as a memorial to G.E.Crawley, a governor and benefactor. In the undercroft is a pump, wooden benches and a First World War Memorial. There is a Boer War Memorial at the entrance door. There are two organs, stained glass, including
memorials. One window was replaced in 1953 after bomb damage.
War Memorial at Highgate School. Erected in 1921. The design is the 'Cross of Sacrifice' of 1919 by Reginald Blomfield. Portland stone cross on octagonal plinth with a bronze sword.
1-7 19th. Cottages with characteristic long front gardens of 1829
6 early 19th with a curved Tuscan porch
9 discreetly tucked away behind a small entrance courtyard the first house built by Walter Segal for himself in 1962-8. In the garden is the temporary building used while the house was under construction, a prototype for Segal's lightweight self-build houses developed later elsewhere
10 villa with Gothic windows
13 Byron House. 18th house with 19th stuccoed front. It was Byron House School 1897 -1962 –a co-educational prep school
15 Hampton Lodge. 18th house of 3 storeys with iron gate.
St.Michael’s Church of England Primary School. The early years of this school demonstrate an important step in primary educational planning, involving greater Government spending and the provision of a wider range of facilities. It had been set up in Southwood Lane as an alternative to the expensive Cholmeley School. In 1850 by Harry Chester of South Grove, assistant secretary to the Privy Council committee on education, and the Rev. T. H. Causton who lived locally got an unprecedentedly large government grant. They opened a school here designed by fashionable architect Anthony Salvin and this opened in 1852. There were also three teachers' houses and twelve dormitories and land for a farm. It was managed by a distinguished committee and was a showplace. However idealism waned and parents demanded a more conventional education, there were many vacancies and it was reorganised in 1922. The Infants' playground is in front and reached by a narrow driveway. A new junior department by architects Barren & Smith was opened in 1972 by Margaret Thatcher, then Minister of Education –there is a plaque in the entrance porch.
Fire station for the Borough of Hornsey, jolly, half timbered. Became an ambulance station, now flats. 1981 Chas Palmer of Timothy Brice Dick Associates. Half-timbered with a tower from 1896. Station rebuilt in 1906 according to inscription on building. Date of original unknown Frank van der Weerden - Originally Hornsey MB. In use as a substation by Hornsey MB, station closed before WWII but reopened during the Blitz
19 Sycamores. Brick house with a big front door and weather-boarding on the side. In the 18th this was the Bear Inn. Thomas Bennett architect of the Saville Theatre lived here from 1932
17 The Sycamores Byron Cottage. It has a G.L.C. blue plaque placed there in 1969 to commemorate the residence here of A.E. Housman, during which he wrote "A Shropshire Lad". It is where he lived while teaching University College
21 The Sycamores 18th brick house
25 Red Lion and Sun. Not to be confused with the since demolished Red Lion coaching inn. This was made up of three old cottages. Rebuilt 1928.
28 Garner Maths Block of Highgate School, This block was opened by Lord Garner in 1983. In the paving of the courtyard behind are preserved the granite setts that formed the floor of stables kept there by a job master.
31 Petrol Station in what was the Bell and Horns Pub
45 Old Forge. This is the site of a shoeing forge which operated from c.1800 until the last proprietor, Thomas Hayhoe, died in 1926
47-49 started as a single grand 18th house. Urns on the parapet.
51 Gloucester House, was a grocer's in the first half of the 19th, then a boys' preparatory school
53-55 originally one house, which in the 1870s was a girls' school called Claremont House.
57 Grimshaw Close. Highgate United Synagogue
Grimshaw Close. Council flats built 1933 on the site of demolished cottages
59 Northfield Hall. An Athenaeum was proposed in 1859 only partly realized with the opening of Northfield hall in 1878 which included a house and two committee rooms. The Territorials in the shape of the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment) moved to the new Northfield hall, to which a commemorative stone was taken. It was also used as a gym by Highgate School and in the 1880s for petty sessions. It has been sold and redesigned as offices and flats.
92 is next to the site of the Red Lion. The Dickens family stayed here in 1832 to escape creditors. .
98 Wrestlers Tavern. Pub goes back to 1547 and there is a plaque on it about the horns ceremony, the present building is 1921. In 1961 the publican restarted the the 300-year-old ceremony of 'swearing on the horns'.
109-117 Prospect Place, pleasant group of 1811. Raised up on a bank.
193-215 enclave of two-storey red brick terraces early council housing of 1902 by the Hornsey Borough Engineer, E.J. Lovegrove, similar to Hornsey's other early estate but also including some cottage flats.
Gateway and bell of Highgate School. The 19th brick archway and bell are remnants of the time when Sir Roger Cholmeley's Grammar School was a virtual charity school. The wrought iron gates to the forecourt were erected to mark the school's tercentenary in 1865. From Castle Yard to the High Street the land between North Road and Southwood Lane is owned by Highgate School, as it has been for more than 400 years.
Wrought iron gates for Cholmeley School’s tercentenary 1865
Northwood Road
Cholmeley Brook –goes along this road having crossed Archway Road
2c Northwood Road Practice
Park House Passage
Footpath which connects North Hill and Talbot Road
A raised grassy bank is the site of the village pound for stray animals
Park Walk
Footpath which went alongside the women's penitentiary between Southwood Lane and Jackson Lane. Part of the Park House estate, hence the name.
Pond Square
So called because there was a pond there which was filled in in 1864. It is a registered 'town green' with mature plane trees and managed by the local authority. It is on the Site of Pond’s Farm by William Paterson founder of the Bank of England. Features in David Copperfield as his first married home. Said to be haunted by the ghost of the chicken which killed Francis Bacon.
1-5 18th houses
6 Rock House. Built in 1777 and named from a Mr Rock lived there in the 1840s. In the 1870s it was the Highgate Dispensary.
45-46, houses with rainwater head dated 1729.
47 18th house
Somerset Gardens
Housing developments. With pitched roofs and timber cladding built by architects, Andrews Sherlock & Partners. An extension of Kingsley Place,
South Grove
Pond Square Chapel. United Reform Church – also used as a nursery and for arts events. Erected in 1858 by Architect T. Roger Smith. In 1967 the Highgate Congregational Church merged with Highgate Presbyterian Church on Pond Square to form the Highgate United Reformed Church. Funding from the sale of the Presbyterian Church allowed for a major refurbishment of Pond Square Chapel which re-opened in 1984
9 Russell House 18th house,
10 Church House. Detached 18th house in brick, The house grew from a 17th cottage, was at one time owned by Roger Cholmeley and a previous resident was Sir John Hawkins. Thought to be the model for Steerforth’s home in Dickens’ David Copperfield. It was the residence of the Jewish school master Leopold Neumegen first professor of Hebrew at London University. A Jewish academy was established here by 1802 under Hyman Hurwitz, The premises on the west were converted into Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution in1840
10a belongs to the Highgate Society and was the Jewish school schoolroom. The Cottage was the sleeping quarters. Now used by the Highgate Society
11 Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. This Lecture hall was built in 1879 in what was previously the stable yard of Church House. It was inspired by Harry Chester, later chair of RSA. It is a members-only club with a private library, a reading room-meeting hall founded in 1839 to promote 'useful and scientific knowledge. The original building was previously used as a school; the front and porch from 1882. Behind is the lecture hall with high timber roof and central lantern, added by Rawlinson Parkinson in 1879; the original hall at the back became the library - Victoria Hall and Coleridge Room.
12 Old Dairy
14 Moreton House. The house of 1715 was originally one of a pair, and only one room deep until the 19th and it was subdivided into floors soon after it was built. Dr.Gillman and Coleridge lived there and it was Coleridge’s first Highgate home - the two top left-hand windows of the old house marked his room. It was burnt down 1983 and rebuilt by Julian Harrap.
16 is by Leonard Malmo c. 1961, on older foundations, and with a later roof
17 Old Hall. Probably rebuilt 1691, which is the date on the rain head. It is the remains of Arundel House where Elizabeth was prisoner on her way to the Tower. It was the home of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel 1585-1646, and where Sir Francis Bacon died and the incident of the refrigerated chicken happened. Arbella Stuart was also here. Lead pipes were installed for water in 1626. It is a brown and red brick building with an iron gate. The grounds were divided up in the late 17th; on the site of the banqueting house and Sir William Ashurst, Lord Mayor in 1693, built a grand house with pediment and cupola. This was demolished for St Michael's Church; its grounds became Highgate Cemetery. Novelist Rumer Godden lived in the current house until 1998.
18 Voel House. 17th house with a later top storey.
Milestone standing in front of 18
30 18th
Angel Row cottages which were behind the Angel Inn
St. Michael's church. Built on the site of Ashurst House, home of Thomas Townsend in 1832. It was built to replace the old school chapel and became the centre of Highgate's first ecclesiastical parish in its own right. The architect was Lewis Vulliamy who produced a landmark spire and three bare wooden galleries. There are memorial tablets to Coleridge and the Gillmans on the north wall and Coleridge was re-interred under the central aisle in 1961is mentioned by Dickens in David Copperfield. The east window was done by Evie Hone before she died in 1955.
Parish centre. Completed in 1988 by architect Melville Poole.
Highgate Dairy Terrace. At the corner of Swain's Lane brick terrace with roughcast gables, built by Ernest H. Abbott
Traffic Island: a horse chestnut tree planted by Sir Yehudi Menuhin, the violinist, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Highgate Society, founded in 1966, of which he was President.
Southwood Lane
The road follows a right of way across Highgate Common along the eastern side of the Bishop of London's park. It provided an alternative route northwards for those who did not want to pay the toll. It also led to the Mus Well – a curative spring - which was also on one of the main medieval roads to the north. The east side of the lane between the High Street and Kingsley Place is lined with Georgian town houses. Some of them are on the foundations on earlier houses with some timber-framing.
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises on the east side near the High Street
Cholmeley Brook – one branch of the brook rises near the site of the former Southwood hospital
Graveyard wall .The Southwood Lane frontage is higher, as the land falls away, and includes 19th cast-iron railings, with spear tops and classical urns. The wall is attached to Highgate School chapel
2-8 18th
10 18th house in brick.
12 Late 18th brick house
15 19th brick house with older building behind
18 probably 17th.
20 19th house
20a 19th house
22 Avalon, Plaque put in place in 1975 to Mary Kingsley who blew up the garden with gunpowder. The Plaque says ‘traveller and ethnologist, lived here as a child'.
50 Arthur Waley translator of Chinese and Japanese literature lived here
68 St.Michael’s Vicarage until 1972
70 Linear House. Single storey house with sustainable features. Built on part of the Hospital gardens. Its western side is sunk into the hillside so the house is almost invisible from the north and west. Most of its roof is covered with meadow flowers and grass.
70 Southwood Court - Southwood Hospital Opened in 1953 for female geriatric patients, the hospital was enlarged from a former orphanage and occupied a previously private mansion called The Limes built before 1815. In 1921 The Limes it had been bought by the Furniture Trades' Provident and Benevolent Institution, who converted it as a children's home "for fatherless children of members". They named it Radlett House, after their former children's homes in Radlett, Herts, which had been established in 1905. In 1940 the orphanage moved and Radlett House was leased to the Middlesex County Council, and it became a hospital for chronically ill patients. In 1948 Radlett House joined the NHS. The Hospital closed in 1991 with 22 beds. The Hospital building is now called Southwood Court. In 2004 it was converted by Cityshape into a terrace of six large family houses of 5 bedrooms each.
87 with a date plaque of 1883. For many years Highgate School's sanatorium.
Highgate Baptist Tabernacle. 19th stuccoed building if 1836 with cast iron lamp holders. It was originally founded by Presbyterians just after the 1665 Act forbidding nonconformists to preach within a five mile radius of the City. It was acquired for Highgate School’s sixth form in 1977.
Dyne House. Five-storey Highgate School arts block by Architects Ansell & Bailey. Opened in 1967 by Yehudi Menuhin, then a local resident, and has a fine underground auditorium. It was named after Rev. J.B. Dyne the Headmaster who was a 'second founder'.
Highgate British School founded in 1852, as a result of nonconformist disillusion with St.Michael's. In 1859, it was in cramped premises in Southwood Lane. It was replaced by Highgate Board School in the 1890s and moved to North Hill. The old premises were sold to Cholmeley's school, as to become laboratories.
Highgate postal sorting office, built in 1888. Now in other use.
99 site of Hornsey local board offices. They used the old highway board offices, until in 1869 when they moved into the purpose built offices here on land leased from the London Diocesan Penitentiary. They were considered unsuitable and replaced by the Town Hall in Crouch End in 1934-5 and demolished in 1968.
Stone bollards marking the site of the public well from which some of Highgate's drinking water was drawn before the piped supply came.
123 Well Cottage. Deep well in the front garden and Sun Insurance Co. insurance mark. Named after the village well which was outside. The mid-18th house was originally two Bow Street Runners' cottages.
Woolaston-Paunceforth Almshouses. Founded in the 17th a single storey row with taller centre for a girls' charity. The houses date from 1722 when the original almshouses were re-built and enlarged. The Pauncefote Charity School for Girls was in the centre house. An inscription over the door gives tells of their foundation by Sir John Woolaston in 1658 and their rebuilding to double the number by Edward Pauncefort in 1722. Until 1988 the almshouses had outdoor sanitation only, and each dwelling a single tap, but they have been modernised for the six old ladies instead of twelve.
Southwood Lawn Road
Southwood Park. Two brutalist, redbrick blocks built 1966 by Douglas Stephen & Partners. Built on the site of Southwood Court,
Southwood Court was demolished in 1965, and had been the home of Lord Southwood Chairman of Odham's Press. Landscaped grounds kept for residents.
Old gateway to Southwood Court. On the wall the Johnson family crest of a winged spur and the motto nunquam non paratus (Always be prepared). John Grove Johnson, an assayer to the Bank of England, lived in Southwood Court from about 1880 when it was built.
Swains Lane
Was probably Swine Lane originally, since pigs were driven up it to be slaughtered.
Transmitter. This dates from 1937 and is associated with early TV broadcasting from Alexandra Palace. Buildings on the north side were associated with it.
Highgate Cemetery. The cemetery was built on the site of Highgate Parish Farm. It was one of seven cemeteries built between 1831 and 1841 as a result of public concern on the insanitary state of London's churchyards. These cemeteries were modelled on the garden cemeteries of Napoleonic France. It was built by a joint-stock company founded by Act of Parliament. The architect was Stephen Geary, who otherwise built pubs and is buried here. The Lodge is now demolished. There are Chapels at the Gate in ‘Undertakers Gothic’, which were closed in 1956. There is an Egyptian Avenue and an Egyptian inner circle in a line of cedar trees. Bunning built catacombs but the Portland cement used did not last, they included a Hydraulic bier. Beer mausoleum closed in 1975. Traitors Hill was subsumed in the cemetery. Until 1939, both this, and the southern extension, were maintained on formal lines as grassed areas landscaped with flower beds and specimen trees. In the 1940s maintenance stopped and it was closed in 1975. In response the Friends of Highgate Cemetery was formed. Ownership was acquired by a small company in 1981, and was transferred to the Official Custodian for Charities in 1988. The cemetery is mainly secondary woodland consisting of stands of sycamore or ash. Large mature trees hint at the original layout.
85 In 1982 architect John Winter designed the Winter House here. After thirty years it was clear it would need complete reconstruction. In 2005 it was demolished and replaced by a new residence, built on the footprint of the previous, designed by Eldridge Smerin Architects
Gates and Lodge to Waterlow Park. Castellated lodge of 1840. This was at the carriage entrance to Waterlow Park when it was part of a private estate
81 three-storey house on southern sloped overlooking cemetery, plain, contrast to local Gothic follies,
91-103, a neat terrace of pale yellow brick, Haxworth & Kasabov, 1970-2; living rooms on the top floor.
The Grove
The road is set back from the side of the green with a Georgian terrace and views over London.
1-6 once known as Quality Walk built 1688 on the site of Dorchester House. Dorchester House had been home to courtier. Henry Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. The houses were built by City by merchant William Blake to fund a charity school and an early example of an urban terrace.
1 handsome gate. This was joined to No.2 in.1900 for use as a school. Subsequently in the 1930s home of actress Gladys Cooper and Neville Pearson. From 1959 home of violinist Yehudi Menuhin until 1983.
3 Plaque to Samuel Taylor Coleridge who lived here from 1823 until his death. Coleridge was addicted to laudanum, and came to Highgate in 1816 to seek a cure. He lived here with Dr. Gillman and his family. Plaque to J.B. Priestley novelist and playwright who lived here in the 1930s - He bought it with the money he made from The Good Companions.
4 Two-tiered garden with formal upper garden; view across Heath; orchard in lower garden.
5 Roger Fry the painter and art critic, was born here. The house was rebuilt by H. James in the 1920s. Fire insurance plate
6 remains of Dorchester House garden walls with bastion and niches in the garden. Fire insurance plate.
7 house built in 1832 and had a garden with conifers and other trees.
12 built in the 1970s by Lush & Lester,
St.Pancras/Finchley boundary marker. Plate of an oval design marked 'S P x P 1791'.
Waterlow Park
Park of 26 acres given to London County Council by Sir Sidney Waterlow. Waterlow, the printer was also Lord of the Manor and Chair of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. Waterlow gave the grounds to the people of London as a 'garden for the gardenless'. The grounds include what is said to be Nell Gwynn's bath marble bath and fireplace and old iron support. There is a hollow and a pond garden first noted in the 17th, Statues and exotic trees. More ponds have been built since the park was opened and there is a bridge over a cascade linking the upper and lower lakes. .
Wall – said to be to Andrew Marvell’s garden, and there is a plaque to this.
Sundial with dedication by Andrew Marvell, whose cottage stood only a few yards from here in the late 17th
Sir Sydney Waterlow statue with hat, bronze umbrella and keys - the key to the park to be given to the public. As relaxed as if he was going for a walk. Believed to be the only statue in London which features an umbrella. He was the last owner of Lauderdale House. He is surrounded by late 19th planting by F.M Taubman.
Lauderdale House. The beginnings of Lauderdale House are unclear. Neither the name of the architect or the builder is known, or indeed the date. A young London goldsmith, Richard Martin, lived here in the late 1580s. In the course of the restoration work in the 1960s, the skeleton of a chicken and demonological objects were found in the external walls. At the end of the 16th John Povey, a lawyer lived there and – was host to Arbella Stuart. It continued to have number of distinguished owners, mainly lawyers. In 1649 it was leased to John Ireton a Cromwellian future Lord Mayor. Lauderdale returned there at the restoration and became Secretary of State for Scotland. At some stage Nell Gwynne may have lived there. In the 18th it was a school, and Later Sir Sidney Waterlow acquired it and leased it to a hospital before presenting it to the London County Council with the park. Since 1968 it has been a centre for exhibitions, concerts and other events. There is a Cafe at the front and tables outside. The house itself is a much-altered remnant of a partly timber 16th house but there is little to see. Despite its appearance the house is Elizabethan. The cellars survive and there is some other restoration and repairs after damage by fires in 1963 and 1968.
The Elms. The house and garden were part of what is now Waterlow Park in the 19th when it was home to Sir James Pennethorne the architect.
Image. Sculpture on bonded bronze by Naomi Blake. On the Upper Lake. Hollow oval form with a solid ball at the top. Sited on an island.
Winchester Road
Solid middle class housing by the Imperial Property Investment Company after the demolition of Winchester Hall
Witenhurst Lane
Bromwich House. Completed after a planning enquiry in 1996 but Planned in 1986 by Elena Keats. Interiors by Conley & Webb. Living rooms at the top level, and a diamond- shaped swimming pool
Sources
Blue Plaque GuideBritish History. Hornsey web site
British Listed Buildings web site
Camden History Newsletter
Chelsea Speleological Society newsletter
Cholmondeley Church web site
Clarke. In Our Grandmothers Footsteps
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. Place Names of London
Fitzroy Park web site
Four Highgate walks
Greater London walk: Through Highgate to Highgate Wood
Headley and Meulenkamp. Follies
History of Middlesex County Council
List of buildings at risk, English Heritage
London Borough of Camden web site
London Borough of Haringey web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Transport Country Walks
Lost London Hospitals web site
Lucas, London
Merugan Temple Web site
Modern Houses in the London Borough of Haringey web site
Muravyoya and Sivolap-Kaftanova, Lenin in London
Nairn, Nairn’s London
Nairn. Modern Buildings,
Pevsner & Cherry. London North
Pinching and Dell. Haringey’s hidden streams
Port of London
Sexby. London Parks
Smith. Florence Nightingale
Smyth. City Wildspace,
Stevenson. Middlesex
Summerson. Georgian London
Symonds. Behind Blue Plaques
The Kingston Zodiac
Tindall. The Fields Beneath
Walford. Highgate to the Lea,
Webster. Great North Road
Wikipedia, Channing School web site
Wikipedia, Holly Estate web site
Willats. Streets of Islington,
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