Your guide to things to do in Highgate, including the best shops, cafes, restaurants and schools. PLUS our guide to property in N6
Welcome to Highgate
With it’s great schools, prime location and deep set community Highgate has earned its popular status and high house prices.
The first mention of Highgate Hill is recorded as far back as 1565 but the area’s village stretches back even further to the 15th century. By the later 17th century houses were being built for City men, many of which are still standing and nowadays still house City men and women and their families.
Visitors come from all over the world to visit the famous Highgate Cemetery which is the resting place of icons including Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. The site was originally commissioned for burial use in 1836 when, during a period of particularly high death rates, an Act of Parliament was passed to create The London Cemetery Company, who bought 17 acres of land in the area for £3,500.
Today, happy Highgate residents are rightly pleased with abundance of independent shops, excellent schools and thriving community. Many Highgate residents have been here since birth and there’s a strong village feel (just with more amenities and better public transport). Families are attracted by the great schools, as are international buyers who enjoy the close proximity to the West End, and the usual coterie of doctors, lawyers and bankers who appreciate the fast routes into the City.
Benham and Reeves tip… The Fair in the Square is in a few weeks’ time on June 17, featuring stalls and entertainment around this year’s theme of Tropical. It’s a fantastic community-run event that sees 10,000 people turn up.
Shops
The high street boasts many independent boutiques. Institutions include Highgate Butchers, Bailey & Saunders Highgate Pharmacy, Highgate Bookshop, Highgate Vet, Brooksby Newsagents and Highgate Pantry. Northwood News was priced out of the area recently with a valedictory street party held in the family owners’ honour.
Archway Road offers a more artistic selection including Wild Guitars; textile and lovely things specialist Selvedge; and Half A Dozen, a studio share for six artists who also run one-to-one tuition.
Best for beautiful blooms... Highgate Flowers sell beautiful cut flower arrangements and offer same-day guaranteed local delivery.
Best for pampered pooches... Hair of the Dog, a shop and doggie salon offers grooming alongside fancy canine accessories.
Cafes, restaurants and bars
Highgate dining can err disappointingly towards chain restaurants although their outpost of Côte comes highly recommended.
Best for carb lovers… New on the scene is Ostuni, London’s first restaurant focusing solely on the cuisine of Puglia. They serve the pasta classics of southern Italy, as well as a delicious range of seafood, and meat dishes cooked over charcoal in their ‘fornello pronto’ oven.
Watering holes in and around the village include the Bull, dog-friendly Red Lion and Sun, and historic pub The Flask, parts of which date back to before the 18th century.
Best for a pint… Locals’ favourite The Wrestlers on North Road has a beer garden for summer drinking and open fires for cosy winter evenings. Nearer the tube station, Boogaloo hosts live bands and club nights for a merry band of locals.
Benham and Reeves tip… Because Highgate was part of the original toll route and the first village out of the City of London we’ve got a lot of very famous old pubs, including the Spaniard’s Inn and the Flask in the village, where Dickens, Coleridge and Keats used to drink.
Things to do
For the artistically inclined, there’s plenty of local culture on offer: Jackson’s Lane is a hub for experimental performance, while the historical Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, established in 1839, runs a Tuesday night lecture series; courses in a range of subjects and houses a library specialising in Highgate and north London.
Upstairs at the Gatehouse is a small, award-winning fringe theatre in the upper room of the Gatehouse pub. It has its own in-house company, Ovation, which produces a varied programme of shows each year.
Local art galleries include Highgate Contemporary Art and North and South Ideas Gallery, both on the High Street.
Waterlow Park was donated by Sidney Waterlow as a ‘garden for the gardenless’. It provides 20-acres of grassland with some of the best views in London and is popular with local dog walkers all year round. During the summer months local school children flock to enjoy the sunshine after classes finish for the day. The park also provides the setting for numerous festivals and fetes, which bring together the whole Highgate community. Lauderdale House was once home to Nell Gwynn and was visited by Samuel Pepys. It has now reopened after refurbishment and
Things to do with children
Named after Roald Dahl’s imaginary crocodile, notsobig is a children’s clothes boutique on the High Street stocking clothes for newborns to 16 year olds.
Over on Archway Road, Jackson’s Lane offers a programme of children’s shows, as well as various performing arts workshops and courses.
Benham and Reeves tip… Highgate Wood has its own play area, which is really good for mums with buggies who like to meet for coffee down there or in the village.
Primary and secondary schools
Highgate is popular in large part thanks to its schools with independent offerings Highgate (mixed) and Channing (girls) selective and highly sought after by wealthy families and several of the area’s celebrity residents. Avenue Nursery and Pre-Prep is a small private nursery school for children aged between nearly three and seven. State Highgate Primary School is a small, mixed community school with a liberal ethos (no uniform, first name teachers, philosophy and Mandarin lessons) rated Good by Ofsted, while religious options St Joseph’s RC primary and St Michael’s C of E are rated Outstanding and Good respectively. St Aloysius RC College is a comprehensive Catholic boys’ school rated Outstanding by Ofsted.
Transport
Highgate tube station is in Zone 3 on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line but it’s a reasonable walk from there to Highgate Village, which is best reached by bus. The 271 from Moorgate currently terminates in the Village but, following a lengthy campaign, there are now plans for it to join the 214 (from Liverpool Street) at its terminus on North Road. The 210 passes through Highgate between Finsbury Park and Brent Cross; the 143 takes a different route through Hendon to Brent Cross; while the 603 travels up past East Finchley to Muswell Hill on weekdays, mostly serving the school crowd.
Property guide
Postcode
Highgate High Street lies on the border of Camden and Haringey, and the boundary with Islington lies part way up Highgate Hill, but the whole of Highgate proper has the N6 postcode. Highgate is in the Holborn & St Pancras parliamentary constituency.
Housing stock
Property in Highgate offers options from grand Georgian town houses and large Victorian homes to world-famous Modernist buildings. The Holly Lodge Estate is a prime example of inter-war planning, complete with mock-Tudor facades. The mansion blocks on the estate were originally designed as bedsits to house single working women but have since been converted into self-contained flats.
Famous Highgate residents including Kate Moss and Jude Law favour The Grove, where the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and novelist JB Priestly once resided. For families the roads either side of Cholmeley basin are popular both for their proximity to the tube station and to the local schools.
Benham and Reeves tip… A less well known backwater is a road called Fitzroy Park, which comes off the Grove and winds its way down to Highgate Ponds and Hampstead Heath. It’s a lovely spot, very peaceful and quiet. Here you’ll find a diverse selection of property, including very big houses that can go north of £20 million, although most are around the £5 million mark.
Best streets
The Grove
Cholmeley Crescent
Fitzroy Park
Southwood Lawn Road
House prices
Two-bedroom flat – £721,872
Terraced house – £1,462,953
Semi-detached house – £1,894,324
Detached house – £4,342,357
Produced in partnership with Benham and Reeves
35 HIGH STREET
LONDON N6 5JT
b-r.co.uk / 020 8348 2341
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