Highgate area guide: schools, shops, pubs and parks

Welcome to Highgate

With it’s great schools, prime location and deep set community Highgate has earned its popular status and high house prices.

West Hill (Image: Polly Hancock)

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. 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.

Do you know the legend of The Flask and the famous residents who once roamed the village on the hill? (Image: Polly Hancock)

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.

Highgate Flowers on Archway Road (Image: Archant)

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.

Cafes, restaurants and bars

Wild Guitars (Image: Archant)

Highgate dining can err disappointingly towards chain restaurants although their outpost of Côte comes highly recommended.

Best for carb lovers… Ostuni serve the pasta classics of southern Italy, as well as a delicious range of seafood, and meat dishes.

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.

The Flask (Image: Polly Hancock)

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

Highgate High Street (Image: Polly Hancock)

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.

Upstairs at the Gatehouse is a small, award-winning fringe theatre in the upper room of the Gatehouse pub.

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.

Highgate Wood (Image: Archant)

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.

Southwood Lane (Image: Polly Hancock)

Primary and secondary schools

Highgate (mixed) and Channing (girls) schools are selective and highly sought after. 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) and is rated Good by Ofsted.

Highgate Village (Image: Polly Hancock)

Transport

Highgate tube station is in Zone 3 on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line

Property guide

Water Low Park (Image: Polly Hancock)

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

Semi-detached house – £1,894,324

Detached house – £4,342,357Produced in partnership with Benham and Reeves