Highgate Court: new flats close to London's 'hilltop village' and the Northern Line Tube station

The slopes of north London offer spectacular views of the capital — and there are few better vantage points than Highgate.

The area has offered fresh air and exclusivity to prosperous Londoners since Elizabethan times. Its hilltop village still has independent shops, “country” pubs, a famous school and cemetery, along with marvellous Pond Square, a pocket of mainly Georgian properties where the Highgate Society, one of the capital’s most active and progressive amenity groups, is based.

Highgate Court, a new development of 85 flats on the site of a former police station, faces on to a busy road but has the advantage of being moments from the Northern line Tube station and Highgate Woods, good for central London commuters who hanker after the countryside.

Neighbouring Crouch End rather looks up to Highgate but it is a place to watch.

It seems an unlikely resting place for anyone other than families who cannot afford Highgate or Muswell Hill. But scratch the surface and you’ll find a bohemian enclave. Arty and slightly radical, it has good pubs and primary schools, quirky shops, buggy-pushing mums and dads and resting actors.

Family houses — some of them huge Victorian and Edwardian jobs — are plentiful and good value by London standards, as are converted flats for the young and reasonably well-off. Trendy new development is the obvious missing ingredient, which is a hangover from the Fifties when Crouch End lost its railway station.

However, regeneration is coming with Pembroke Apartments in Campsbourne Road. From £480,000. Call Bairstow Eves on 020 8012 1774.