Living in Highgate: area guide to homes, schools and transport

One of the village’s beautiful early Georgian terrace houses bears a blue plaque commemorating the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Following the breakdown of his friendship with fellow Romantic poet William Wordsworth, Coleridge sought treatment for his opium addiction with Highgate surgeon James Gillman.

He moved into Gillman’s house in 1816 and remained there until his death in 1834. This was a happier period in Coleridge’s life and he became known as the “sage of Highgate”.

Families come to live in Highgate for the good schools — there are two well-known all-through private schools, the co-educational Highgate School and the girls’ school, Channing — along with the village atmosphere and the green spaces.

Waterlow Park on Highgate Hill and Hampstead Heath are reached down Fitzroy Park, a private country lane lined with some of the district’s most expensive houses.

Shaun Cunningham, sales manager at the local branch of estate agents Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, says the easy commute on the Northern line from Highgate or Archway draws a lot of City workers although Highgate’s arty reputation remains, with many buyers still coming from the media, arts and TV worlds.

Sir Roger Cholmeley, Karl Marx and Andrey Guryev are three people who have left their mark on Highgate.

Local resident Sir Roger Cholmeley (1485-1565) was Lord Chief Justice, a Recorder of London and an MP. In the year of his death he established a grammar school in Highgate by Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I. This is Highgate School, and former pupils call themselves Old Cholmeleians. The Highgate roads Cholmeley Park and Cholmeley Crescent are named after Sir Roger.

The German socialist revolutionary Karl Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery, one of the “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries built in a ring around London.

It has some of the finest funerary architecture in the country and is now run by a charity that describes it as: “A place of peace and contemplation where a romantic profusion of trees, memorials and wildlife flourish.”

The Karl Marx memorial hit the headlines in February when it was vandalised twice in a matter of weeks, but the Marx Memorial Lecture is still set to go ahead tomorrow in the cemetery chapel with speaker Ben Fine, professor of economics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Russian fertiliser baron Andrey Guryev owns Witanhurst, an enormous Edwardian mansion on the corner of Highgate West Hill and The Grove.

Built in the Queen Anne style, it is reputed to have 65 rooms, 25 bedrooms and a ballroom measuring 70ft by 20ft. Between 2008 and 2015, while the residents of Highgate endured years of building work, ownership of Witanhurst was shrouded in mystery until Guryev’s involvement was revealed in The New Yorker magazine.

He has added a 40,000sq ft two-storey basement. Said to be worth £300 million, Witanhurst now covers 90,000sq ft, making it the second largest house in London after Buckingham Palace.

Highgate is five miles north of central London with Muswell Hill to the north, Hornsey and Stroud Green to the east, Archway and Holloway to the south, and Hampstead Heath and Golders Green to the west.

The property scene

The variety of homes in Highgate is surprisingly wide. The village has lovely Georgian architecture but also modern homes such as The Lawns, a striking glass house set behind a high brick wall, while in Fitzroy Park a modern six-bedroom glass, steel and concrete box of a house set into the hillside covering 6,200sq ft and designed by Stanton Williams Architects, is on the market for £9.95 million.

There are big detached Twenties and Thirties houses and modern rebuilds near historic Kenwood House. The Bishops Avenue, with a “Billionaires Row” reputation, has lost much of its lustre with some houses empty and boarded up.

A seven-bedroom detached Victorian house priced £10 million in nearby Bishopswood Road is the most expensive home for sale now. A six-bedroom Courtenay Avenue house is £8.65 million with permission to replace it with a 13,488sq ft mansion soon to be renewed.

Whitehall Park conservation area off Archway Road has big Edwardian houses, one on the market for £2.2 million.

On the other side of the hill, off Highgate West Hill, the Holly Lodge Estate has mock-Tudor houses and mansion flats. A four-bedroom house here is for sale for £2.2 million and there are two one-bedroom flats for sale, one for £399,950, the other for £415,000.

Highpoint I and Highpoint II are two ground-breaking modernist blocks in North Hill. Grade I listed, they were built in 1935 and 1938 and designed by Soviet émigré architect Berthold Lubetkin, who built himself a penthouse flat at the top of Highpoint II.

The two blocks are set in communal gardens with a swimming pool and tennis courts.

West Hill Park off Merton Lane, between Highgate and Hampstead Heath, is a sought-after estate of 44 houses and eight flats designed in the Seventies by the architect Ted Levy and often referred to as the Ted Levy houses. A four-bedroom house here is currently for sale for £2.5 million.

New-build homes

Highgate Court at the junction of Bishops Road, Church Road and Archway Road is a Bellway London development of 86 one-, two- and three-bedroom flats, of which 26 are lower cost.

The flats are ready to move into. Five two-bedroom homes remain and prices start at £699,950. Call 0333 202 5141.

Furnival House in Cholmeley Park is the rebuild of an Edwardian hostel built by Prudential Assurance in 1916 for its female employees. It now has 15 one-, two- and three-bedroom flats.

The remaining four homes start at £1.25 million for a two-bedroom flat and £3.25 million for a three-bedroom flat. Call Dexters on 020 8545 8584.

Hill House in Highgate Hill next to Archway station is the conversion of a Seventies office building into 147 studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom flats by developer Bode with architects Hawkins\Brown.

The development, which has new ground-floor shops and restaurants, includes a 14-storey tower and a three-storey podium. Eight flats remain, all ready to move into.

Two-bedroom flats start at £975,000, with three-bedroom flats priced from £1.35 million. Call Hamptons International on 020 3151 7649.

Who rents here?

Pop singer Justin Bieber rented a house in The Bishops Avenue for £25,000 a week.

However, Bianca Marchini, lettings manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, says her tenants and landlords are a much more mixed bunch, including everyone from families who come to Highgate for the schools, to professional couples and sharers.

Some families are looking for homes on the Crouch End side of Highgate in the hope of getting their children into Coleridge Primary School in Crouch End Hill, which gets the coveted “outstanding” rating from the Ofsted schools watchdog.

Commuters like homes that are close to either Highgate or Archway Tube stations.

Postcode

N6 is the favoured Highgate postcode; on its southern border it strays into N19, the Upper Holloway postcode —Whitehall Park is in N19 — and on its eastern border it merges with N8, the Hornsey postcode.

Best roads

The Grove and Fitzroy Park

Up and coming

Regeneration in Archway has brought new independent businesses to Junction Road, causing buyers to look afresh at the area.

Travel

Archway Road, east of Highgate village, is on the A1, the Great North Road, a major artery out of London. Highgate Tube station in Archway Road is a good 10-minute walk from the village, which is why many locals take a bus down the hill to Archway Tube.

Both stations are on the Northern line with trains to the City and West End. Archway is in Zone 2 and an annual travelcard to Zone 1 costs £1,404. Highgate is in Zone 3 and an annual travelcard costs £1,648.

Round-the-clock commuter buses are the No 271 from Highgate village to Moorgate, and the No 43 and No 134 which run down Archway Road to Tottenham Court Road and London Bridge respectively.

Shops and restaurants

Highgate village is pretty but short on retail excitement although it does have a butcher, greengrocer, delicatessen and bookshop, and there are now a number of charity shops which offer rich pickings for bargain hunters, while WCD is an interesting interiors shop which also designs bespoke furniture.

Chain restaurants include Côte, Gail’s, Le Pain Quotidien, Pizza Express and Café Rouge.

The best outing in Highgate is a pub lunch and a walk down Fitzroy Park to Hampstead Heath and maybe a dip in one of the outdoor swimming ponds.

The Flask is a Fuller’s pub with the feel of a country inn. Others with good food offerings are The Angel Inn, The Gatehouse, The Red Lion & Sun and The Woodman in Archway Road. The Duke’s Head specialises in craft beer.

There are also shops, cafés and restaurants in Archway Road, which may be a busy thoroughfare but seems to offer independents a better chance of taking root than in the village itself.

There are two antiques shops specialising in mid-century furniture: Gonnermann and 20thc Quarters; pizza and burger place, Papa Del’s; popular café Food Room and top music pub Boogaloo.

Further down the road Leaping Lizards designs interesting childrenswear.

Open space

Highgate is surrounded by green spaces. Waterlow Park is on Highgate Hill; Hampstead Heath is a short walk from the village and Highgate Wood and Queen’s Wood are between Archway Road and Muswell Hill.

Waterlow Park occupies a hillside site with views over central London; it has tennis courts, children’s playgrounds, three ponds fed by natural springs, an orchard and a community kitchen garden.

The Highgate Bowl, reached from Townsend Yard off the High Street, is an historic green space once used by drovers to fatten their cattle on the way to market.

It has now been transformed with new greenhouses into OmVed, which describes itself as “a garden, exhibition space and food hub”.

Leisure and the arts

Over the road from Highgate Tube station is Jacksons Lane, a thriving contemporary arts centre based in a listed former Methodist church, on track to undergo a £5.1 million refurbishment in 2020 to transform it into a world-leading provider of culture and community engagement.

There is a fringe theatre above The Gatehouse pub. There are children’s and adult classes and exhibitions at Lauderdale House in Waterlow Park and at the Highgate Society’s premises in South Grove.

Primary

The state primary schools are all judged to be “good” by Ofsted. The one “outstanding” school is St Joseph’s RC in Highgate Hill. Some parents look in Highgate for homes in the catchment of the very popular Coleridge Primary School in Crouch End Hill.

Comprehensive

Four comprehensive schools share a sixth form, known as LaSWAP: La Sainte Union RC (girls, ages 11 to 18), William Ellis (boys, ages 11 to18) and Parliament Hill (girls, ages 11 to18), all in Highgate Road, and Acland Burghley (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Burghley Road in Tufnell Park, all of which are rated “good”.

The other local comprehensive schools rated “good” are: City of London Academy, Highgate Hill (co-ed, ages 11 to18) in Duncombe Road and Highgate Wood (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Montenotte Road in Crouch End.

Private

Families move to Highgate for the two leading all-through private schools: Highgate (co-ed, ages three to 18) in North Road and Channing (girls, ages three to 18) in The Bank off Highgate Hill.

Avenue (co-ed, ages two to eight) in Highgate Avenue is the local private nursery and pre-preparatory school.