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Property Search - Highgate

Highgate is divided between three London boroughs: Haringey in the north Camden in the south and west and Islington in the south and east. The postal district for Highgate is N6. It is one of the more expensive suburbs to live in and has an active conservation society The Highgate Society to protect its character.

Hampstead Lane and Highgate Hill contain the red brick Victorian buildings of Highgate School and its adjacent Chapel of St Michael. The school has played a paramount role in the life of the village and has existed on its site since its founding was permitted by letters from Queen Elizabeth I in 1565. Highgate is noteworthy for its Cemetery and Georgian architecture. It is also the location of Berthold Lubetkin's two Highpoint apartment buildings.

Historically it adjoined the Bishop of London's hunting estate. The Bishop kept a toll-house where one of the main northward roads out of London entered his land. A number of pubs sprang up along the route one of which the Gatehouse commemorates the toll-house. In later centuries Highgate was associated with the highwayman Dick Turpin. Subsequently Highgate was part of the Municipal Borough of Hornsey and the seat of that borough's governing body for many years.

Highgate Hill the steep street linking Archway and Highgate village was the route of the first cable car to be built in Europe. It operated between 1884 and 1909.

Notable inhabitants

Peter Sellers' mother moved here to Muswell Hill Road in order to send Peter to the Catholic St Aloysius boys' school in Hornsey Lane.

In recent years famous inhabitants have included John James Sainsbury J. B. Priestley Stella Gibbons Yehudi Menuhin (and later Sting who bought Menuhin's old house) Sir Clifford Curzon Sir Jacob Bronowski Stanley Baxter Mike Skinner Clive Owen Geri Halliwell Bob Hoskins Ulrika Johnson Imre Varadi Alex Zane Terry Gilliam Arthur Boyd Christopher Nolan George Michael Jonathan Pryce Alison Steadman Paul Nicholas Tim Pigott-Smith Heath Robinson and Victoria Wood. Highgate Cemetery is the burial place of Karl Marx Michael Faraday Douglas Adams George Eliot Jacob Bronowski Sir Ralph Richardson Sir Sidney Nolan Alexander Litvinenko and Radclyffe Hall. Adjacent to the cemetery is the Holly Lodge Estate one of only two housing estates built in the UK for single women and formerly the home and grounds of Baroness Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts. Sadie Frost has an office in the village behind the 'LA Fitness' gym. In April 2008 she complained about the noise caused by the classes[2]. Leslie Compton ex Arsenal F.C Footballer and ex Middlesex Cricketer owned a pub here when he retired from sports.

The MP for the Hampstead and Highgate constituency since 1992 has been Labour's Glenda Jackson. Lynne Featherstone is the Liberal Democrat MP for the Hornsey and Wood Green constituency which covers the northern half of Highgate Village. The Boundary Commission report of 2003 recommended separating the Camden part of Highgate from the remainder of its present constituency and joining it with Kentish Town and Holborn to the south.

Many influential men have passed through Highgate School either Masters or indeed Old Cholmeleians the name given to old boys of the school. These include T. S. Eliot who taught the poet laureate John Betjeman there Gerard Manley Hopkins the poet the composers John Taverner and John Rutter John Venn the inventor of Venn diagrams actor Geoffrey Palmer Anthony Crossland MP and Labour reformer and most recently the cabinet minister Charles Clarke.

In Victorian times St Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate was a refuge for former prostitutes - "fallen women" - where Christina Rossetti was a volunteer from 1859 to 1870. It may have inspired her most well-known poem Goblin Market.

Nearest places

Archway
Crouch End
Dartmouth Park
Finchley
Hampstead
Holloway
Hornsey
Muswell Hill





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