My wandering around Highgate on Sunday 19th November, continued. You can read the first part of it at Highgate – Mirrors, Mansions & Luxury Cars which had ended at the Kingdom Hall on North Hill.
One thing that I seldom resist on a walk is a passage and a little further down North Hill I found Park House Passage. And after photographing the rather fine house beside it (4 North Hill, not digitised) I went down it to The Park, confusingly not a park but a street, with houses only on the north side. I took several more pictures not on line including two of a large block of flats two the south on Hillcrest, perhaps built later on the parkland which had given the street its name. But trees along the road meant they could not be seen as clearly as I would have liked.
But I saw the ash tree in this picture after I turned on to Southwood Lane in front of some modern housing largely hidden behind an old wall. Both house and tree are still there, though of course the tree has grown considerably. Most of the ash leaves had fallen but some were still holding on and contrasted greatly with the evergreen shrub at the bottom of the frame.
A little further down Southwood Lane I turned into Jackson’s Lane, named after Joseph B Jackson, who lived in a house named Hillside, demolished to build the late Victorian Hillside Mansions and the street Hillside Gardens.
Highstone House is the first house down the street on a very narrow section of the road and it is now rather hidden as the wrought iron gate has been replaced by a solid wooden one.
I photographed another house on the opposite side of Jackson’s Lane and then turned around to return to Southwood Lane photographing this house close to the junction at 62 Jackson’s Lane.
Almost opposite was Park Walk, leading from Southwood Lane to North Road, so I had to go down it. I think the white house on Southwood lane is possibly a detached part of the property on Jackson’s Lane in the previous picture.
The flats which can be seen through the trees are I think on Hillcrest, and are perhaps Cunningham House or Tedder House. Park Walk took me back to North Hill, opposite the High Point flats.
Berthold Lubetkin designed the Grade I listed High Point 1 flats built in 1931 in the International Modern style as housing for the employees of Sigmund Gestetner but they never got to live in them. Also involved as structural engineer was Ove Arup. I think my picture deliberately avoided taking a standard view of them showing them as a modern masterpiece but instead concentrated on what I take to be an architectural joke at the entrance with pilotis and caryatids.
The flats are on one of the highest points in Highgate and the name above the entrance is clearly High Point, but they are usually referred to as Highpoint. This is Highpoint 1 and later in 1938 Lubetkin added the adjoining more luxurious Highpoint 2 in a similar design. He lived in the penthouse on Highpoint 1 until then.
Le Corbusier visited the flats in 1935 and called them “an achievement of the first rank” and many architectural critics consider them among the finest flats built and among Britain’s finest buildings. Of course they have been much photographed and I didn’t on this occasion do more than take a few frames as I walked past – only this one online.
More from Highgte in a later post.
