Highgate – Mirrors, Mansions & Luxury Cars: My next photographic walk in 1989 was on Sunday 19th November, and began At Highgate Station on the Northern Line, from where long escalators took me up to Archway Road.
The picture is a double self-portrait with me appearing – if dimly – in two of the mirrors in a shop window with the message ‘IF YOU DO NOT SEE WHAT YOU REQUIRE IN THE WINDOW PLEASE ASK INSIDE. My Olympus OM4, held in my right hand (left in the mirrors) covers most of my face.
Mirrors have often featured in photographs and seem endemic in film, and in 1978 John Szakowski staged an exhibition of American photography since 1960 and a book, Mirrors and Windows exploring what he felt was the distinction between photographers whose work largely reflected their own subjective view and others who used photography as a window on the world. It is of course not a dichotomy and we all do both, though perhaps at different positions on the spectrum.
I wandered around a bit up and down Archway Road and can’t remember exactly where this shop was, but not far from the station. Eventually I turned south down Southwood Lane.
Southwood Mansions is an imposing late Victorian mansion block build in 1897 and although its entrance (one of a pair) looked rather down-at-heel in 1989, the large flats here now sell for well over a million pounds. This is a very desirable location, close both to the Underground station and to Highgate village.
I went back to Archway Road and wandered a little around the area, taking few pictures. This rather grand car showroom had some rather expensive cars – I was told they are 930 and 964 Porsches and would be worth a fortune now and the first advert that came up on Google lists them at £64,995 to £449,995. I can’t find this showroom now and think it has probably been demolished.
These houses are a part of a small estate on North Hill, Bramalea Close and Cross Crescent. They are among those featured on a walk along the street by the Highgate Society which states “Arguably no other road in London, Britain, Europe or, who knows, even the world compares with North Hill in terms of the diversity of its domestic architecture” though it gives rather little information about these. They were built between 1976 and 1982.
More expensive cars at Highgate dealer Hexagon, founded by Paul Michaels in 1963. The company is still in business but this site has been demolished and replaced by housing.
The pub building is still there but closed in 2017 and planning permission was granted for the site to be developed with extra residential building but retaining the pub. Some think the developers are waiting until the pub is in such a poor condition they will be able to demolish it and develop the entire site. But so far it does not seem to have been treated to the usual fire started by persons unknown.
Thes building are not mentioned in the Highgate Society walk on North Hill, though I did photograph some of the others. I found it interesting for the porch and the balcony above at 51 and the 1930s style windows of 53 to the right (since replaced) and the unusual fenestration of 53 and 55, clearly a later addition to 51.
There is something very odd about these walls and steps that lead up to the door of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses at 33 North Hill, and it seems perverse in the era of accessible entrances. It was certainly not the straight gate of Matthew 7 verse 14. The The steps from the pavement now seem to have been levelled out and there is now I think step-free access to a lower level of the building.
More to come from my walk in Highgate.
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