Hidden-Highate.org was launched just before Hallowe’en in 2013. It seems appropriate therefore to mark the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane and the more secular ‘May Day’, which occur at the opposite point on the wheel of the year, with a long overdue blog post. Celebrated the world over for centuries, this special time of year
What on earth could one of the oldest breeds of heavy horse be doing, lumbering around Highgate? Actually there is no real mystery here, for a change. Roy, the four- year old Suffolk horse in question, was politely asked by the Friends of Queens Wood and Haringey Council to lend a bit of horse power
What does Guy Fawkes’ Night – the 5th of November – mean to Hampstead and Highgate? And did Guy Fawkes’ gang really plan to watch London burn from Parliament Hill? Well, I didn’t see any harm in it, so I bought a mask for the child and gave it him, and delighted he was;
In the 15th century, a black mass allegedly took place in Highgate which could have altered the history of the monarchy today. Today the site of this rite, where wax figures of the king are said to have been melted in the fire, is a harmless golf course. But why was Highgate chosen as the
A curious passageway of note in Highgate lies slightly to the north west, and beneath, the Hillcrest estate. Now a modernised cut-through between Broadlands and Talbot Roads, Park House Passage takes it name from the mansion of the same name which once stood on the looming bulwarks now occupied by Hillcrest. To the folkloric and
When the Romans came to Britain, they found a land as mysterious and strange as darkest Africa was to the Victorians. Standing stones in the landscape, dreary and cold and with superstitious people who looked nothing like them, and had very odd religious practices. This was the land of the ghost story, of monsters and
It is not intended to point out the tortuous directions of Hagbush-lane; for the chief object of this notice is to excite the reader to one of the pleasantest walks he can imagine, and to tax his ingenuity to the discovery of the route the road takes. This, the ancient north road, comes into
What can we glean about how Highgate may have looked in the past by studying its name? And what does it tell us about Highgate today? Many local history primers confidently (and rather dryly) inform the novice reader that Highgate takes its name from its previous role as a kind of border pass, situated on
William Hone was born in 1770, in Bath, but spent much of his life in London. A popular, radical socialist and bookseller, his political and religious satires such as ‘The Reformists’ Register’ and ‘The Political Litany’ (both published in 1817) courted ill-favour with the Prince Regent and many influential people of the day. Hone campaigned