A village on the hill
Highgate grew up on the high road north out of London, and it still reads as a village. The streets around Pond Square, South Grove and the High Street have kept their small scale. Georgian houses and old shopfronts line them, and the views fall away towards the City.
The oldest houses are on The Grove. Numbers 1 to 6 were built around 1688 by William Blake, a City merchant, in the gardens of a larger house. They face a tree-lined green. Number 3 is listed Grade II*, and the listing covers its low front wall, its wrought-iron railings and its lamp. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived there from 1823 until his death in 1834, as a guest of the Gillman family.
Further down the hill, Waterlow Park surrounds Lauderdale House. It was first built in 1582 for Richard Martin, a Lord Mayor of London. Down Swain’s Lane, past Highgate Cemetery, is Holly Village. This is a group of Gothic cottages completed in 1865 for the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts.
Away from the village core, the plots get bigger. Fitzroy Park is a private road running down towards Hampstead Heath, lined with detached houses in deep gardens. Southwood Lane and the streets towards Queen’s Wood hold Victorian and Edwardian villas behind front walls.
What the ironwork looks like here
Highgate is a place of walls and gates more than basement railings. In the village, railings are short and sit on low brick walls close to the pavement. Gates are narrow and simple, often just bars with a top rail and a few finials. The Grove shows this at its best.
On the larger plots the gate does the talking. A pair of driveway gates between brick piers is often the first thing you see of a Fitzroy Park house. These can carry more scrollwork, but they still need to suit the brick and the trees around them.
Ironwork for Highgate homes
Driveway and entrance gates
For detached houses we design gates in proportion to the piers and the house behind them. If you want them automated, we build the frame and hinge points to suit your installer’s motor.
Garden gates and front railings
For the village houses and terraces we make pedestrian gates and short runs of railing. Where an original survives on the street, we match it.
Heritage restoration
Old gates on Highgate’s lanes often sag on worn hinges. We repair and rehang them, and replace only the parts that cannot be saved.
Staircase balustrades
Period houses here often have stairs worth keeping. We forge balustrades from plain Georgian stick balusters to scrolled panels. Inside a home the guarding must be at least 900mm high, with no gap that lets a 100mm ball through.
The building work around the gates
A heavy forged gate is only as good as the pier it hangs from. On Highgate’s sloping streets, old brick piers often lean, crack or sit on shallow footings. We can take a pier down, lay a proper base and rebuild it in matching brick. We can also repair a front wall on Southwood Lane or reset the steps up to a village house. Then the gates and railings go in on solid work, built by the same team.
Planning and consent across two councils
The Highgate Conservation Area is shared by Camden and Haringey. A conservation area is a district the council protects for its historic look. Fitzroy Park, Waterlow Park and Highgate Cemetery are on the Camden side. Much of the village core and Southwood Lane are in Haringey. The Holly Lodge Estate has its own conservation area next door.
As a general rule, a new gate or wall more than one metre high beside a road needs planning permission. If your house is listed, any change to its ironwork needs listed building consent. That is permission from the council to alter a protected building. Please check with Camden or Haringey before you commit. We provide drawings that show the gate in its setting for your application.
Design, forging and installation
You can pick a pattern from our design album, which holds hundreds of proven gates and railings, and we adapt it to your piers and opening. For larger driveway gates or a listed house, we often draw a fully bespoke design in CAD. Nothing is forged until you approve the drawings.
Your gates are forged in our own workshop by a craftsman with 20 years of hand-forging experience. Our London team then hangs them. Many Highgate lanes are steep, narrow or private, so we check the delivery route at survey and agree access with neighbours where needed.
If you need gates for a Fitzroy Park drive or railings for a cottage off Pond Square, request a quote with our short form, or call us.