Highgate Renovations & Design-Build — N6

Camden's appraisal says Highgate village is divided between Camden, Haringey and Islington and lies close to the Barnet boundary.

Haringey has designated its own Highgate Conservation Area, east and north of the High Street, while the High Street itself marks the edge of Camden's area and the borough line.

The line has moved before: the Gatehouse pub once straddled the Middlesex and London boundary, and in 1993 the boundary was shifted a few feet to give Camden overall control of it.

The Highgate Neighbourhood Plan, adopted by Haringey in July 2017 and Camden in September 2017, applies on both sides and notes how long the borough boundary has divided the area.

So the first question we answer on any Highgate enquiry is which council the address sits in, before any design advice is given.

Sources: Camden: Highgate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted October 2007), Highgate Neighbourhood Plan (adopted by Haringey in July 2017 and Camden in September 2017)

The historic group on The Grove was built by William Blake to raise money for an orphanage, and Pevsner and Cherry called the street's houses the finest group in Highgate; the group includes eleven listed buildings.

Even the garden walls, terraces and steps behind the historic houses are listed grade II, which matters for any extension or garden work there.

Further along, houses are stock brick with white-painted rusticated stucco on the ground floor, and an 1854 pair of Italianate villas with cream-painted rendered dressings.

Source: Camden: Highgate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted October 2007)

The neighbourhood plan says Highgate's geology, topography and hydrology have caused well-documented problems with residential basements, particularly for neighbours.

It also records concern that basements reduce the groundwater that replenishes the Highgate and Hampstead ponds, and says protecting mature trees helps limit the impact on the water table.

Basement schemes must meet the borough's own policy and the plan's Policy DH7 together.

Our basement work in Highgate starts with the engineer's desk study of the ground and water, before a design is drawn.

Source: Highgate Neighbourhood Plan (adopted by Haringey in July 2017 and Camden in September 2017)

Highgate's building stock is unusually mixed: Georgian groups such as The Grove, an 1854 pair of Italianate villas, the speculative Victorian terraces and semis of Bisham Gardens, and Highpoint I's flats on North Hill.

Fitzroy Park keeps an older pattern of houses in large gardens among mature trees, while the steep fall of Highgate West Hill brings very different house heights within one street.

Because of that mix, no two Highgate briefs start in the same place. A Georgian house may need its original plan kept; a Victorian semi may take a larger extension; a flat may be governed first by its lease.

We note the date and type of the building at the first visit, because it decides which council guidance and which repair methods apply.

Sources: Camden: Highgate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted October 2007), Historic England - National Heritage List for England, list entry 1358885 (Highpoint I)

Policy DH6 keeps original boundary walls, gate piers and railings, and asks that matching walls, such as the clinker walls of Cromwell Avenue, are rebuilt to match where they are replaced.

The plan names Southwood Lane, Cromwell Avenue and Highgate Avenue as roads where the walls themselves give the street its character.

On Bisham Gardens, the original rugged brick front walls survive mostly on the north side, while many on the south have been rendered and painted.

Camden will resist losing historic boundaries, planting and soft landscaping to new hard standing.

When a project includes the front garden, we survey the wall and its coping first and price its repair with the house.

Sources: Highgate Neighbourhood Plan (adopted by Haringey in July 2017 and Camden in September 2017), Camden: Highgate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted October 2007)