Highgate New Town

The Ambition of an Era

There is a moment in the history of British architecture when the ambitions of social democracy and the energies of modernist design converged with an intensity that has never been repeated. It occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, when local authorities across the country, empowered by generous government funding and inspired by the belief that good architecture could create a better society, embarked on housing programmes of extraordinary ambition. Camden Council, the progressive north London authority that served some of the most affluent and most deprived communities in the capital, was at the forefront of this movement, and the housing estates it built during this period — Alexandra Road, Branch Hill, Fleet Road, and Highgate New Town among them — represent the high-water mark of British social housing design.

Highgate New Town occupies a site on the steep slopes below Highgate Village, between Chester Road and Dartmouth Park Hill, where a collection of Victorian terraced houses had deteriorated to the point where comprehensive redevelopment was considered the only viable option. The decision to demolish the existing housing and replace it with a new estate was taken in the late 1960s, during a period when slum clearance and comprehensive redevelopment were the orthodox responses to poor housing conditions. The scheme that emerged from Camden's architects department was one of the most ambitious and architecturally distinguished council housing projects ever undertaken in London.

The scale of the undertaking was remarkable. Over a period of more than a decade, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, several hundred new homes were built on the site, together with community facilities, shops, and landscaped open spaces. The development was carried out in phases, each designed by different architects within Camden's department, and the resulting ensemble displays a variety of architectural approaches that reflects the evolving tastes and priorities of the period. What unites the different phases is a shared commitment to quality — of design, of materials, of landscaping — that distinguishes Highgate New Town from the cruder and more cynical housing estates that disfigured other parts of London during the same period.

The Design Philosophy

The architects who designed Highgate New Town were heirs to a tradition of socially committed modernist architecture that stretched back to the inter-war period and the pioneering housing schemes of continental Europe. Their design philosophy was grounded in several key principles: that social housing should be of the same architectural quality as private housing; that the design of the dwelling should be based on a careful analysis of how people actually live; that the relationship between the individual home and the wider community should be expressed through the design of shared spaces; and that the materials and construction methods used should be honest, durable, and appropriate to the climate and landscape of the site.

The most immediately striking aspect of Highgate New Town's design is its relationship to the topography. The site falls steeply from north to south, dropping perhaps fifty feet from Chester Road to Dartmouth Park Hill, and the architects used this slope to create a series of terraced housing blocks that step down the hillside, following the contours of the land. This arrangement gives many of the dwellings views to the south and west that rival those of the Georgian houses in the village above — a deliberate and deeply political gesture, providing council tenants with the same prospect of London that had been the exclusive preserve of the wealthy for two hundred years.

The housing is predominantly low-rise, rarely exceeding four storeys, a decision that reflected the growing disenchantment with tower blocks that had set in by the early 1970s. The architects favoured the terrace and the maisonette — dwelling types with their own front doors and their own outdoor space — over the corridor-access flats that had characterised earlier council housing. Each home has a private garden or balcony, and the external spaces are carefully graduated from the fully private to the fully public, with semi-private courtyards and shared gardens providing the intermediate spaces that encourage neighbourly interaction without compromising individual privacy.

Peter Tabori and the Camden Architects

The architectural vision behind Highgate New Town was the product of Camden Council's in-house architects department, one of the most talented and productive local authority design teams in post-war Britain. The department, which at its peak employed several hundred architects, planners, and landscape designers, was responsible for an extraordinary body of work that included not only housing but also schools, libraries, community centres, and public spaces across the borough. The ethos of the department was collaborative — buildings were designed by teams rather than individuals — but several key figures shaped the direction of the Highgate New Town project.

Peter Tabori, a Hungarian-born architect who joined Camden's department in the 1960s, was the principal designer of the earliest and most architecturally distinctive phase of Highgate New Town. Tabori brought to the project a deep knowledge of European housing design, an acute sensitivity to the relationship between architecture and landscape, and a commitment to the idea that social housing should be beautiful as well as functional. His designs for the Chester Road section of the estate — a sequence of terraced houses stepping down the hillside, with white-rendered walls, deep-set windows, and steeply pitched roofs — are among the finest examples of public housing architecture in London.

The later phases of the development, designed by other architects within the Camden department, adopted a different aesthetic — the exposed concrete and board-marked surfaces of the Brutalist manner that was dominant in British architecture during the 1970s. These later blocks are more assertive in their materiality, their rough concrete surfaces and angular forms contrasting sharply with the softer, more domestic character of Tabori's earlier work. The juxtaposition of these different approaches — the white-rendered terraces and the raw concrete blocks, the domestic and the monumental, the gentle and the aggressive — gives Highgate New Town its distinctive architectural character and its capacity to provoke strong reactions in those who encounter it.

The Brutalist Aesthetic

Brutalism — a term derived from the French "beton brut," meaning raw concrete — is perhaps the most divisive architectural movement of the twentieth century. Its proponents, who include some of the most distinguished architects of the post-war period, argue that the honest expression of materials and structure is a form of architectural integrity, and that the rough, tactile surfaces of exposed concrete possess a beauty of their own. Its detractors, who include the majority of the general public, see it as an aggressive, dehumanising style that expresses contempt for the people who are forced to live and work within its buildings. Highgate New Town sits squarely in the middle of this debate, its concrete surfaces weathering to a patina that some find noble and others find depressing.

The concrete of Highgate New Town is not the smooth, precision-finished material of a corporate office building but the rough, board-marked concrete that was characteristic of the Brutalist style. The formwork — the timber boards into which the wet concrete was poured — has left its imprint on the surface, creating a texture of horizontal lines and wood grain that gives the material a warmth and tactility that is often overlooked by those who dismiss Brutalism as cold and inhuman. The concrete has aged well in many places, acquiring a patina of moss and lichen that softens its appearance and integrates it with the surrounding landscape. In other places, water staining and surface deterioration have produced the streaked, discoloured surfaces that are Brutalism's Achilles heel.

The detailing of the concrete work at Highgate New Town is of exceptionally high quality, reflecting the skill of the contractors and the perfectionism of the architects. The corners are sharp, the edges are clean, the joint lines between pours are carefully aligned, and the surface texture is consistent throughout. This attention to detail is characteristic of the best Brutalist work, and it distinguishes Highgate New Town from the countless inferior housing estates where poor-quality concrete was used as a cheap and cheerless building material. The difference between good Brutalism and bad Brutalism is, in many ways, the difference between craft and carelessness, and at Highgate New Town the craft is evident in every surface.

The Relationship to the Village

The relationship between Highgate New Town and the historic village above it is one of the most fraught and fascinating in London's architectural geography. The two communities are separated by a distance of a few hundred yards and a social chasm that reflects the deeper inequalities of British life. The village, with its Georgian terraces, its literary associations, and its multi-million-pound houses, represents one version of Highgate — affluent, conservative, and deeply invested in the preservation of its historic character. The estate, with its council housing, its diverse population, and its modernist architecture, represents another — progressive, egalitarian, and committed to the principle that good housing is a right, not a privilege.

The architectural contrast between the two is stark. The Georgian houses of the village are built in brick, with sash windows, moulded cornices, and the full vocabulary of classical detail; the housing of Highgate New Town is built in concrete, with horizontal strip windows, flat roofs, and the unadorned surfaces of the modernist manner. The village is a collection of individual houses, each with its own character and history; the estate is a designed ensemble, planned as a unified composition with a consistency of approach that subordinates the individual to the collective. The village faces inward, toward its own streets and gardens; the estate faces outward, toward the views of London that its terraced form reveals.

Yet the relationship between the two is more nuanced than the simple opposition of old and new, rich and poor, traditional and modern might suggest. The residents of Highgate New Town use the village shops, drink in its pubs, walk their dogs on its Heath; the residents of the village pass through the estate on their way to Dartmouth Park station or the shops on Highgate Hill. The two communities are connected by geography, by shared services, and by the daily interactions that characterise urban life, even if they are separated by income, architecture, and social background. The challenge — as it has always been in Highgate — is to find a way of living together that acknowledges these differences without allowing them to harden into barriers.

Controversy and Criticism

Highgate New Town has been controversial from the moment its designs were first published. The decision to replace Victorian terraced houses with modernist housing blocks provoked fierce opposition from conservation groups, local residents, and architectural critics who argued that the existing housing could and should have been renovated rather than demolished. The Brutalist aesthetic of the later phases provoked particular hostility, both from the village residents who felt that the concrete blocks were an affront to the Georgian character of the hilltop and from the wider public, who associated Brutalism with the failed housing experiments of the 1960s and 1970s.

The criticism was not confined to aesthetics. Practical concerns about the quality of the housing — problems with damp, inadequate heating, poor sound insulation between dwellings, and the deterioration of the concrete surfaces — emerged within a few years of completion and have been a source of ongoing dissatisfaction among residents. The walkways and elevated courtyards that were intended to foster community interaction have, in some cases, become wind tunnels and rain traps, their exposed surfaces proving uncomfortable in the English climate. The garages and parking areas, designed for an era when car ownership was lower than it is today, have proved inadequate for the needs of the current population.

Against these criticisms must be set the genuine achievements of the scheme. The individual dwellings are, for the most part, generously sized and well planned, with the dual-aspect living rooms, private outdoor spaces, and ample storage that characterise the best social housing of the period. The landscaping, which has matured over the decades, is now one of the estate's greatest assets, the trees and shrubs that were planted in the 1970s and 1980s having grown into a green framework that softens the concrete surfaces and provides shade, shelter, and visual pleasure. The community that has developed on the estate is strong and cohesive, with an active residents association and a tradition of mutual support that reflects the original ambition of the architects to create not just housing but a neighbourhood.

Listed Status and the Future

The architectural significance of Highgate New Town has been formally recognised through the listing of several of its key buildings by Historic England. The earliest phase, designed by Peter Tabori, has been listed at Grade II, placing it in the same category of national importance as many of the Georgian houses in the village above. This listing, which came as a surprise to many — the idea of listing a council estate built within living memory seemed paradoxical to those who associate listed buildings with medieval churches and stately homes — reflects a growing recognition that the best post-war architecture is as worthy of preservation as the best of any other period.

The listing has practical implications for the management of the estate. Listed building consent is now required for any alterations that affect the character of the listed buildings, and this imposes constraints on the maintenance and improvement works that Camden Council might wish to carry out. The challenge is to find ways of addressing the estate's practical shortcomings — the damp, the poor insulation, the deteriorating concrete — without compromising the architectural qualities that earned the listing in the first place. This is a challenge that is common to all listed buildings, but it is particularly acute in the case of a lived-in social housing estate where the needs of the residents must be balanced against the demands of conservation.

The future of Highgate New Town will depend on the willingness of Camden Council, its residents, and the conservation authorities to work together to preserve the best of the estate while addressing its shortcomings. The architectural quality of the design, the strength of the community, and the beauty of the landscape setting all argue in favour of a future that respects the original vision while adapting it to contemporary needs. Highgate New Town may never be loved by those who see only its concrete surfaces and its angular forms, but for those who take the time to understand the ambitions that created it and the community that inhabits it, it remains one of the most remarkable and thought-provoking places in the whole of N6.

*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*