The Bishop's Forest
Before there was a village, before there was a gate, before there was even a road, there was the forest. The hilltop on which Highgate now stands was, in the early medieval period, a dense, unbroken woodland of oak, elm, hornbeam, and ash that formed part of the great forest of Middlesex — the vast tract of wildwood that covered most of the land between London and the northern counties. This forest was not the park-like, managed woodland that we might imagine today; it was a genuinely wild place, dense with undergrowth, dark beneath the canopy of the ancient trees, and home to deer, boar, foxes, and a rich diversity of birdlife that has long since vanished from the London area. The forest covered the entire ridge of the Northern Heights, from what is now Hampstead Heath in the west through Highgate, Muswell Hill, and beyond, and its sheer density and extent made it one of the most formidable natural barriers in the south of England.
This forest belonged to the Bishop of London. Since at least the Norman Conquest, and probably before, the Bishops of London had held the manor of Hornsey, which encompassed a vast swathe of land to the north of the capital, including the hilltop on which Highgate would eventually be built. The bishops used the forest primarily as a hunting park — a private preserve where they and their guests could pursue deer through the ancient woodland in the manner that was one of the principal pleasures of the medieval aristocracy. The park was known as Hornsey Great Park, and it stretched from the heights above Highgate southward and eastward through what is now Crouch End, Stroud Green, and Finsbury Park, covering an area of several hundred acres. Within this park, the bishop's authority was absolute: no one could hunt, fell trees, or graze animals without his permission, and the forest was maintained in its wild state for the exclusive benefit of the episcopal household.
The hilltop that would become Highgate occupied the western edge of the park, at the point where the bishop's land met the road that led from London to the north. This road — the ancient route that followed the line of the modern Holloway Road — ran through the valley to the east of the hill, avoiding the steep climb over the summit and passing instead through the lower-lying ground to the south of the park. The hilltop itself was uninhabited: there were no houses, no farms, no human settlements of any kind. It was simply a high point in the forest, a place of dense woodland and wild animals, visited only by the bishop's huntsmen and, perhaps, by the occasional charcoal burner or woodcutter who had obtained the bishop's permission to ply his trade among the trees.
The Fourteenth-Century Road
The event that transformed the hilltop from a silent patch of woodland into the site of a settlement was the construction of a new road in the fourteenth century. The existing route through the valley — the road that followed the line of the modern Holloway Road — had become increasingly difficult to use, particularly during the winter months. The valley floor was composed of heavy London clay, which turned to a viscous, clinging mud whenever it rained, and the road, which was never more than an unmetalled track, could become virtually impassable for weeks at a time. Carts sank to their axles, horses stumbled and fell, and travellers were frequently forced to abandon their vehicles and proceed on foot. The problem was particularly acute in the stretch of the road that climbed from the valley floor towards Islington, where the gradient and the clay combined to create conditions of legendary difficulty.
The solution was to build an alternative route — a road that climbed the hill itself, passing through the bishop's forest on a firmer, higher surface that was less susceptible to the waterlogging that plagued the valley road. The new road was authorised by the Bishop of London, who granted permission for a cutting to be made through his forest and for a gate to be erected at the summit to collect tolls from the users of the new route. The construction of the road was a significant engineering undertaking by the standards of the fourteenth century. It required the felling of trees along a wide corridor up the hillside, the levelling and grading of the surface, and the construction of drainage channels to carry away the water that would otherwise have turned the new road into a quagmire as bad as the one it was designed to replace.
The date of the road's construction is not precisely known, but the earliest documentary references to the "high gate" appear in the mid-fourteenth century, suggesting that the road and the gate were established at some point between 1318 and 1354. The name itself — "high gate" — refers to the toll gate at the summit of the hill, which was the most prominent feature of the new road and the one that gave the nascent settlement its identity. The gate was a simple structure — a bar or chain across the road, attended by a gatekeeper who collected the tolls — but its position at the top of the long climb from the valley below made it a conspicuous landmark, visible to travellers from some distance as they approached the summit. The name "high gate" distinguished this gate from the many other toll gates in the area, emphasising its elevated position above the surrounding landscape.
The Hermit and the Toll Gate
The earliest toll-keeper at Highgate was, by tradition, a hermit — a religious figure who combined the practical duty of collecting tolls with the spiritual duty of praying for the souls of travellers and maintaining the small chapel that was built beside the gate. The combination of toll-keeping and religious devotion was not unusual in medieval England; hermits frequently served as the guardians of bridges, fords, and mountain passes, providing a spiritual as well as a practical service to the travellers who passed through their territory. The Highgate hermit occupied a small dwelling beside the gate, where he lived a life of solitary devotion punctuated by the regular interruptions of travellers requiring passage.
The hermitage at Highgate is first mentioned in documentary sources in the early fifteenth century, though it may well have existed from the time the road was first constructed. The hermit's duties were clearly defined: he was to maintain the gate, collect the tolls, keep the road in passable condition, and pray for the welfare of travellers and for the soul of the Bishop of London. In return, he received a stipend from the episcopal estate and the right to retain a portion of the toll income. The arrangement suited all parties: the bishop received an income from the road without the expense of employing a secular gatekeeper; the travellers received the reassurance of a religious presence on a road that passed through wild and potentially dangerous countryside; and the hermit received a living and a purpose that combined his spiritual vocation with a useful public service.
The chapel that stood beside the hermitage was dedicated to the keeping of prayers for travellers, and it served as the spiritual centre of the nascent settlement for several generations before the construction of a larger chapel — the precursor of the present-day church of St Michael — in the sixteenth century. The original chapel was a modest building, appropriate to its function as a wayside shrine rather than a parish church, and it is unlikely to have survived beyond the Reformation, when the dissolution of the monasteries and the suppression of the religious orders swept away many of the smaller religious foundations that dotted the English countryside. The hermitage, too, eventually disappeared, its function as a toll-collecting station taken over by secular officials as the traffic on the road increased and the sums involved grew beyond the capacity of a single religious to manage.
The First Houses
The settlement that grew up around the toll gate developed slowly at first. The earliest houses were built to serve the immediate needs of the road — alehouses where travellers could refresh themselves after the climb, a smithy where horses could be shod and ironwork repaired, and a few cottages for the families who made their living from the traffic that passed through the gate. These early buildings clustered around the summit of the hill, in the area that is now the High Street, and they faced the road in the manner of all roadside settlements, their front doors opening directly onto the thoroughfare that was their reason for existence.
The growth of the settlement was constrained by the bishop's ownership of the surrounding land. The forest on either side of the road remained the bishop's property, and no one could build on it without his permission. This meant that the earliest houses at Highgate were confined to the narrow strip of land alongside the road, and the settlement had a characteristically linear form — a single street of houses stretching along the ridge of the hill, with no depth behind them. This linear pattern is still visible in the modern street plan of Highgate, where the High Street forms a long, narrow spine running along the crest of the hill, with side streets and lanes branching off at right angles. The pattern is a direct legacy of the medieval settlement's origins as a roadside community, strung out along the route of the Great North Road.
As the traffic on the road increased through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the settlement grew with it. More houses were built, more shops and alehouses opened, and the population of the hilltop slowly increased. The bishop began to grant leases on parcels of land adjacent to the road, allowing the settlement to expand beyond its original narrow confines, and a recognisable village began to take shape — a community with its own social structure, its own economic life, and its own sense of identity. By the end of the fifteenth century, Highgate had acquired most of the features that would characterise it for the next five hundred years: a main street lined with shops and inns, a chapel for worship, a school for the education of the village's children, and a population of perhaps a few hundred souls whose livelihoods depended on the road that had brought the village into being.
The Chapel and the School
The development of Highgate's institutional life in the medieval period was closely tied to the charitable impulses of wealthy individuals who wished to endow the village with the facilities that a growing community required. The chapel at Highgate, which served the spiritual needs of the settlement from the fourteenth century onwards, was supplemented in the late medieval period by a school that would eventually become one of the most distinguished educational institutions in north London. The origins of the school are obscure, but it appears to have been established in the fifteenth century as a charitable foundation, providing free education to the children of the village and of the surrounding area.
The most important figure in the early institutional history of Highgate was Sir Roger Cholmeley, a Lord Chief Justice of England who, in 1565, founded the school that bears his name — Highgate School, which continues to operate as one of London's leading independent schools on its original hilltop site. Cholmeley's foundation was a generous act of philanthropy that transformed the educational life of the village, providing not only a school but an endowment that would support its operations in perpetuity. The school's buildings, which were erected on the site of the earlier medieval institution, became one of the most prominent structures in the village, and their presence reinforced Highgate's identity as a place of learning and culture as well as a roadside staging post.
The chapel, meanwhile, continued to serve the religious needs of the community, though its status was anomalous. Highgate was not a parish in its own right but a hamlet within the parish of Hornsey, and its chapel was technically a chapel of ease — a subsidiary place of worship dependent on the mother church at Hornsey rather than an independent parish church. This subordinate status was a source of some frustration to the people of Highgate, who resented having to travel to Hornsey for baptisms, marriages, and burials, and who lobbied persistently for the elevation of their chapel to parochial status. The issue was not resolved until the nineteenth century, when the chapel was finally replaced by the church of St Michael, which stands at the top of Highgate Hill to this day and which serves as the parish church of Highgate.
The Village Takes Shape
By the end of the medieval period — conventionally dated to the accession of the Tudors in 1485 — Highgate had evolved from a cluster of roadside huts into a recognisable village with a settled population, a functioning economy, and a distinct identity. The settlement was still small by later standards — its population was probably no more than a few hundred — but it had acquired the institutional framework that would support its growth in the centuries to come. The toll gate remained the defining feature of the village, both physically and symbolically: it was the gate that controlled access to the road, the gate that generated the income on which much of the local economy depended, and the gate that gave the village its name and its reason for being.
The layout of the medieval village can be partially reconstructed from later maps and from the pattern of surviving buildings and streets. The main settlement was concentrated along the crest of the hill, in the area now occupied by the High Street and the streets immediately adjacent to it. The houses were built of timber — the stone and brick construction that characterises the present-day village did not become common until the seventeenth century — and they were typically small, two-storey structures with shops or workshops on the ground floor and living quarters above. The alehouses and inns that served the road were among the largest buildings in the village, and their prominence in the street scene reflected the centrality of the road trade to the local economy.
The medieval village was also shaped by its relationship with the surrounding countryside. The bishop's forest, which still covered much of the hillside, provided the villagers with timber for building and fuel, and the open fields to the north of the village — in the area now occupied by Highgate Wood and Queen's Wood — were cultivated by the local farmers who supplied the village with food. The proximity of the forest gave medieval Highgate a character quite different from the urban village of today: it was a settlement on the edge of the wilderness, a clearing in the woods where human habitation met the untamed forest, and the sounds and smells of the woodland — the birdsong, the rustle of leaves, the distant crashing of deer through the undergrowth — would have been a constant accompaniment to daily life.
Medieval Life on the Hill
What was life like in medieval Highgate? The documentary evidence is thin — the village was too small and too insignificant to attract much attention from contemporary chroniclers — but it is possible to piece together a general picture from the records that survive and from our knowledge of medieval village life more broadly. The people of Highgate lived by the road: they were innkeepers, ostlers, smiths, and tradesmen, supplementing their income from the coaching trade with small-scale farming and with the exploitation of the forest's resources. Their lives were governed by the rhythms of the road — the arrival and departure of travellers, the seasonal patterns of traffic, the fluctuations in trade that followed the festivals and fairs of the medieval calendar.
The social structure of the medieval village was simple but well defined. At the top stood the hermit and the chaplain, who represented the spiritual authority of the Church; below them were the more prosperous tradesmen and innkeepers, who formed the village's economic elite; and at the bottom were the labourers, servants, and cottagers who did the physical work of the settlement. The bishop's authority, exercised through his manorial officials, provided the framework of governance within which this social hierarchy operated, and the toll gate — the bishop's instrument for extracting revenue from the road — was a constant reminder of the episcopal power that had brought the village into being and that continued to shape its development.
The medieval village was also a place of genuine community, where the bonds of neighbourliness and mutual obligation that characterised pre-industrial English society were reinforced by the shared experience of living in a small, isolated settlement on a hilltop. The people of Highgate knew one another intimately — their names, their families, their occupations, their virtues and their failings — and the social life of the village revolved around the chapel, the alehouses, and the communal events that punctuated the calendar. Feast days, market days, and the seasonal rituals of the agricultural year provided occasions for the village to come together, and the road itself, with its constant flow of strangers and its ever-changing cast of travellers, provided a window onto the wider world that kept the villagers connected to the great events and movements of their time. Medieval Highgate was a small place, but it was never a parochial one: the road ensured that the village was always in touch with the larger currents of English life, and this openness to the wider world is a quality that Highgate has retained to the present day.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*