Before St Michael's: The Medieval Chapel
Long before the present church was built, Highgate had a place of worship. The medieval chapel that stood near the top of Highgate Hill — probably on or near the site of the current church — served the spiritual needs of the village from at least the fifteenth century. Highgate was not, in the medieval period, a parish in its own right; it belonged to the parish of Hornsey, whose church stood in the valley to the east, a considerable distance from the hilltop settlement. The inconvenience of this arrangement — particularly acute in winter, when the roads were impassable and the elderly and infirm could not face the journey down the hill — led to the establishment of a chapel of ease on the summit, where the villagers could hear divine service without making the trek to the mother church.
The chapel was, by all accounts, a modest structure. No detailed description of it survives, but it was probably a small stone or brick building, large enough to accommodate the village congregation but without the architectural pretensions of a parish church. It served its purpose adequately for several centuries, but by the early nineteenth century, it had become inadequate. The population of Highgate was growing rapidly — the village was being transformed from a rural retreat into a prosperous suburb — and the chapel could no longer accommodate the numbers who wished to worship there. Moreover, the building was in poor repair, its fabric weakened by age and neglect, and the cost of restoration was judged to be greater than the cost of building anew.
The decision to demolish the old chapel and replace it with a new church was taken in the late 1820s, after much debate within the parish. Some voices argued for restoration, citing the chapel's historical associations and its place in the fabric of the village. Others, more numerous and more persuasive, argued that a new church — larger, finer, and more suited to the dignity of a community that now thought of itself as one of the most desirable addresses in London — was the proper course. The demolition of the old chapel, when it came, was carried out with the efficiency and the lack of sentiment that characterised the Victorian approach to medieval buildings. A few fragments were preserved, but the structure was essentially lost, and the last physical link with Highgate's medieval past was severed.
Lewis Vulliamy's Design
The architect chosen to design the new church was Lewis Vulliamy, a figure of considerable importance in the architectural history of early Victorian London. Vulliamy was the son of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy, the renowned clockmaker who held the royal warrant, and he had studied at the Royal Academy Schools before travelling extensively in Italy, where he developed the passion for classical and Renaissance architecture that would inform his work throughout his career. By the time he was commissioned to design St Michael's, Highgate, he had already established a substantial practice, with commissions ranging from country houses to public buildings.
Vulliamy's design for St Michael's was in the Gothic Revival style that was becoming the standard idiom for Anglican church building in the 1830s. The choice was not without controversy — the Gothic Revival was still, at this date, a relatively novel fashion, and some conservative voices preferred the classical manner that had dominated English church architecture since the time of Wren. But Vulliamy handled the style with confidence and restraint, producing a building that was unmistakably Gothic in its forms — pointed arches, tracery windows, buttresses, and a tall tower — while retaining a sense of order and proportion that reflected his classical training. The result is a church that manages to be both picturesque and dignified, a building that sits on its hilltop site with the assurance of a structure that was designed for precisely this location.
The church was built of Kentish ragstone, a hard, grey-brown material that weathers well and that gives the building a solidity and a permanence appropriate to its prominent position. The ragstone was quarried in the Maidstone area of Kent and transported to Highgate by road and river, a significant logistical undertaking in an age before railways had reached this part of London. The construction was carried out between 1830 and 1832, and the church was consecrated in 1832, replacing the old chapel as the place of worship for the growing community of Highgate village.
The Tower as Landmark
The most conspicuous feature of St Michael's is its tower, which rises from the western end of the church to a height that makes it visible for miles in every direction. The tower is square in plan, with angle buttresses that taper as they rise, and it is crowned by a short spire — more properly a spirelet or fleche — that adds a final vertical accent to the composition. From the south, the tower is silhouetted against the sky above the rooftops of Holloway and Islington, a landmark that has guided the eye and oriented the mind for nearly two centuries. From the north, it rises above the trees of Highgate village like the tower of a country church, its stone changing colour with the light from warm grey to cold silver as the clouds pass overhead.
The tower's prominence is a consequence of both its height and its position. Highgate stands on the summit of one of the highest points in London — the ridge that extends from Hampstead to Muswell Hill, reaching over four hundred feet above sea level at its highest points. A tower of any size, placed on this ridge, would be visible over a wide area; a tower of the height and bulk of St Michael's is visible from almost anywhere in central London that has a clear sightline to the north. On a clear day, the tower can be picked out from the bridges over the Thames, from the parks of the West End, and from the high ground of south London — a small, dark point against the sky that signals the position of Highgate as surely as a lighthouse signals a headland.
For the residents of Highgate, the tower serves a more intimate function. It is the visual centre of the village, the feature around which the settlement is mentally organised. You can see it from the High Street, from South Grove, from the paths of Waterlow Park and the walks of Hampstead Heath. It appears and disappears as you move through the neighbourhood, now visible above a roofline, now hidden behind a row of trees, its intermittent presence a constant reminder that you are in Highgate and nowhere else. In a part of London where the boundaries between one area and the next are often blurred by the continuity of the built environment, the tower of St Michael's acts as an unambiguous marker of place, a declaration that this hilltop village has a centre and a focus.
Coleridge's Resting Place
Of all the associations that cluster around St Michael's Church, none is more celebrated than its connection with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, philosopher, and critic who spent the last eighteen years of his life in Highgate and whose remains lie in the church's nave. Coleridge came to Highgate in 1816, a broken man. His health was ruined by decades of opium addiction, his marriage had collapsed, his literary career was in disarray, and his finances were in chaos. He placed himself under the care of Dr James Gillman, a Highgate physician who took the poet into his home at 3 The Grove, a handsome house overlooking the village green, and who attempted, with limited success, to wean him from his dependence on laudanum.
Coleridge lived with the Gillmans until his death on 25 July 1834, and during these Highgate years he experienced a remarkable late flowering of his intellectual powers. Though the great poems of his youth — "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," "Christabel" — were behind him, he produced in Highgate some of his most important prose works, including the Biographia Literaria and the philosophical writings that would influence a generation of Victorian thinkers. His Thursday evening conversations at The Grove, attended by an ever-changing circle of admirers, became one of the most celebrated salons in literary London, and his presence on the hilltop gave Highgate an association with the life of the mind that it has never entirely lost.
When Coleridge died, he was buried in the chapel of Highgate School — the old chapel that had served the village before the construction of St Michael's. His remains lay there for over a century, until in 1961 they were transferred to St Michael's Church and reinterred in the nave, beneath a memorial that records his name, his dates, and a brief inscription. The reinterment was an occasion of some ceremony, attended by representatives of the literary world and the local community, and it established St Michael's as a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Coleridge from around the world. The poet who had come to Highgate in desperation found there, in the end, not only a home but a permanent resting place, at the summit of the hill from which he had gazed out over London in the last years of his extraordinary life.
The Architecture of the Interior
The interior of St Michael's is a handsome and well-proportioned space that rewards the visitor who steps inside. The nave is divided from the aisles by arcades of pointed arches, carried on slender stone columns with simply carved capitals that reflect Vulliamy's restrained approach to Gothic ornament. The ceiling is of timber, an open structure of beams and rafters that gives the interior an airy, almost barn-like quality, quite different from the vaulted stone ceilings of medieval churches but appropriate to the lighter, more domestic atmosphere of an early Victorian place of worship.
The east window is the most significant piece of decorative art in the building. Filled with stained glass of considerable quality — though the precise date and authorship of the glass have been the subject of some debate among specialists — it floods the chancel with colour on sunny mornings, casting patterns of red, blue, and gold across the stone floor and the wooden pews. The subject matter is biblical, drawn from the life of Christ, and the figures are executed in the rich, jewel-like manner that characterises the best Victorian stained glass. The window was probably installed some years after the church was completed, as part of the programme of enrichment that was typical of Victorian churches in prosperous parishes.
The furnishings of the church have been accumulated over nearly two centuries and include some pieces of real interest. The font, positioned near the west door in the traditional manner, is a substantial piece of carved stone that dates from the church's earliest years. The pulpit, set against the north arcade, is a Victorian piece in carved oak, its panels decorated with trefoil and quatrefoil motifs that echo the Gothic tracery of the windows. Memorial tablets and plaques line the walls, recording the names and virtues of Highgate residents from the early nineteenth century to the present day — a lapidary history of the community that is as informative, in its way, as any written record.
The Churchyard
The churchyard of St Michael's is a place of quiet beauty that offers a welcome respite from the bustle of the High Street beyond its walls. Shaded by mature trees — yews, limes, and the occasional cedar — it is a green enclosure of considerable charm, with a collection of monuments that spans the full range of Victorian and later funerary art. Table tombs, chest tombs, headstones, and crosses stand among the trees in various states of preservation, some sharply legible and some softened by lichen and the passage of time into near-illegibility.
The monuments tell the story of Highgate's community in a way that no other record can. Here lie the merchants and professionals who made their fortunes in the City and retired to the hilltop for their health and their leisure. Here lie the clergymen and schoolmasters who served the parish and the school. Here lie the wives and mothers whose lives were spent within the compass of the village, and the children who did not survive to adulthood. The inscriptions, with their formulaic piety and their occasional flashes of genuine grief, give voice to the generations who lived and died in Highgate before the living memory of any present inhabitant, and they connect the community of today with a past that extends back to the very foundation of the church.
The churchyard also serves a more immediate function as a public space. Residents of Highgate use it as a shortcut, a place to sit, a destination for a lunchtime walk. The benches that have been placed among the monuments are often occupied, particularly in fine weather, by people reading, talking, or simply enjoying the peace of a space that is both in the village and apart from it. The presence of the dead, far from casting a pall over the living, seems to contribute to the tranquillity of the place — a reminder that the business of life continues against a backdrop of mortality, and that the churchyard, like the church it surrounds, serves the community in death as in life.
The Parish and Its Future
St Michael's Church is not a museum or a monument; it is a living parish church, serving a congregation that gathers for worship every Sunday and on the festivals of the Christian year. The parish of Highgate, carved out of the ancient parish of Hornsey in the nineteenth century, encompasses the village and the surrounding streets, and the church's ministry extends to the full range of activities that an Anglican parish provides: baptisms, marriages, funerals, pastoral care, and the maintenance of a community life that is rooted in the Christian tradition while open to the wider neighbourhood.
The challenges facing St Michael's are the challenges facing parish churches across England: declining attendance, rising maintenance costs, the difficulty of sustaining a community of faith in an increasingly secular society. The building itself, now approaching its bicentenary, requires constant care — the ragstone weathers well but the mortar does not, and the roof, the windows, and the internal fittings all demand regular attention. The financial burden of maintaining a Grade II listed building is considerable, and the parish relies on a combination of regular giving, fundraising events, and grants from heritage bodies to keep the fabric in good repair.
Yet the church endures, as it has endured since 1832. Its tower still rises above the village, its bells still ring on Sunday mornings, and its doors still open to anyone who wishes to enter. For the community of Highgate N6, St Michael's remains what it has always been: the spiritual centre of the village, the landmark that defines the skyline, and the place where the great passages of life — birth, marriage, death — are marked with the solemnity and the beauty that only a building of this age and this character can provide. Vulliamy built well, and his church, like the hilltop village it serves, gives every sign of enduring for centuries to come.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*