Shepherd's Cottage and rear boundary wall, 36a Highgate High Street, Highgate, London

Summary

Cottage. Probably early-C18 in origin. Renovated and re-roofed with re-used tiles in the 1980s and the east gable was rebuilt in 2017.

Description

Cottage. Probably early-C18 in origin. Renovated and re-roofed with re-used tiles in the 1980s; the east gable was partly rebuilt in 2017.

MATERIALS: mix of yellow and red brick laid in an irregular bond. Timber sash windows with stone sills and timber casements to the dormers. The gambrel roof has pan tiles on the upper slopes and plain tiles on the lower.

PLAN: the cottage is located on a site which slopes down from south to north. It is of two storeys plus attic and undercroft. The building is rectangular in plan, orientated east-west with end-wall chimney stacks. There are two small, probably C20 outshuts, at the north-west corner at undercroft level (with stairs over to a rear ground-floor entrance) and at the south-west corner at ground floor level. On its south side the cottage is abutted at its eastern end by a two-storey extension of number 36 Highgate High Street with a gallery running along the southern wall of the cottage at first-floor level. Access to the cottage entrance in the south elevation is via a covered passageway off the High Street between numbers 36 and 38, opening out into a small open courtyard in front of the cottage. Internally, the ground floor and undercroft are open single rooms. The stair to the undercroft is in the north-west corner and the stair to the upper floors is in the south-west corner. The first-floor has two rooms off a small landing, a bathroom and a room used as a study. The attic floor has a single bedroom.

EXTERIOR: the north elevation is broadly symmetrical and of two bays. The ground floor has a six-over-six timber sash window with narrow glazing bars, set in a segmental-arched opening with a stone sill to the east and a C20 top-glazed timber door in a segmental opening (probably replacing an original window opening) to the west. The first floor has a pair of the same six-over-six sash windows although the segmental arch is rather shallower. In the lower slope of the gambrel roof are a pair of shallow, flat-roofed, dormers with C20 paired timber casement windows. The undercroft has a pair of C20 replacement six-over-six horned timber sash windows with concrete lintels. The brickwork to the undercroft is laid in English bond and is also probably C20 in date.

The south elevation is largely obscured by the two-storey extension and gallery of 36 Highgate High Street. Only the western part of the ground floor is visible and this has an entrance with a timber panelled door in a segmental arched opening and a small square timber-framed, fixed-pane, window lighting the stairway to the west. The gallery is supported on a steel joist.

The gable ends are blind. The top of the western gable end and chimney stack have been rebuilt in Flemish bond and the eastern gable and stack were more extensively rebuilt in 2017, largely using the original bricks but laid in English bond. The stacks have tall chimney pots, one on the eastern stack is a modern replica of an original with incised decoration.

INTERIOR: the single room undercroft has a relieving arch at the eastern end and a, probably late-C20, square brick fireplace containing a modern cooking range and flue at the west end. The undercroft is accessed via a late-C20 quarter-turn open riser stair in the north-west corner. The ceiling has one substantial chamfered cross beam at the eastern end. The exposed joists are deep and narrow and are a mix of hand and machine-cut timbers. There is a ceiling hatch near the stair in the north-west corner and a blocked shute (possibly for coal) in the southern wall. The kitchen outshut has a pair of steel joists supporting the york stone slabs of the external stair above.

The ground-floor is also a single room with an imported Classical-style timber fireplace surround at the east end. In the south wall just to the west of the front entrance is evidence of a blocked doorway which gave access to the rear extension of 36 Highgate High Street. The western part of the room has a panelled ceiling while the eastern part has a boarded ceiling, suggesting that the room was once partitioned. The floor is of softwood planks. The winder stair in the south-west corner of the room is of soft-wood with dado-height plank panelling and balustrade and a plain newel post. The stairwell has an internal window at first-floor level. Under the stair is a cupboard with a two-panel door.

The principal first-floor room at the east of the building has a rendered, segmental-arched, fireplace with a plain timber mantel. To the left of the fireplace is a cupboard with upper and lower panelled double doors the upper having leaded glazing. The partition with the bathroom to the west is of vertical boarding. The bathroom has a fireplace with a plain timber surround and mantel and panelled timber partitioning to the landing. The ceilings in both rooms are of panelled plywood but boarded ceilings are understood to survive underneath. The small landing has a four-panel door to the stair with leaded glazed upper panels and a three-light transom.

The attic storey is reached via narrower continuation of the winder stair with broad vertical timber panelling and no handrail. The bedroom has a plank and batten door to the stair and a brick fireplace with a plain modern mantel and a hob grate at the eastern end. Either side of the fireplace are cupboards, that to the left having a plank and batten door with iron strap hinges and that to the right having a two-panel door.

The structure of the gambrel roof has a machine-cut ridge-piece and a mix of machine and hand-cut rafters.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: projecting from the north-west corner of the cottage is a boundary wall (as far as some garages on the north side of Townsend’s Yard) with a soldier-course, roughly 1.2m in height, at ground-floor level.

History

Shepherd’s Cottage stands on the southern edge of the area known as Highgate Bowl, immediately to the north of Highgate High Street and at the south-east corner of Townsend's Yard. Highgate Bowl was once part of an area of pasture land used by drovers to fatten their animals before taking them to London’s meat markets. It has been suggested that the undercroft at Shepherd’s Cottage acted as a byre relating to this. The ribbon-development of Highgate High Street acquired its current form largely during the late-C17, with many of the buildings on the north side of the street dating from the early-C18 with some possibly earlier in date behind C18 frontages. The date of Shepherd’s Cottage is uncertain (the name appears to date from the late-C20) but it probably dates from the early-C18. It appears to have post-dated the piecemeal terrace immediately to the south (numbers 24-40) which is partly late-C17 in origin, although one bears a datestone for 1794. The Hornsey Court Rolls mention that in 1692 Francis Jones surrendered ten cottages and a parcel of meadow land. The published edition notes that the southern boundary of the estate was represented by the later Townsend Yard and it is possible that Shepherd’s Cottage was one of these cottages. However, a plan of 1698 by John Hobbs relating to a gift of land in Highgate to Christ's Hospital does not show the cottage, although it shows the terrace in front. John Rocque’s outer London map of 1746 shows the section of the High Street to have been developed by at least the mid-C18. The Hornsey Enclosure maps of 1815 show buildings on the south side of Townsend’s Yard, to the rear of the High Street. By the middle of the C19 Townsend’s Yard, with its many small dwellings had become notorious for its overcrowding and much of the housing was gradually cleared.

Shepherd’s Cottage is first shown as an identifiable building on the 1870 Ordnance Survey map at the end of a clearly depicted alley off the High Street, between what are now numbers 36 and 38, suggesting that the two-bay frontage of 38 High Street was originally only a single bay which was then extended over the passage, probably shortly after this date. By the 1896 OS map the terrace is shown with a unified frontage and the cottage forms part of number 36 with an elongated L-shaped footprint, which it retains on the current map base although the two buildings are no longer interconnected. From around 1910 until the Second World War numbers 36 and 38 were variously occupied by Annie Constant and her daughter Gladys, milliners and dressmakers, with a shop fronting onto the High Street. Shepherd’s Cottage was renovated and the roof re-covered in the 1980s and the eastern gable was rebuilt in 2017.

Reasons for Listing

Shepherd’s Cottage, 36a Highgate High Street, a cottage of probably early-C18 date, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a rare example in the capital of a surviving modest vernacular building of the period;

* for uncommon architectural features in a local context such as the gambrel roof and full-length undercroft which was possibly used as a byre for livestock;

* for its high degree of surviving historic fabric and plan form.

Historical interest:

* as the last surviving building relating to Townsend Yard, one of the characteristic courts off Highgate High Street, and later a notorious London slum;

* as a reminder of the rural and pastoral origins of a village once on the edge of London and for its importance to London’s meat trade.

Group value:

* with the Grade II C18 terrace, 24-40 Highgate High Street, which it adjoins and is accessed from via a covered passage.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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