Highgate Village: Tales of History and Mystery
In 1962 Highgate’s historic high street was threatened with demolition to make way for a wider road. Highgate residents saved the village, in the process forming the Highgate Society. We work to protect and enhance life in Highgate.
This tour, created and narrated by heritage content producer Deborah Greenfield, touches on the stories of the famous residents of Highgate, as well as its architecture and environment as a London village. It starts outside Highgate Cemetery’s neo-Gothic western entrance. You’ll wind your way through the leafy Waterlow Park to Lauderdale House. Then, you’ll follow the historic High Street, with buildings dating back to the 1600s, mercifully saved from destruction in the 1960s by local residents. You’ll arrive in the heart of the village, a place where a settlement has existed at least since the Middle Ages, where history and legend are woven into its streets.
Along the way, you’ll hear what this place sounded like centuries ago with its horses, carriages, and street criers. There are stories of writers, philanthropists, highwaymen and ghosts who have left their traces throughout the village. The tour ends at Pond Square, where you’ll learn about Highgate’s quirky Swearing on the Horns tradition, a pub ritual where drovers and travellers would kiss a set of animal horns, buy drinks, and become honorary ’Freemen of Highgate.’
On this 60-minute walking tour, you’ll have a chance to:
- Explore Waterlow Park, gifted to the community by Victorian philanthropist Sydney Waterlow as a garden for the gardenless
- Visit Lauderdale House, the place where 17th-century actress Nell Gwynn enjoyed trysts with King Charles II and nearly dropped one of their children from a window (on purpose!)
- Walk the famous High Street that once heaved with street criers selling their wares, herds being driven to market and dozens of pubs through the ages
- Discover where Graham Chapman wrote early sketches for Monty Python’s Flying Circus
- Learn about where Romantic poets once met, lived, and died of laudanum (opium) addiction
- Spot the house that Dickens used for one of the settings in David Copperfield
- Visit haunted spots and see where celebrities and famous Highgate residents have lived
To download the tour, which costs £5.99, visit
https://voicemap.me/tour/london/highgate-village-tales-of-history-and-mystery
The VoiceMap app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
22 August 2025
Reviews:
With its robust research into the area’s cultural history, this promenade warmly coaxes you into sharing the routines of some of Highgate’s most interesting inhabitants, visitors and customs from the 18th century to today, all made utterly enjoyable by the finely nuanced vocal performance and very well-paced storytelling. Special congrats to writer and narrator Deborah Greenfield! Combined with her charmingly cheeky voice, and aided by photos of key spots, the smart GPS system guides and prompts as you go, giving you a sense of belonging in real time and space to paths endlessly trodden through the ages in this most charming of London communities. An excellent tour!
