The Great North Road, the Old Mail Road to Scotland: London to York

by Charles G. Harper

Unless we take this hill-top route to the left we shall not have seen Highgate; nor, in truth, is there much to see, now that the old Gatehouse Tavern is gone, and with it the last outward and visible connection with the days of yore. The tavern marked the site of the old turnpike-gate that stood here, the lineal successor of the hermit’s original pitch lower down, when the old route to Barnet by Tallingdon Lane, Crouch End, Hornsey Great Park, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, and Whetstone was superseded by the new one through the Bishop of London’s estate, by Finchley and Whetstone, in 1386. It is in the existence at that time of the Bishop’s park that we may perhaps seek with success the origin of the name of “Highgate,” which does not necessarily allude to the very obviously “high” gate situated here—more than 350 feet above sea-level. No; it was the “haigh” gate, the portal which gave access through the enclosure (haia) with which my Lord Bishop’s domain was presumably surrounded. Through his land all traffic passed until it emerged on the other side of Whetstone, where, commanding the entrance to Barnet, stood another gate in receipt of tolls, swelling the income of that very business-like ecclesiastic and his successors for hundreds of years.

At the Highgate end dues were collected on horned cattle, among other things, and here originated the practice of being initiated into the freedom of Highgate, a mock ceremonial founded upon Roman Catholic rites at the time of the Reformation. For three hundred years this farcical observance was continued at the tavern by the gate, and only fell into disuse with the decay of coaching. Those who had not previously passed this way were “sworn in on the horns,” a practice traced to the unwillingness of the cattle drovers who frequented the tavern to allow strangers to mix with them. This exclusiveness no doubt originated in the fear of trade secrets being divulged, a feeling which may still be met with among commercial travellers of the older school, who resent the appearance of the mere tourist in their midst. The stranger who in olden times happened upon these drovers at Highgate was discouraged from taking bite or sup here, and only permitted to join them after having kissed the horns of one of their beasts. This speedily became elevated (or degraded, shall we say?) into a sort of blasphemous ritual parodying the admission of a novice into the Church, and this again, with the lapse of time and the dying of religious hatreds, developed into the merely good-natured farce played during the last hundred years of the existence of the custom.

When the coaches pulled up here, it was soon discovered, by judicious questioning, who were the strangers who had not been made “free.” They were made to alight, and, having removed their hats and kissed a pair of horns mounted on a pole, “the oath” was administered by the landlord in this wise:—“Upstanding and uncovered: silence. Take notice what I now say to you, for that is the first word of the oath; mind that. You must acknowledge me to be your adopted father. I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son. If you do not call me father you forfeit a bottle of wine; if I do not call you son I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate, and you have no money in your pocket, go call for a bottle of wine at any house you may think proper to enter and book it to your father’s score,” and so forth.

An initiate had to swear never to drink small beer when he could get strong (unless he preferred small); never to eat brown bread when he could get white (unless he preferred brown); never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress (unless he preferred the maid, and in case of doubt he might kiss both); after which he had to kiss the horns or the woman in the company who appeared the fairest, as seemed good to him, the ceremony concluding with the declaration of his privileges as a freeman of Highgate. Among the well-known privileges were—that if he felt tired when passing through Highgate and saw a pig lying in a ditch, he might kick the pig away and take its place, but if he saw three lying together he must only kick away the middle one and lie between the other two!

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It was on Highgate Hill that the great Francis, Lord Bacon, whom some believe to have written Shakespeare’s dramas, fell a martyr to his scientific enthusiasm. Driving up this chilly eminence one winter’s day when the snow lay on the ground, it occurred to him that, from its chemical constituents, snow must possess admirable preservative properties, and he accordingly resolved immediately to put this theory to the proof. Stopping his carriage at a neighbouring farmhouse, he purchased a fowl and stuffed it carefully with snow. Being in weak health at the time, he took a chill, and before he could be driven home, became so alarmingly ill that he was obliged to be carried to Lord Arundel’s house at Highgate. There a damp bed aggravated his seizure, so that in a few days he died, in 1626.

Farmhouses are far to seek from Highgate Hill nowadays, new roads and streets of shops being more general. With the end of the eighteenth century, Highgate became a populous little town, but its outskirts did not altogether lose their terrors for travellers. Suburban villas had begun to sparsely dot these northern heights of London with the coming of the new era, but the New Police had not yet been brought into being; and so belated dwellers in these wilds afforded fine sport for the footpads, who, hunting in couples, and armed with horrible pitch-plasters, attacked the mild citizen from behind, and, clapping a plaster over his mouth, reduced him to an enforced silence, while they emptied his pockets at leisure. It was late one night in 1807 that Grimaldi, the most famous of all clowns, was robbed on Highgate Hill by two footpads. They spared him the usual plaster, perhaps because there was no one else about, and so it did not matter in the least how loudly he might shout for help. Among minor articles of spoil, they secured a remarkable watch which had been given him two years before as a testimonial by his many admirers. The dial represented his face in character when singing his popular comic song, “Me and my Neddy.” The robbers, seeing this, immediately recognised him. Looking at one another, they could not make up their minds to rob him of his treasure, and so they gave it back, Grimaldi goggling and grinning at them the while, as on the stage. So, with a vivid recollection of Sadler’s Wells, and bursting with laughter, they left him.

It is peculiarly unfortunate for those who are uncertain about their aspirates that London and its neighbourhood should abound in place-names beginning with the letters “A” and “H.” Cockneys have ever—or ’ave hever, shall we say?—been afflicted with this difficulty; but they are overcoming the tendency of their forbears to speak of “’Ornsey, ’Ampstead, ’Igit, ’Arrow, ’Omerton, ’Ackney, ’Endon or ’Atfield.” The classic anecdote in this connection is that of the City Alderman who lived at Highgate, praising his locality to a distinguished guest at a Mayoral banquet.