Curious Muswell Hill
being published by Five Leaves in May 2025
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Muswell Hill is a model of the Edwardian middle-class suburb, with its broad streets, regal street names, arts-and-crafts houses and fashionable shopping parades. But look a little harder and you'll find the trace of aristocratic Russian anarchists, God-fearing African revolutionaries and insurrectionary Indian nationalists. Alongside Martyn's, with its mahogany shop fittings and aroma of freshly roasted coffee, Muswell Hill still has a rare cluster of back-to-back cottages. Everyone knows about the seventeen-span viaduct that spans St James's Lane, but let's not overlook the splendid 125-year old electricity supply pillar that falls within its shadow.
The Kinks grew up here and made the locality almost cool with their 'Muswell Hillbillies' album. Fairport Convention started rehearsing in a house on Fortis Green from which they took their name. Muswell Hillbilly Brewers use N10 hops, grown in back gardens in Colney Hatch Lane, to add magic to their Tetherdown pale ale and Fortis Green stout. While back in the mid-Victorian era, the Muswell Hill Brigade were early and inspiring advocates of women's rights. In Curious Muswell Hill, historian Andrew Whitehead takes an affectionate - and mildly subversive - tour round N10, taking in the Bowls Club and the working men's club, the pumping station and the pioneering Wetherspoon's pub, and seeking out the hidden stories of this architecturally distinguished corner of north London. A detailed map will help you find your way around Muswell Hill's curiosities and there's a wealth of photographs and illustrations, ancient and modern. |
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