Village Raw - ISSUE 15
Village Raw is a magazine that explores cultural stories from Crouch End, East Finchley, Highgate, Muswell Hill and the surrounding areas. The magazine is created by the community, for the community. If you like this issue you can support the project through a subscription or donation. See the links below. The fifteenth issue of Village Raw includes: UPSTAIRS AT THE GATEHOUSE - A look at Highgate’s fringe theatre. GETTING TO KNOW - The poetry and music of rapper and artist TaliaBle. FROM PAINT TO PRINT - How lockdown closures led an 81-year-old to a new career. SPACE TO THROW - Local ceramics studios offering courses. INSIDE THE SHEPHERD’S COTTAGE - Inside a 17th century Highgate house. RIGHT UP MY STREET - How to set up a community street party. UPON MEETING A FOX (OR TWO) - Launching the On Local Nature community. FILL ’ER UP - Exploring the local zero waste refill scene. ASK OLA - Refocusing the mind and dealing with hay fever. AND MORE…
Village Raw is a magazine that explores cultural stories from Crouch End, East Finchley, Highgate, Muswell Hill and the surrounding areas. The magazine is created by the community, for the community. If you like this issue you can support the project through a subscription or donation. See the links below. The fifteenth issue of Village Raw includes:
UPSTAIRS AT THE GATEHOUSE - A look at Highgate’s fringe theatre.
GETTING TO KNOW - The poetry and music of rapper and artist TaliaBle.
FROM PAINT TO PRINT - How lockdown closures led an 81-year-old to a new career.
SPACE TO THROW - Local ceramics studios offering courses.
INSIDE THE SHEPHERD’S COTTAGE - Inside a 17th century Highgate house.
RIGHT UP MY STREET - How to set up a community street party.
UPON MEETING A FOX (OR TWO) - Launching the On Local Nature community.
FILL ’ER UP - Exploring the local zero waste refill scene.
ASK OLA - Refocusing the mind and dealing with hay fever.
AND MORE…
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VILLAGE RAW<br />
VILLAGE PICTURES<br />
INSIDE THE<br />
SHEPHERD’S COTTAGE<br />
Words by Jane Hill. Photos by Dan Bridge.<br />
We shape our buildings - they shape us. Shepherd’s Cottage, a late<br />
17th century dwelling, is one of the oldest and least altered in Highgate<br />
<strong>Village</strong>. Only visible from Townsend Yard, this tinderbox house<br />
is all north facing and depends upon borrowed light. The attic floor<br />
is eye level with treetops and it can feel like being in a ship’s crow’s<br />
nest while the undercroft, where the shepherd kept his sheep,<br />
could be a narrow boat.<br />
The Grade II listed cottage is furnished with local artefacts: a<br />
hornbeam skittle from the Freemasons Arms; bookcases (made<br />
from 1940s banana crates stamped Elders & Fyffes) salvaged<br />
from antiquarian bookshop Fisher and Sperr which closed in 2010;<br />
sculptor Bernard Meadows’ tools, Ercol chair, Welsh blanket and<br />
hand-painted harvest mugs from Keith Fawkes books; a rout bench<br />
from the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution; and ornaments<br />
unearthed in a midden.<br />
Highgate’s yards were the backlands populated by craftsmen<br />
and artisans who supported Highgate <strong>Village</strong>. They represent that<br />
less tangible heritage, indicative of old routes of movement and<br />
migration within the landscape where the borders between worlds<br />
and epochs are at their most fragile. A link to pastoral Middlesex<br />
and the natural amphitheatrical space of the Highgate Bowl, these<br />
edgelands are our breathing spaces and wildlife corridors, with ancient<br />
boundary trees - where bird song is heard and bats can be<br />
seen at dusk.<br />
I see the house as a repository, an abode of souls. Myself as<br />
its guardian. Old materials that mattered in the past still belong in<br />
the present, standing in for human histories, and they recalibrate<br />
my purpose. A development of seven houses in Townsend Yard<br />
has been given planning permission. Shepherd’s Cottage will be<br />
blocked in, plunged into darkness, divorced from its setting and effaced<br />
from public view, its structural integrity undermined and its<br />
significance as a heritage asset ignored. Local societies are campaigning<br />
to turn this decision around. •<br />
For more information visit: highgatesociety.com/townsend-yard-update<br />
To object to the granting of Listed Building Consent use reference HGY/2021/3273 at:<br />
www.planningservices.haringey.gov.uk<br />
20 21
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