Muswell Hill

View looking south east towards Canary Wharf

The earliest records of Muswell Hill date from the 12th century. The Bishop of London, who was the Lord of the Manor of Haringey,[1] owned the area and granted 26 ha (64 acres), located to the east of Colney Hatch Lane, to a newly formed order of nuns. The nuns built a chapel on the site and called it Our Lady of Muswell.

The name Muswell is believed to come from a natural spring or well (the "Mossy Well"), said to have miraculous properties. A traditional story tells that Scottish king Malcolm IV was cured of disease after drinking the water. The area became a place of pilgrimage for healing during medieval times.[2] The River Moselle, which has its source in Muswell Hill and Highgate, derives its name from this district; it was originally known as the Mosa or Mosella.[3][4] Until the 1950s, the town's name was often pronounced "Muzzle Hill".[5]

In the 18th century Muswell Hill was a scattered village consisting mainly of detached villas with large gardens.[6] In 1787 one commentator wrote that nowhere within 100 miles (160 km) of London was there a village so pleasant or with such varied views.[7] Little had changed by the middle of the 19th century. One of the houses of the time was The Limes. This house occupied the angle of Muswell Hill Road with Colney Hatch Lane and was a three-storeyed house with portico and two-storeyed wing approached by a double carriage drive through impressive gateways. The large grounds of the house extended to Tetherdown and included a lake.[8] Opposite The Limes was Muswell Hill pond and beyond that the Green Man inn, built of stone.[9]

Further down the hill past the Green Man was The Elms, a squat three-storeyed house later improved by Thomas Cubitt standing in 4.5 ha (11 acres), part of the grounds of which were laid out by Joseph Paxton.[10] A short distance down the north side of Muswell Hill was The Grove, which was three storeys high and had nine bays with pedimented projections at each end.[11] It stood in 3.2 ha (7.9 acres) of grounds which contained a 184 m (201 yd) avenue of oaks. In 1774 the house was occupied by Topham Beauclerk.[12]

19th century

A little farther down the hill stood Grove Lodge, also in wooded grounds.[13] Altogether there were eight properties in Muswell Hill worthy of note in 1817.[14]

The former Odeon cinema, now an Everyman, in Muswell Hill is a Grade II* Listed Building

Parallel with Muswell Hill was a track known as St James's Lane which ran across a triangle of wasteland. By the middle of the 19th century houses were already dispersed along the lane at the foot of which was Lalla Rookh, a two-storeyed villa with a wide verandah.[15] Other buildings there were apparently cottages or huts, both single and in terraces.[16]

It was not until the end of the 19th century that Muswell Hill began to be developed more densely from a collection of country houses to the London village that it is today. The development was spurred by the opening in 1873 of Alexandra Palace, a massive pleasure pavilion built on the most easterly of north London's gravel hills and intended as the counterpart to the Crystal Palace on Sydenham Hill in south London. Alexandra Palace was served by a branchline railway from Highgate, with an intermediary station at Muswell Hill (see below). The foot of Alexandra Palace was served by another rail network with connecting services to Finsbury Park and Kings Cross stations.

The hill was part of the Bishop of London's Manor of Hornsey, an area served from the medieval period by the ancient parish of Hornsey. Parishes were originally ecclesiastic in purpose, but from the Tudor era onwards had a civic as well as ecclesiastical purpose.

In 1903, the area of the civil parish of Hornsey became the Municipal Borough of Hornsey, within the administrative county of Middlesex. Then in 1965 Horney merged with Tottenham and Wood Green to form the modern London Borough of Haringey.

Northern parts of the N10 postal area, sometimes also regarded as part of Muswell Hill, were part of the parish of Friern Barnet, which subsequently became Friern Barnet Urban District before becoming part of the London Borough of Barnet.[20]

The area is in the Hornsey and Wood Green parliamentary constituency.

Close to Alexandra Park and Highgate Woods, Muswell Hill is a mainly Edwardian north London suburb. Muswell Hill Broadway and Fortis Green Road, the main shopping streets, still maintain their historic character with most of the original facades preserved above street level. The area has a synagogue and six churches, one of which has been converted into a steak house.

The 2011 census showed that the N10 postal area (including parts of Friern Barnet} had a population of 27,992 in the 2011 census.[34]

The same census showed that in the much smaller Muswell Hill electoral ward of the London Borough of Haringey, 84% of the population was white (65% British, 16% Other, 3% Irish). 40% were irreligious and Christian each, while the Jewish population stood at 5.3%.[35]

• Alexandra Palace
• Alexandra Park
• Golf Course Allotments (the largest allotment site in the area)
• The Guy Chester Centre of the Methodist church
• Oliver Tambo Memorial Statue at the Albert Road Recreation Ground
• Muswell Hill United Synagogue

• In the war romance film The Americanization of Emily (1964), Emily's mother lives in a house in Dukes Avenue. Exterior shots show Alexandra Palace in the background.
• In the 1970s BBC TV comedy series Porridge, the principal character, Norman Stanley Fletcher, played by Ronnie Barker, hailed from Muswell Hill. Fletcher claimed that in his younger days he was "King of the Teds in Muswell Hill".
• The Kinks recorded the 1971 LP Muswell Hillbillies, which included the song "Muswell Hillbilly".
• The Yorkshire Television sitcom That's My Boy (1981–1986), starring Mollie Sugden and Christopher Blake, made frequent references to Muswell Hill, as the family lived in the area throughout the first four seasons.
• Series one of the 1993 sitcom Sean's Show is set in Muswell Hill.[36]
• The Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern" (2006) is set in Muswell Hill, during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953.
• The Madness song "Driving in My Car" includes the line "I've been far, I drive up to Muswell Hill".[37]
• Hilaire Belloc referenced Muswell Hill in the poem "Charles Augustus Fortescue", in which a deserving lad finally gets a house there called ‘The Cedars’.
• Angela Thirkell continues the tale of The Cedars, Muswell Hill in her 1939 novel, Before Lunch.
• Mentioned in Natasha Gordon's play Nine Night.
• Muswell Hill is a 2012 Torben Betts play[38] which "hold[s] a mirror up to middle-class delusion".[39]

See People from Muswell Hill and People from Fortis Green categories.

John Logie Baird was the first person to transmit moving pictures, now called television. The first public broadcasts were from nearby Alexandra Palace before WW2. His scanning, rotating disc system was later replaced by a more modern electronic system. The former John Baird pub, now the Village Green, in Fortis Green Road was named after him.

Musicians Ray and Dave Davies, founding members of The Kinks, grew up in Muswell Hill, the album title Muswell Hillbillies being an obvious reference to their youth. They allegedly played their first ever gig in the Clissold Arms in Fortis Green.

Musician Michael Kiwanuka was born and raised in Muswell Hill; he was the winner of the Mercury Prize 2020 for his album Kiwanuka and a nominee for the 2021 63rd Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. His album Love & Hate went to Number 1 on the UK albums chart in 2016.

Former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko lived in Muswell Hill from his exile in 2000 until his assassination in 2006.

The group Fairport Convention started in the Muswell Hill family home of Simon Nicol. The house, Fairport, is on the south side of Fortis Green near the junction with Tetherdown and Fortis Green Road.

The serial killer and necrophile Dennis Nilsen committed his later murders in his Cranley Gardens flat in Muswell Hill and became known as the "Muswell Hill Murderer".

A resident for a short time in Muswell Hill was the Russian-born England Rugby union star Prince Alexander Obolensky, who died in Suffolk in an aircraft accident in 1940 while training as an RAF pilot.

Philip Martell, musical director for Hammer House of Horrors lived in Woodland Gardens

Musician, author, poet, wit and great English eccentric Vivian Stanshall lived his final years in Muswell Hill, dying in a fire in his Hillfield Park flat in 1995.

• Colney Hatch
• Crouch End
• East Finchley
• Friern Barnet
• Highgate
• Hornsey
• Wood Green

• Alexandra Palace railway station
• Bowes Park railway station
• Hornsey railway station
• New Southgate station

The nearest tube stations are:

• Highgate
• Turnpike Lane
• East Finchley
• Bounds Green
• Wood Green

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Muswell Hill.

• Hornsey (parish) for the local government unit of which Muswell Hill was part from medieval times to 1867
• Municipal Borough of Hornsey for the local government unit of which Muswell Hill was part from 1903 to 1965

• Muswell Hill & Fortis Green Association - has some good historical pictures etc.
• History of Muswell Hill - Hornsey Historical Society - articles, books, postcards etc