Ivy House And Northgate House

A pair of substantial houses built after 1664 for Jeremiah Richardson, demonstrating the growing popularity of Highgate Hill as a suburban retreat for City merchants and aristocrats during the mid-17th century. They stand near the Grade I-listed Cromwell House of 1638 and together illustrate the area's development as a fashionable residence.

Construction and Materials

The houses are built of narrow brick, predominantly in Flemish bond to the front elevations with mixed bond to the sides. Decorative features include moulded and rubbed brickwork to the cornice and window voussoirs. The basement of Ivy House is roughcast rendered and scored. Both properties share a steep-pitched roof covered in handmade clay tiles incorporating dormers, with clustered brick chimney stacks topped by tall pots—one stack to each house. Most spectacular is the painted bracketed cornice running across both front and rear elevations.

Plan and Layout

Each house follows a double-pile plan with chimneys rising through the centre. Fireplaces are positioned on each side of the chimney stack with staircases adjacent. Northgate House has a small single-bay side wing to the rear only.

Front Elevation

The roughly symmetrical frontage spans six windows across three storeys plus attic and basement. The roof is half-hipped to the right. Due to the sloping site, the basement is exposed only at Ivy House, whose main entrance is to the side—unaltered brickwork confirms there was never a front entrance. Each house has three windows per floor: horned sashes with exposed frames—six-pane sashes to the second floor, twelve-pane to first and ground floors. The dormers have four-pane casements and are flat-roofed to the front, hipped to the rear; Northgate House has only two dormers to the front. Much original glass survives.

The cornice is exceptionally deep with a boarded soffit and elaborate carved wooden console brackets featuring acanthus and anthemion motifs, painted white. Below this is a projecting brick eaves band with the main moulded brick cornice positioned above the first floor.

At the left, the doorway to Northgate House features pilasters with an entablature, an open pediment with dentil moulding, a round-arched doorway with keystone, a fanlight with intersecting tracery, panelled reveals, and a flush-panelled door. Adjacent yellow-brick patching suggests a possible former pentice or verandah. A painted lead hopper and downpipe mark the division between the properties. Front steps descend to the basement at the right corner of Ivy House. Adjacent is an added brick bay with a panelled door and overlight providing access to an arcaded cloister-type walkway leading to the side door, which has a sliding peephole.

Rear Elevation

The rear elevation is similar to the front, though the ground and first floor windows have cambered heads and simpler mouldings to the eaves cornice. Notably, Northgate House retains cross-framing to its windows. The rear side wing—making a seven-window range here—to Northgate House features a slender iron-framed first floor verandah with very delicate columns and a swept lead canopy. The ground floor doorway at the end of the cross passage from the front has fluted pilasters and a rectangular overlight with intersecting tracery. Ivy House's rear entrance is enclosed by a porch.

Side Elevations

The side elevation of Ivy House, the only one visible, shows a three-window range with the first floor rear window blocked. A full-length window at first floor front has a small iron balcony, and metal ties are visible. Attached are double boarded gates to the former coach entrance with a cobbled surface and an adjacent high brick boundary wall. Front brick garden walls have stone saddleback coping. The north side elevation of Northgate House also retains cross-framed windows.

Interior Layout

Although Northgate House has a front entrance with a through passage to the rear and Ivy House has a rear entrance, the interior layout of each is based around a staircase rising from the hall at the centre of the house through the building's core, adjacent to the chimney. This arrangement allows for large rooms across each frontage with connecting lobbies around the far side of the chimney on each floor.

The early 18th-century staircases have wreathed and ramped handrails, open strings with decorative tread ends (more elaborate in Ivy House), and slender turned balusters—similarly proportioned but of different designs in each house—painted white with dark handrails. At ground floor level, there is a wreathed and balustered return at the foot against the stair wall with a matching ramped handrail. At higher levels, the stairs become remarkably steep and twisting, virtually spiral.

The flat high structural beams for each floor create a characteristic ceiling arrangement for the main rooms, dividing them into two sections. In some places the beams remain simply plastered or exposed, but in others—notably the first floor drawing room of Ivy House—a plaster cornice has been created to border each panel; in Northgate House the cornice is wood. Generally, the cornices in both houses are fairly plain. Both houses originally had wall panelling with quite shallow square fielded panels, in places incorporating a dado rail. Much of this survives in Northgate House; that inside Ivy House is less evident although more may exist under later coverings. Both properties have extensive basements.

Ivy House Interior

The interior features plain grey marble fireplaces with cast-iron grates to the main ground and first floor reception rooms, with simpler examples above, one with Adam-style motifs, white-painted. A plaster round-arched lobby-alcove with imposts and keyblock leads to the first floor drawing room. Throughout are panelled reveals, shutters, six-panelled doors (four-panelled above), dado rail, and remains of wood panelling, for example on the stairs (and possibly elsewhere concealed). Wide stairs descend to the basement with a quarry-tiled floor. The rear door has a rectangular overlight.

Northgate House Interior

The interior retains full panelling with dado rail to the hall, incorporating fittings for a long-case clock at the rear. A decorative round arch with keystone and a side recess with a roof-light with radial glazing were created around 1900 from a former small courtyard with a well, which still exists beneath the room. The ground floor front reception room has rectangular panelling and a plaster cornice with corner paterae, plus a small open brick fireplace. All the rear and side rooms retain cross-framed windows with moulded mullions. A wide door with glazed upper panels has extant wooden panels to cover the glass, possibly 17th century.

The first floor drawing room has panelling incorporating dado similar to the hall. The cross beam has been enclosed in wooden panels with a lightly moulded cornice. Dado and wall-panelling continue to the stairs. The top two flights are original 17th century with straight closed string embellished with an architrave, heavier turned vase balusters, and orb finials and pendants. In the attic, principal rafters are incorporated into the steeply pitched ceiling. Floor levels of the side wing are stepped down. Many interesting surviving early fittings remain, including door chains, locks, and hinges. Throughout are shutters, panelled reveals, six-panelled doors (some wide), surrounds, window seats, and wide floorboards. The basement has a flag floor and, in the absence of exterior steps, two chutes to the front. Roof drainage is through wooden lead-lined gutters, accessed at the centre valley.

History

The building was constructed as a pair of houses in the 1660s for Jeremiah Richardson. It is speculated that he was the chemist of that name from Aldersgate Street Without, recorded as a citizen of London in a contemporary survey, who bought eight acres and a parcel of waste in 1664. His City home and chemist premises may have been destroyed in the Fire of London. Extant records show inheritance by his daughter, Miss Mary Richardson (Mrs Pryor), of both houses in 1678.

The houses were refitted in the early 18th century, with Northgate House retaining some 17th-century features such as cross-framed windows and the upper part of the staircase. Further alterations in the later 18th and early 19th centuries particularly affected windows and fireplaces—Northgate House has a late 18th-century cast iron fireplace by Carron of Falkirk. Later 19th-century rearrangements—including many four-panelled upper doors—saw the enclosing around 1900 of the former well courtyard at Northgate House, whilst Ivy House was given a cloistered side entrance in Arts and Crafts style and the upper gable end was rebuilt.

In the 19th century, Ivy House was inhabited by George Crawshay, ironmaster of South Wales, who donated the clock and bell to St Michael's church, and afterwards by Charles Knight, author and publisher of popular historical accounts of London, who died in 1873. It was subsequently leased for school dormitory accommodation.

The gardens to the rear suggest a former rectangular formal garden at a lower level belonging to the houses with remains of a former gateway. The walls dividing and surrounding the properties probably mostly date from the 17th and 18th centuries, with that to the right of Ivy House appearing on all early maps as a boundary to a drive. The houses are fine examples of their type and are particularly unusual survivors in the context of Greater London.