History

All Saints Church Highgate, was built in 1874 to serve the expanding population of the Parish of St Michael, Highgate. As early as 1812, the cutting and widening of the Archway Road was providing a way around Highgate Hill. Inevitably, along this stretch of road, with its tollgate, new streets and dwellings grew up. The population was expanding rapidly.

The new church of All Saints was not big enough, and a former iron schoolroom was dismantled and rebuilt on a site obtained from the Winchester Hall Estate on the site of the present-day block of flats – Northwood Hall, in Hornsey Lane. This itself is an interesting construction with amazing views all over London. It was built in the 1930s by German architects. It is cruciform in design and clearly visible from the air. Rumour has it that it was built thus to provide a marker for German planes flying into London a few years later.

The former schoolroom was consecrated on 23 March 1882, under the patronage of St Augustine of Canterbury. It proved inadequate and was soon bursting at the seams. A competition was held to produce a design for a new church. James Brooks, J.E.K. Cutts, J.D. Sedding and Charles Mileham were short-listed. After a fierce competition, J.D. Sedding’s design was accepted. Great interest has been shown in his work, due to Sedding's other main projects which were in the design stage: Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell and Holy Trinity, Sloane Street. While not matching the magnificence of either of these, traces of his developing and distinctive style are to be found in St Augustine's.