The Fields Beneath (2012)
“The northern part of the area, at any rate, was still a good address. T. J. Barrett, later an inhabitant of Hampstead and celebrated for his local history of that place, lived at the foot of Highgate West Hill as a young man, near the Howitts (see page 25). The Holly Lodge Estate on the east side of Highgate Hill passed around the mid-century to Angela Burdett-Coutts, Thomas Coutts the banker’s granddaughter and heiress and a close friend of Dickens; through him, she met Hans Andersen, who visi...ted her there and admired her rhododendrons – then a foreign novelty. She gave big garden parties in the summers; the local paper for June 1867 gives an account of hundreds of coaches going up there for a ‘conversazione’, and all through the year friends and acquaintances received presents of fruit and flowers from her greenhouses. Even today, when Holly Lodge Estate, a twentieth-century suburban development, covers the site, some of her rhododendrons and other, still uncommon, foreign plants are to be found in many of the gardens.MoreLess
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