3-082-931 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Churchyard Bottom Wood, Highgate, the spoliation of which is under discussion, 1895. '1. The Alexandra Palace from the Outskirts of the Wood. 2. In the Wood. The surveyor and his ally, the omnivorous suburban builder, already have their eye upon Churchyard Bottom, and unless the hand of the destroyer be stayed at once the wood will be given its edging of "neat villas" along Muswell Hill Road, and forty-feet roads through the heart of the wood will do the rest. Churchyard Bottom...is one of the few remnants of the great forest of Middlesex. "A well-wooded chase, having good covert for harts, bucks, does, boars, and wild bulls," an old chronicler calls it, and he goes on to speak of "pastures and plain meadows with brooks running through them, turning water-wheels with a pleasant noise." The pastures and plain meadows are now rows of shops and suburban villas, and the brooks are become sewer-ways...only by saving Churchyard Bottom can the sylvan beauty be preserved of this nearest woodland retreat for the denizens of crowded, dreary Holloway, Islington, and Clerkenwell. A strong local committee...has been formed to approach the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and seek by friendly negotiation to avert what would be a calamity to all North London'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.