Highlands Gardens is a small park in New Barnet at the western end of Leicester Road, on the corner with Abbotts Road. The park was opened in 1931 in the grounds of Highlands House which was demolished in about 1972 and replaced by flats.

The park

Highlands Gardens and house on 1930s Ordnance Survey map

The park was opened in 1931 in the grounds of Highlands House which already had a well-established set of gardens. The entrance is on the corner of Leicester Road and Abbotts Road. The gardens consist of a lawn terrace with a

pergola A pergola is most commonly an outdoor garden feature forming a shaded walkway, passageway, or sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained. The ...

walk on the north side and water and rock features on the western side. All four sides of the gardens include mature trees. The rockworks were probably the work of

James Pulham and Son James Pulham and Son was a firm of Victorian landscape gardeners and terracotta manufacturers which exhibited and won medals at London's Great Exhibition of 1851 and 1862 International Exhibition. History James Pulham and Son was founded by J ...

, around 1871, of nearby Broxbourne. An aviary by the name of the "Bird World Display Centre" existed on the northern edge of the gardens until the late 1990s.Highlands Gardens.
London Gardens Online. Retrieved 29 August 2015. The gardens are maintained by the London Borough of Barnet with help from the Friends of Highlands Gardens.About Us.
Friends of Highlands Gardens. Retrieved 29 August 2015.

Highlands House

Highlands House was built in 1897 for the banker

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (21 June 1818 – 15 November 1905) was a conservative, evangelical English Quaker minister. In 1887, he drafted the Quaker Richmond Declaration which stated, among other things, that the Bible was of greater authority t ...

(1855-1934) who is thought to have designed the gardens. The house was south facing on high ground that overlooked Leicester Road, New Barnet. Braithwaite was an amateur astronomer who had a copper-domed observatory built at the house with a telescope on rails offering 360 degree views of the sky.History.
Friends of Highland Gardens. Retrieved 29 August 2015. During the Second World War, the dome was painted black in order to prevent it being visible to enemy aircraft in moonlight. In 1930, George P. Howe bought the house, or part of it, and converted it to eight flats that he rented out. Around 1951, the house became a family home again after Howe allowed his married children and his grandchildren to live there. His daughter, Joan Cochrane, recalled:

"The windows were by Crittall, and some contained
leaded light Leadlights, leaded lights or leaded windows are decorative windows made of small sections of glass supported in lead cames. The technique of creating windows using glass and lead came to be known as came glasswork. The term 'leadlight' could ...
s; the staircase of oak; the ground floor parquet. Terrazzo flooring was in the foyer and on the terrace. The walls in the hall and on the upper two landings were panelled. This was a substantial house, with the roof fully lined with wood beneath the tiles and the lofts boarded. There were several immense cellars linked by hatches and one of them contained a huge boiler which provided hot air to the ground floor via brass gratings in the parquet flooring. Drains and sewers were lined with glazed white tiles."

By 1972 the house had deteriorated and it was demolished, eventually being replaced by a block of flats known as The Highlands.

References

External links

* {{coords, 51.6483, -0.1864, display=title Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Barnet 1931 establishments in England