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The classy northern corner of Mill Hill, with a wealth
of historic buildings, formerly known simply as Highwood. It was first identified separately from its parent manor of Hendon
in the fourteenth century and became a fashionable country retreat during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The diarist
and traveller Celia Fiennes lived at Highwood Ash from 1713 to 1737. Highwood House was bought in 1825 by Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore and the London Zoological Society. He lived here for only a year before he died but Lady Raffles
stayed on until her own death in 1858. An older house on the estate had been the residence of Rachel, Lady Russell, whose
husband was executed for conspiring to murder Charles II. The adjacent Hendon Park estate was the 140-acre property of William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner. To the south, Holcombe House was built for a City glove merchant in 1778. Herbert (later Cardinal)
Vaughan
bought the villa in 1866 and started a Catholic missionary college here. The school soon outgrew the premises so Vaughan
built St Joseph’s College, which lies to the south-west. Holcombe House then became home to a sisterhood of Franciscan
nuns, who also soon moved to larger, purpose-built premises: the neighbouring St Mary’s Abbey. When Holcombe House came
back on the market in 1977 it was acquired for the Missionary Institute London, a collaborative undertaking that trains men
and women for ministry and missionary work. The institute was affiliated to Middlesex University but closed in 2007 as a
result of declining student numbers. St Mary’s Abbey has been converted into a luxury apartment complex called Highwoods,
and the Franciscan sisters have moved into a new lodge next door. The more conventional – but still grand – houses
of Highwood Hill mostly date from various decades of the twentieth century, especially the 1930s.
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