Built around 1872, it was designed by Edward Salomons and John Philpot in an intricate style, particularly as to shape and brickwork, blending Dutch and classical influences. It lies on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, from which it can be seen.
It was home to several important industrialists until the early 1940s, when it was acquired by the Royal Air Force. It was later a National Health Service home for people with dementia until 2003, when it was left derelict. In 2016, Russian oligarchMikhail Fridman bought the house and restored it for use as a modern family home.
Origin
An engraving (c.1880) of Caen Wood Towers shortly after it was built by Edward Brooke.
The house was built for Edward Brooke, who was born in Manchester in 1832.[1] He married Jane Emily Alston in 1857; they had many children. He also owned Pabo Hall in Conwy, Wales, which still has his portrait in the hallway.
In 1869, Brooke came from Manchester to London and bought Lord Dufferin’s estate at Highgate. Shortly after, he had the house, originally named Caen Wood Towers, built on this property.[2]
The house is chiefly a mixture of classical architecture and neo-Gothic crenular with a tall dutch gable making up the pinnacle of the façade in front of a multi-turreted tower and with long, narrow Tudor-style chimneys on the left wing. A variety of stone and brick materials is therefore used in appropriate sections and the building is similar to the generally smaller follies of the time.
In 1877, Brooke's first wife, Jane, died and in the following year he married Frances Amyand Bellairs, daughter of the Reverend Henry Walford Bellairs.[3]
Brooke was a partner in the firm of Brooke, Simpson and Spiller, who were aniline dye manufacturers in London. He became a Justice of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, for the City of London and for the County of Carnarvon. He was also one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for the Lieutenancy of the City of London.[2] A book published in 1880, entitled A series of picturesque views of seats of the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, included a colour engraving of Caen Wood Towers and a descriptive article about Edward Brooke and the house.[4]
Brooke left Caen Wood Towers in about 1885 and Francis Reckitt and his family came to live in the house.[5]
Francis Reckitt
Francis Reckitt 1892.
Francis Reckitt was a partner in the company of Reckitt and Sons. His father Isaac had founded the firm and he and his brother Sir James Reckitt were directors of the company at the time he lived at Caen Wood Towers.
Reckitt was born in 1827 in Lincolnshire. He lived for some years in Hull where the Reckitt and Sons company was based and later moved to Hessle. He was twice widowed and had numerous children before he married Eliza Louisa Whitlock in 1877.[6] The 1891 Census shows the family living at Caen Wood Towers and at this time there were four children still living with them. One of them was his son Francis William Reckitt who was an artist.[7]
Francis Reckitt became wealthy and donated a great deal of money to establish public institutions. For example, in 1897 he paid for the Newland Homes Francis Reckitt House for infants.[8] He also provided the funds to establish a new reference library within an existing library in Hull in 1890.[9] The Reckitt Convalescent Home (now demolished) was built in 1907 with money donated by Francis.[10]
Reckitt left Caen Wood Towers in about 1900 and Sir Francis Cory-Wright became the owner.
Sir Francis Cory-Wright
Caen Wood Towers (east view) circa 1900.Sir Francis Cory-Wright circa 1900.
Sir Francis Cory-Wright was Chief[clarification needed] of William Cory and Sons, a large coal distribution firm. He was considered one of the best-known commercial men in the City and a chapter was written about him in "London Leaders" in 1907.[11]
Cory-Wright was born in 1839; his father was Lieutenant William Wright of the Rifle Brigade. He was educated privately and entered the firm of William Cory and Sons at the age of 21. He became Chief of the company in 1888 and was credited with the large development of this firm which followed his appointment.
In 1868 he married Mima Owen, the youngest daughter of Sir Hugh Owen. They had two sons and three daughters. Cory-Wright was very interested in local affairs, particularly in the Highgate area. He led the movement to save for public use the area then called Churchyard Bottom, now Queen's Wood[12]
Cory-Wright died at Caen Wood Towers in 1909. His widow remained at the house until 1911 when it was sold to Thomas Frame Thompson,[13] who died two years later in a shooting accident. The property was then sold in 1914 to Charles Henry Watson who also owned a home called Ashmount in Hampstead; in 1919 he sold Caen Wood Towers to Sir Robert Waley Cohen.[14]
Sir Robert Waley Cohen
Sir Robert Waley Cohen circa 1920.
Sir Robert Waley Cohen was the Managing Director of the Shell Company. He was the longest and most prominent resident of Caen Wood Towers, living there for more than twenty years between 1919 and 1942.
Waley Cohen was born in London in 1877. His father was Nathaniel Louis Cohen and his mother was Julia Waley, daughter of Jacob Waley, Professor at University College, London. After Waley Cohen left Cambridge University he entered the Shell Company, eventually becoming its Managing Director.[15]
In 1904 he married Alice Violet Beddington and the couple had two sons and a daughter. While they lived at Caen Wood they held numerous social events at the house and Lady Waley Cohen often allowed the gardens to be used for fetes and parties for girls' clubs, Boy Scouts, and to raise money for charity.[16]
Lady Waley Cohen died in 1935 but Sir Robert continued to live at Caen Wood Towers until about 1942 when it was taken over by the RAF.
Royal Air Force Station Highgate
In September 1942, the house was acquired by the Air Ministry. The RAF Intelligence School, formerly housed in a number of nearby houses in Highgate, moved into Caen Wood Towers. The site, officially named Royal Air Force Station Highgate, occupied the grounds and outbuildings of the Caen Wood estate. It included accommodation, messing, equipment stores and a medical centre. Because of the sensitivity of intelligence and covert operations during the war, the site's purpose was not made public and it operated under the guise of an RAF convalescence hospital. A number of different courses were run, teaching Air Intelligence, Escape and Evasion, and Basic Intelligence Analysis for direct entrants to intelligence work. Most of the instruction was given by visiting specialists (from the Air Ministry, MI6, MI9, Central Interpretation Unit at RAF Medmenham and Station X at Bletchley Park).[17]
During World War II, over 6,000 officers of the British services (including dominion and Allied Forces attached to the RAF) attended intelligence training courses at the house. A description of the training given during the war at the house is contained in the book Shot Down and on the Run.[18]
In late 1944, the school was hit twice by German V-1 flying bombs causing damage to the buildings and injuring a number of staff.[10]
Following the end of the war, training continued at RAF Highgate until 1948 when the Air Ministry decided that the School should move to the Air Ministry building as they were de-requisitioning the property. RAF Highgate (Caen Wood Towers) was handed over to the Ministry of Health in 1951 and its previous role remained an Official Secret until 2005 when files (such as the unit's Form 540) were declassified and made available to the public in the National Archives.[19]
The site was acquired by the Ministry of Health in 1951, renamed Athlone House in 1955 as part of the Middlesex Hospital Group, and converted into a pre-convalescent home for those not well enough to go to The Middlesex Hospital's Convalescent Home in Clacton. A new building was added for geriatric care.
2003 to the present day
The hospital was closed in 2003 and the site was sold to Dwyer Investments. The wing added in the 1940s and a 1970s extension were demolished, and three new blocks of luxury apartments built in their stead, called Kenwood Place. The original house was sold in 2006 to a Kuwaiti businessman of the Kharafi family for a reported £16 million.[10] Planning permission to build a new house on the site was refused by Camden Council in 2010, and the refusal upheld by the Planning Inspectorate in 2011.[20] In 2014 the developers Athlone House Limited again appealed against the decision to the Planning Inspectorate, but this was rejected in June 2015[21] after objections from The Highgate Society, which raised a 5,000-signature petition to preserve the house.[22]
In January 2016, the Evening Standard reported that the house had been sold for about £20 million and that the new owners had contacted Camden Council "to discuss refurbishment plans", which were thought to include keeping the original house and building flats in the large gardens.[23]
In April 2016, it was reported in the Sunday Times that the Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman had purchased Athlone House for £65 million.[24]
Under Fridman's ownership, extensive restoration work was carried out including roofing works, major structural repairs, restoration of stonework and brickwork, replacement of perished timbers, damp-proofing and replacement of all windows.[25] The restoration was designed by architects SHH.[26] The new roof won an award for Best Use of a Heritage Roof at the Pitched Roofing Awards 2021.[27][28]
Highgate is a suburban area of London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, 4+1⁄2 miles north-northwest of Charing Cross.
Hampstead Heath is an ancient heath in London, spanning 320 hectares. This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London Clay. The heath is rambling and hilly, embracing ponds, recent and ancient woodlands, a lido, playgrounds, and a training track, and it adjoins the former stately home of Kenwood House and its estate. The south-east part of the heath is Parliament Hill, from which the view over London is protected by law.
Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is a co-educational, fee-charging, private day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate Pre-Preparatory School, Highgate junior school and the senior school (11+) – which together comprise the Highgate Foundation. As part of its wider work the charity was from 2010 a founding partner of the London Academy of Excellence and it is now also the principal education sponsor of an associated Academy, the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, which opened in September 2017. The principal business sponsor is Tottenham Hotspur FC. The charity also funds the Chrysalis Partnership, a scheme supporting 26 state schools in six London boroughs.
Intelligence services in the Royal Air Force are delivered by Officers of the Royal Air Force Intelligence Branch and Airmen from the Intelligence Analyst Trade and Intelligence Analyst (Voice) Trade. The specialisation has around 1,200 personnel of all ranks posted to operational air stations, HQs and other establishments of the British Armed Forces, both in the United Kingdom and overseas.
Sir Sydney Hedley Waterlow, 1st Baronet, was a British philanthropist and Liberal Party politician, principally remembered for donating Waterlow Park to the public as "a garden for the gardenless".
The Survey of London is a research project to produce a comprehensive architectural survey of central London and its suburbs, or the area formerly administered by the London County Council. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Robert Ashbee, an Arts-and-Crafts designer, architect and social reformer and was motivated by a desire to record and preserve London's ancient monuments. The first volume was published in 1900, but the completion of the series remains far in the future.
Lauderdale House is an historic house, now run as an arts and education centre, based in Waterlow Park, Highgate in north London, England.
The Landmark London is a five-star hotel on Marylebone Road on the northern side of central London, England, in the City of Westminster. It was originally opened by the Great Central Railway, as the Hotel Great Central. As one of London's railway hotels it declined after the advent of the motor car, and served as a military convalescent home during the Second World War, and later the headquarters of the British Railways Board. It reopened as a hotel in 1993.
Sir Robert Waley Cohen, KBE was a British industrialist and prominent leader of Anglo-Jewry.
Sir Herbert Nield PC, KC, DL was a barrister and Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Nocton Hall is a historic Grade II listed building in the village of Nocton, in Lincolnshire, England. The plaque on the north face of the Hall indicates that the original building dates back to about 1530 but since then there have been two notable reconstructions. Several prominent people have been residents of the house the most notable being Frederick John Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a short time.
The Cory-Wright Baronetcy, of Caen Wood Towers, High Gate, in St. Pancras in the County of London and Hornsey in the County of Middlesex, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 28 August 1903 for Cory Cory-Wright, Chairman of William Cory & Son, coal and oil shippers. Born Cory Wright, he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Cory in 1903. He was High Sheriff of Middlesex in 1902. The second Baronet was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1921. The third Baronet was the husband of Felicity Tree, daughter of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
The Army and Navy Club in London is a private members club founded in 1837, also known informally as The Rag.
Felicity Constance Tree, Lady Cory-Wright, was an English baronetess and high society figure. A daughter of the actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Maud Holt, she appeared regularly in news of the time starting from infancy.
Sir Geoffrey Cory-Wright, 3rd Baronet was the 3rd Baronet Cory-Wright.
Sir Arthur Cory Cory-Wright, 2nd Baronet was a British businessman.
Sir Cory Francis Cory-Wright, 1st Baronet was a British businessman.
Jacob Waley, was an English legal writer.
Dorothea Waley Singer, b. Cohen (1882–1964) was a British palaeographer, historian of science, medical historian and philanthropist.
Cromwell House is a Grade I listed building built in 1638 in Highgate Village, now a suburb of London. It is currently owned by the Republic of Ghana and used as its visa section.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
