Highgate Hill, North London, stretches from Archway to Highgate village. For those who don’t know it, it’s steep – rising to a 10 per cent gradient as it crests near the top. If you’ve ever tried to lug your shopping up it, I wouldn’t recommend it.
In fact, this was the reason that Europe’s first cable tramway was opened here in 1884: to haul passengers, goods and livestock up the hill. At under a mile long, the tramway stretched from Archway Tavern, the pub now opposite Archway Station, to Southwood Lane at the top of Highgate Village.
“The successful opening of the Highgate Hill Cable Tramway, the first of its kind in Europe, opens up a new era in tramway construction,” wrote The Times in 1884. Certainly, tram technology was on the rise: steam-powered and cable-hauled trams had started to give the old horse-drawn models a run for their money.
The world’s first cable tramway opened in San Francisco in 1873, pioneered by Londoner Andrew Smith Hallidie. It worked by pulling the cable cars along a fixed track by a moving steel cable, powered by static engines at the top of the hill. The car would start moving when the grip was applied to the cable, and would stop when released.
Highgate’s tram system was designed by William Eppelsheimer, the same man who had designed San Francisco’s pioneering tramway and created the grip system. Cars ran every five minutes, and fares cost 2p for a ride up and 1p to go down.
Archway was already a busy terminus for horse-drawn trams, but Highgate Hill was considered too steep for horses.
When the tramway opened in 1884, its first passengers were the Lord Mayor of London and the City of London Artillery Band. Nevertheless, a degree of scepticism persisted, with The Times mentioning that “it yet remains whether to be proved whether the general application of either the steam or cable system would be unattended with serious loss of life or limb.”
They were right to have their doubts. The tramway suffered from financial and operational problems, and there were multiple reports of accidents in the years following its introduction.
Later in the same year, the tramway’s brake system failed, with two tram cars and two dummies – cars with transverse seating – falling off the line, and a car and a dummy escaping down the hill. Two passengers in the runaway car were hurt, and the driver “remembered nothing more until he found himself at home in bed,” according to The Times’ coverage.
In December 1892, there was another accident after a cable snapped and the runaway car crashed. As a result, the tramway was closed for five years, only reopening again in 1897 under new ownership.
After a rocky lifespan, the cable tramway finally closed in 1909 after it was sold for £13,000 to London Country Council. It was replaced with an electric system, which remained in place until London Transport began decommissioning trams in 1952.
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Keyword: The lost North London tramway inspired by San Francisco's hills that was less than a mile long