Archway, United Kingdom

The Rotherhithe scheme failed, even after Richard Trevithick had been brought in to help. Undeterred, Vazie tried again at Highgate. In 1808 he proposed a tunnel more than a mile long which forked at the southern end to avoid both Highgate West Hill and Highgate Hill. After this failed to obtain Parliamentary sanction in 1809, he reduced the tunnel to 360 yards with approaches in cuttings; this passed as the St. Mary Islington Road Act 1810. It established the Highgate Archway Company "for making and maintaining a Road partly by an Archway through the East Side of Highgate Hill...". The Archway was to be 24' wide and 18' high.

The Company's purpose – building a tunnel to avoid Highgate Hill – was given visible form on its seal. Its motto sicut talpæ sub terram vivimus means "like moles we live underground".

Work had been going on for several months when, in April 1811, with problems evident, John Rennie was consulted. He recommended reducing the tunnel to 211 yards. After a partial collapse he was consulted again in December 1811 and specified repairs using dowelled brickwork. After heavy rain, between 4 and 5 a.m. on 13 April 1812 the entire tunnel collapsed, fortunately without casualties.

The collapses and ensuing costs exhausted the Company's resources. It was obliged to seek a new Act of Parliament to increase its capital. The Highgate Archway Act 1812 increased the available capital to £70,000 but did not alter the Company's objects, which were to construct a tunnel and approach roads in cuttings.

The Company responded to the collapse by appointing John Nash as engineer. He devised the scheme which was implemented. The entire route was excavated as a cutting and a structure built across it through which the road passed in an "archway" with Hornsey Lane carried across above.

Architecturally, these two were separate, with the "archway" having a well-defined top (the lintel), above which was the three-arched bridge for Hornsey Lane, at the former ground level. The "archway" was structurally a tunnel (see cross-section) with a ring of brickwork to resist thrusts from all directions. As the Highgate Archway Company was only authorised to build a tunnel (and cuttings on the approaches), that is what it was.

The Company always referred to the structure as "Archway" or "Highgate Archway", never "Archway Bridge". In some prints of the 1820s and 1830s it was described as "Highgate Tunnel". The concept of one road crossing another at a different level did not then exist: in 1898 Sir John Wolfe Barry cited "the famous Highgate Archway" and Holborn Viaduct as the only instances of grade separation in London, apart from roads at river-bank level beneath bridges over the Thames.

The scheme opened on 21 August 1813 but, being in a deep cutting, the road surface was plagued by frequent and sudden inundations. All attempts to form a firm roadway were unsuccessful until 1829 when Telford's chief engineer John Macneill laid the road metal in a thick bed of Roman cement with extensive drainage at the sides.

At first, the toll gate was in the Archway; the windows lighting the toll-keeper's room can be seen in the print of Highgate Tunnel, along with a bricked-up door and hatch below. By 1817 the toll gate had been moved south, next to the newly-built Archway Tavern. It remained in use until 1864. A plaque at 1 Pauntley Street, an apartment block, records this.

In the later nineteenth century, houses were built beside Archway Road, changing perceptions of where the ground level lay and giving the Archway the appearance of a bridge. Nash's structure was replaced in 1900 by the current steel Hornsey Lane Bridge with cast- and wrought-iron decorations. A few residents, especially those born and locally raised in the early 20th century, refer to the area with a definite article (as "the Archway").

Seven bus routes in London terminate at 'Archway', the term having become mainstream after the tube station, originally called Highgate, was renamed Highgate (Archway) in 1939, and subsequently Archway (Highgate) in 1941, and Archway in 1947. The ecclesiastical parishes (once having had poor-relief vestries employing highwaymen, for example) before the laws that disestablished their secular components do not mention Archway. Those covering the area are parts of traditional parent parishes named Whitehall Park, Upper Holloway, St John the Evangelist, Upper Holloway and a very small part of a Highgate, Islington parish.

Highgate Hill, the road from Archway to Highgate village, was the route of the first motorised cable tramway in Europe. It operated from 1884 to 1909. Highgate tube station (later renamed 'Highgate Archway' and subsequently just 'Archway') opened on 22 June 1907 as the northern terminus of the Highgate branch of the Northern Line.