Editing Muswell Hill (section)

===19th century===
A little farther down the hill stood ''Grove Lodge'', also in wooded grounds.<ref>C. Nicholson, Scraps of Hist. of a Northern Suburb of Lond. (1879), 16; sales parts. (1939) in Hornsey libr.</ref>  Altogether there were eight properties in Muswell Hill worthy of note in 1817.<ref>Hassell, Rides and Walks, i. 194.</ref>
[[File:Muswell hill odeon.jpg|thumb|The former Odeon cinema, now an [[Everyman Cinemas|Everyman]], in Muswell Hill is a Grade II* [[Listed Building]]]]

Parallel with Muswell Hill was a track known as St James's Lane which ran across a triangle of wasteland. By the middle of the 19th century houses were already dispersed along the lane at the foot of which was ''Lalla Rookh'', a two-storeyed villa with a wide verandah.<ref>Thorne, Environs, 443-4.</ref>  Other buildings there were apparently cottages or huts, both single and in terraces.<ref>Photos. (1935) in Hornsey libr.; Hornsey Boro. Ann. Rep. of M.O.H. (1930); see also Sherington, Story of Hornsey, 42</ref>

It was not until the end of the 19th century that Muswell Hill began to be developed more densely from a collection of country houses to the London village that it is today. The development was spurred by the opening in 1873 of [[Alexandra Palace]], a massive pleasure pavilion built on the most easterly of north London's gravel hills and intended as the counterpart to the [[The Crystal Palace|Crystal Palace]] on Sydenham Hill in south London. Alexandra Palace was served by a [[Muswell Hill railway station|branchline railway]] from Highgate, with an intermediary station at Muswell Hill (see below). The foot of Alexandra Palace was served by another rail network with connecting services to Finsbury Park and Kings Cross stations.