Decoy Brook - Spaniards
Decoy Brook
Decoy Brook rises in Turners Wood and flows into the ponds of the Hampstead Heath Extension.
Post to the north Hampstead Garden Suburb
Decoy Brook rises in Turners Wood and flows into the ponds of the Hampstead Heath Extension.
Post to the north Hampstead Garden Suburb
Bishops Avenue
Arden Court Gardens, group of houses a well-landscaped group of smaller houses of the 1980s; steep, wide-eaved roofs over squarish houses with cut-away corners.
52 Kenstead Hall. This is a mini stately home with Hollywood half timbering. A Neo-Tudor mini-stately home of the 1920s. It is owned by King Fadh of Saudi Arabia. His father, King Khaled bought it from the shipping mogul Ravi Tikkoo in 1976. Tikkoo had added a cricket pitch and an orangery. There is also a stable block with a cupola.
54 Oak Lodge. Built 1927. Restrained
56 Barons Court. Built in 1900. In red brick with huge Tuscan portico.
Wyldewood. Built in 1926. Now divided into two as Fernwood.
58 Murtaza, originally called Kenmore. Built 1896 but remodelled in 1905 in Old English ‘Domestic Style’ after Norman Shaw.
Knole Hurst
Hornbeams
59 East Weald also known as Heath Hall and as Vernon Hall. Built in 1910 by H.V. Ashley and F. Winton Newman for William Lyle of Tate and Lyle.
60 Dane Court. Neo-Jacobean with turret and stone door case.
62 Jersey House. This was called Eaglescliff
63 Leo Baeck House. This was called Bishop’s Mead when it was built in 1900 for Herbert Neild, MP, JP.
64 Chelwood. Built 1930.
66 Heath Lodge. 1931.
Hammerson House. Built on the grounds of Glenthorn after the war.
Bunkers Hill
1-2 at a twitten entrance a pair by C. Cowles-Voysey for himself, built 1928-9
Columba’s Drive
The Elms. Built on the site of the tea garden. Behind high walls, with a neo-Jacobean outline of gables, turret and chimneys altered and extended in 1998. The older house was changed before 1870 and then again, perhaps by T.E.Collcut, for art dealer, Joseph Joel Duveen, in 1888-95. It is now posh flats
St. Columba's Hospital in the Elms. Friedenheim, also known as the Home of Peace, was opened in Islington, in 1885 following concerns about the lack of care for the dying. In 1892 they moved to a site at Swiss Cottage and in 1915, when it had 50 beds, its name was changed to St Columba's Hospital. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948, and in 1957 moved to The Elms with 35 beds. It closed in 1981
Mother Huffs Tea Garden – a popular pub in the 18th.
Fairway Close
Backing onto the golf course. Houses by C. H. James 1929
3 architect’s own house
Hampstead Lane
The road runs slightly to the north of the St.Pancras/Hornsey boundary
Granite setts along the lane mark the line of the boundary of the bishops’ park.
Cricket Ground
Hampstead Way
Laid out as an approach road to a never-built underground station at Wyldes.
North End/Bull and Bush Tube Station. The Charing Cross & Hampstead Railway was authorised as far as Hampstead in 1893 but, take over by Yerkes in 1900, it was proposed to continue it to Golders Green. A condition was the provision of a station at North End which would have been opposite Wylde’s farmhouse and should have been London’s deepest tube station. There was much local opposition to the proposed station from the posh people who lived on the heath and Henrietta Barnett’s intervention to purchase what became the Hampstead Heath Extension prevented plans for new housing. Work on construction of the station continued at track level and it was halted as residential development was opposed and did not progress, Work on the station was stopped in 1906 before the lift shafts were sunk and surface building were erected. Services began in 1907, running through the unfinished station. The official name of the station would have been North End, it was always known as 'Bull & Bush' after the nearby public house. The platforms were later removed altogether and during the Second World War the subways were used to store archives with access only available from the cabs of passing trains.
Underground Control Centre. Since 1933 the operational control centre of the London Passenger Transport Board was been in Leicester Square station and a floodgate control centre also established there. It was then decided to build a nuclear proof control centre – the Special Works programme to keep the underground running. The abandoned North End Station seemed to be ideal and was sited on part of the Manor House Hospital site, which London Transport owned. This involved building an entrance blockhouse with stairs down to a new shaft sunk down to the unfinished station subways where rooms were built. Between the control centre and the Northern Line a heavy steel blast door was fitted. However in 1955 work was stopped and although the floodgate control room opened in 1956 there was no staff accommodation
Kenwood Grounds
Henry Moore Sculpture. Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 5 by Henry Moore.
West Meadow – this is an area of The Heath next to the Kenwood House Pasture Land
Kenwood Farm. Built 1795, by George Saunders. Originally octagonal in the ‘Swiss chalet style’ was a cottage, dairy and brew house. There is only one remaining building of the actual farmhouse, privately owned, but the original outline of the octagonal brickwork is still in the ground. The dairy is later and is surrounded by a ha ha.
Stones – there are three stones on the left of the path to the staff entrance. These are all boundary markers for St.Pancras, Finchley and Hampstead Parishes which all meet here.
The Old Quarry. This is north of the Old Farmhouse and was a source of sand for the Kenwood Estate used to lighten soils and to maintain path and drive surfaces. It ceased being used in the 1890s.
North Wood. This is the area of The Heath within the north boundary of the Kenwood Estate. It is mostly beech and oak, with Scots pine. It was added to the Ken Wood Estate by the 2nd Earl of Mansfield in l793. Hampstead way
Tree – this tree is at the junction of the path from the Kenwood House Drive and the path to the car park. It once had an iron 1791 boundary marker attached to it. In the trunk of the tree is a stone Finchley Parish marker.
Boundary markers on a sunken path towards the farm gates. These are two semi-buried stones. They are for St. Pancras Parish and for St.John’s Hampstead.
Boundary marker - this is on a path beyond the farm gate to the right. This was once the site of an elm tree which marked the boundary. The stone is marked for St. Pancras on one side, and St, Johns on the other. More markers can be found on side paths on the line of the boundary.
Hampstead Heath Extension
The Heath Extension covers 125 acres. The land consists of most of the former agricultural land of Spaniards Farm and Wyldes Farm. It has changed little the former field pattern of Wyldes Farm. The acquisition of land was largely down to Henrietta Barnett who formed the Hampstead Heath Extension Council in 1903 to prevent the Underground reaching the area. The Wyldes Estate belonged to Eton College and it was purchased after a struggle. The hedgerows are a feature dividing the space into a series of green 'rooms', each with its own character. There are brambles and thistles, hazels and hollies, hawthorn, black poplar along with flowers and dragonflies and damselflies on the pond banks. There are many field trees - elder, field maple, and boundary oaks. There is a cluster of maintenance buildings in the centre. In the lower part are playing fields. .
Decoy Brook This stream rises from Sandy Heath where the sand meets the clay. It passes through a series of ponds on the Hampstead Heath Extension.
Ponds.There is a series of 7 ponds fed by the brook and runoff water from Sandy Heath. One pond is an old field pond first recorded in the 18th and the others were dug between 1907 and 1915 by unemployed immigrant labour. Known as The Seven Sisters they are the northern-most ponds on Hampstead Heath. Some of the ponds are enclosed within fencing and some are not.
The Walter Field Memorial Drinking Fountain. This is north of junction of Hampstead Way and Wildwood Road.
Ingram Avenue
Dr. Winnington Ingram was a Bishop of London and a supporter of Henrietta Barnett.
16 designed by Souter's office to be similar to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust offices in Finchley Road in 1935. The house was to be a wedding present for the son of the Chair of the Midland Bank, for whom Lutyens put a special frontage on it.
Kenwood Close
Built in 1936 with houses designed by Powell.
Spaniards End
This was originally a group of houses built in the 18th on the Highgate side of Spaniards Gate.
Heath End Cottage. 19th brick house. It is part of a row of outbuildings
The Firs – now divided into The White House and The Chantry. The original house dated from 1734 and it appears as an imposing house of white stucco
Casa Maria is the old Billiards Room of the main house. It had a Spanish appearance with arched openings,
12 a modern house, flat roofed with many horizontal planes
14 a bungalow with brick and tile hanging which uses the slope to give two storeys with balcony having a 1950s feel.
16 A modest house enlarged by ABA Architects. Known as the VXO house - The carport is held by thin posts and a large red vertical metallic circle and it has a timber clad cantilever supported on a red V-shaped column in front of a blue artwork wall by Simon Patterson, the garden gymnasium has red X -shaped supports.
18 a large, modern house, with a number of horizontal planes and interlocking blocks in blue brick,
24 The Firs, 1959 by Patrick Gwynne. Brick with timber boarding, large windows to the garden. In 1734 John Turner, a City tobacconist, built a house at Parkgate called The Firs after a clump of tree painted by Constable. The modern building externally looks a bit like a TV set but the screen is for those inside to see out. To the rear, the building had glass blocks plus there is a round ended structure and a curved pool which follow the line of the north-west wall.
New house on the site of the old tennis court,
17 used the awkwardly shaped plot and sloping site
15 this appears as a modest bungalow but it has been enlarged with conservatories and extensions
13a sandwiched between 13 and 15 it uses the awkward site and steep slope
13 by Higgins and Ney and once called “Highbrow”, it is now a diplomatic residence.
11 fairly plain building of red brick
Spaniards Road
The area is the result of the old sand diggings. The road appears as an embankment due to the gravel and sand diggings which brought in an income of the Wilsons, Lords of the Manor. Red and silver sand was used for sanding the floors of public houses. The area had otherwise belonged to Eton College. It is said to have been the site of a gibbet
This is the site of a gate into the Bishop's park, one of those installed before 1227. By the 14th people had to pay a toll to cross the park. There are boundary stones of the Bishops Park outside the inn,
Inkin Gate. This gateway into Kenwood goes to a path which goes through North Wood and emerges at the top of West Meadow. It was named for Christopher Ikin who was a local Solicitor and Historian
Spaniards Inn. A 16th weather boarded pub, associated with Dick Turpin (where isn’t? – it’s a sort of generic name for the highwaymen who were certainly around here). It was built in 1585 as part of the tollgate on the Finchley boundary, forming the entrance to the Bishop of London’s estate. The pub is thus in the Borough of Barnet and the tollhouse opposite in the Borough of Camden. There are a number of theories about the name - it is said to be the residence of the Spanish Ambassador to James I, or perhaps a previous landlord was Spanish or named after two Spanish brothers who killed each other in a duel. In the Gordon riots a mob set on looting Kenwood House were detailed there until the soldiers arrived – there were rifles in the bar. Dickens used this for the scene in Pickwick Papers where Mrs. Bardell is arrested for debt. It has a garden with an artificial mound from which views over London can be seen – and the odd ghost.
Tollhouse. The toll house at the junction of the modern boroughs of Barnet and Camden was built at the entrance to the Bishop’s estate. Traffic here is reduced to one lane nut A proposal to demolish it in 1961 was resisted. Built in the 18th it is a rectangular single storey building.
Erskine House. Next door to The Spaniards Inn and also to Evergreen Hill. This was the home of Thomas Erskine, a leading Whig, involved in reform movement of the 1790s. These estates - Evergreen Hill, and Heath End House - were landscaped with together with Kenwood. Eventually Lord Mansfield, of Kenwood, bought Evergreen Hill
Evergreen Hill. Built on the site of the original Erskine House and date from 1788. The front is weather boarded with brick behind. The wall at the in front is of red brick from the 18th. There is a plaque to the Barnett’s on the front wall.
Erskine House. This may include parts of a wing of the previous house on site.
Heath End House. It was the home of Rear-
Mount Tyndal - The roundhouse. Modern flat complex.
Turners Wood
Houses for the Hampstead Heath Extension Co. built 1915 by G. L. Sutcliffe
Turners Wood
Source of the Decoy Brook
Bird Sanctuary – private and protected
Wildwood Grove
Built by a local builder in 1866-7. Surprisingly urban
Wildwood Rise
Spaniard’s Field
2 this house won a Country Life competition. It was built by Cyril Farey and looks modem for 1912-13.
5 stone frontispiece and, Jacobean details; Built 1913 by Field and Summers.
Wildwood Road
This was built up between 1908 and 1914 using mainly brick..
4 designed in 1929 by C.H. James and with a black roof
8 the childhood home of Elizabeth Taylor
15 home of Frank Pick, London Transport director lived here 1828-1941
34-42 by C. Cowles-Voysey.
44 by James Bywater
48 by Robert Atkinson. Home of Myra Hess
Wildwood Terrace
Like Wildwood Grove
2 Home of Nikolaus Pevsner from 1936 until his death,
Winnington Road
Braewood. Like a miniature Jacobean mansion with shaped gables
61 Spaniards Mount, designed by Adrian Scott for himself in 1936.
Hampstead Golf Club. This was founded in 1893 and is the closest golf course to the centre of London.
Wyldes Close
Gates House. This includes putto cast from the Frampton sculpture at Selfridge’s entrance. Built by T. Laurence Dale 1915.
Far End. Built 1911 by Evelyn Simmons for himself
Wyldes Close Corner. Built by Parker & Unwin, 1912
Old Wyldes. The former farmhouse, timber framed, was built in the 17th. This is a two-storey lobby-entry house with weather boarded exterior and an 18th extension; another extension, of c.1820, links it to Wyldes. The area was very isolated in the 18th and the land belonged to Eton College. There is a plaque, erected in 1975, to John Linnell, and to William Blake, who stayed here as his guest. Dickens stayed here for five weeks in 1837 when it was known as Collins Farm. From 1884 it was occupied by Mrs Charlotte Wilson, an early Fabian, and became the meeting place of the Hampstead Historic Club, a radical political discussion group. She remodelled the house in 1885, giving it an oriel window and veranda, and completed the conversion of the barn. In 1905 the house was threatened by the proposed Underground extension; its site was to be a car park, and Hampstead Way was laid out as an approach road. Instead, it became the home of Raymond Unwin, the designer of Hampstead Garden Suburb. He reconstructed the barn as drawing and estate offices.
Wyldes. The converted barn to Wyldes Farm. It was planned that this should be the car park for an underground extension but instead Hampstead Garden Suburb designer, Raymond Unwin, moved in. used as the drawing and estate offices.
Sources
Behind the Blue Plaques
Blue Plaque Guide
Borer. Hampstead and Highgate
Camden History Record
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names,
GLIAS- Newsletter
Hampstead Golf Club. Web site
Hampstead Heath. Web site
London Borough of Barnet. Web site
London Borough of Camden. Web site
London Transport. Country Walks
London Encyclopaedia
Lost Hospitals. Web site
Meulemkamp and Wheatley. Follies
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex,
Miller. Hampstead Garden Suburb
Nairn. Modern Buildings,
Night and Day in London
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
Spaniards Inn. Wikipedia, web site.
Stevenson, Middlesex
Stokes. A walk along ancient boundaries in Kenwood
Thames Basin Archaeological Group survey
Troughs and Drinking Fountains
Wade. Hampstead Past
Walford. Highgate to the Lea,
Arden Court Gardens, group of houses a well-landscaped group of smaller houses of the 1980s; steep, wide-eaved roofs over squarish houses with cut-away corners.
52 Kenstead Hall. This is a mini stately home with Hollywood half timbering. A Neo-Tudor mini-stately home of the 1920s. It is owned by King Fadh of Saudi Arabia. His father, King Khaled bought it from the shipping mogul Ravi Tikkoo in 1976. Tikkoo had added a cricket pitch and an orangery. There is also a stable block with a cupola.
54 Oak Lodge. Built 1927. Restrained
56 Barons Court. Built in 1900. In red brick with huge Tuscan portico.
Wyldewood. Built in 1926. Now divided into two as Fernwood.
58 Murtaza, originally called Kenmore. Built 1896 but remodelled in 1905 in Old English ‘Domestic Style’ after Norman Shaw.
Knole Hurst
Hornbeams
59 East Weald also known as Heath Hall and as Vernon Hall. Built in 1910 by H.V. Ashley and F. Winton Newman for William Lyle of Tate and Lyle.
60 Dane Court. Neo-Jacobean with turret and stone door case.
62 Jersey House. This was called Eaglescliff
63 Leo Baeck House. This was called Bishop’s Mead when it was built in 1900 for Herbert Neild, MP, JP.
64 Chelwood. Built 1930.
66 Heath Lodge. 1931.
Hammerson House. Built on the grounds of Glenthorn after the war.
Bunkers Hill
1-2 at a twitten entrance a pair by C. Cowles-Voysey for himself, built 1928-9
Columba’s Drive
The Elms. Built on the site of the tea garden. Behind high walls, with a neo-Jacobean outline of gables, turret and chimneys altered and extended in 1998. The older house was changed before 1870 and then again, perhaps by T.E.Collcut, for art dealer, Joseph Joel Duveen, in 1888-95. It is now posh flats
St. Columba's Hospital in the Elms. Friedenheim, also known as the Home of Peace, was opened in Islington, in 1885 following concerns about the lack of care for the dying. In 1892 they moved to a site at Swiss Cottage and in 1915, when it had 50 beds, its name was changed to St Columba's Hospital. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948, and in 1957 moved to The Elms with 35 beds. It closed in 1981
Mother Huffs Tea Garden – a popular pub in the 18th.
Fairway Close
Backing onto the golf course. Houses by C. H. James 1929
3 architect’s own house
Hampstead Lane
The road runs slightly to the north of the St.Pancras/Hornsey boundary
Granite setts along the lane mark the line of the boundary of the bishops’ park.
Cricket Ground
Hampstead Way
Laid out as an approach road to a never-built underground station at Wyldes.
North End/Bull and Bush Tube Station. The Charing Cross & Hampstead Railway was authorised as far as Hampstead in 1893 but, take over by Yerkes in 1900, it was proposed to continue it to Golders Green. A condition was the provision of a station at North End which would have been opposite Wylde’s farmhouse and should have been London’s deepest tube station. There was much local opposition to the proposed station from the posh people who lived on the heath and Henrietta Barnett’s intervention to purchase what became the Hampstead Heath Extension prevented plans for new housing. Work on construction of the station continued at track level and it was halted as residential development was opposed and did not progress, Work on the station was stopped in 1906 before the lift shafts were sunk and surface building were erected. Services began in 1907, running through the unfinished station. The official name of the station would have been North End, it was always known as 'Bull & Bush' after the nearby public house. The platforms were later removed altogether and during the Second World War the subways were used to store archives with access only available from the cabs of passing trains.
Underground Control Centre. Since 1933 the operational control centre of the London Passenger Transport Board was been in Leicester Square station and a floodgate control centre also established there. It was then decided to build a nuclear proof control centre – the Special Works programme to keep the underground running. The abandoned North End Station seemed to be ideal and was sited on part of the Manor House Hospital site, which London Transport owned. This involved building an entrance blockhouse with stairs down to a new shaft sunk down to the unfinished station subways where rooms were built. Between the control centre and the Northern Line a heavy steel blast door was fitted. However in 1955 work was stopped and although the floodgate control room opened in 1956 there was no staff accommodation
Kenwood Grounds
Henry Moore Sculpture. Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 5 by Henry Moore.
West Meadow – this is an area of The Heath next to the Kenwood House Pasture Land
Kenwood Farm. Built 1795, by George Saunders. Originally octagonal in the ‘Swiss chalet style’ was a cottage, dairy and brew house. There is only one remaining building of the actual farmhouse, privately owned, but the original outline of the octagonal brickwork is still in the ground. The dairy is later and is surrounded by a ha ha.
Stones – there are three stones on the left of the path to the staff entrance. These are all boundary markers for St.Pancras, Finchley and Hampstead Parishes which all meet here.
The Old Quarry. This is north of the Old Farmhouse and was a source of sand for the Kenwood Estate used to lighten soils and to maintain path and drive surfaces. It ceased being used in the 1890s.
North Wood. This is the area of The Heath within the north boundary of the Kenwood Estate. It is mostly beech and oak, with Scots pine. It was added to the Ken Wood Estate by the 2nd Earl of Mansfield in l793. Hampstead way
Tree – this tree is at the junction of the path from the Kenwood House Drive and the path to the car park. It once had an iron 1791 boundary marker attached to it. In the trunk of the tree is a stone Finchley Parish marker.
Boundary markers on a sunken path towards the farm gates. These are two semi-buried stones. They are for St. Pancras Parish and for St.John’s Hampstead.
Boundary marker - this is on a path beyond the farm gate to the right. This was once the site of an elm tree which marked the boundary. The stone is marked for St. Pancras on one side, and St, Johns on the other. More markers can be found on side paths on the line of the boundary.
Hampstead Heath Extension
The Heath Extension covers 125 acres. The land consists of most of the former agricultural land of Spaniards Farm and Wyldes Farm. It has changed little the former field pattern of Wyldes Farm. The acquisition of land was largely down to Henrietta Barnett who formed the Hampstead Heath Extension Council in 1903 to prevent the Underground reaching the area. The Wyldes Estate belonged to Eton College and it was purchased after a struggle. The hedgerows are a feature dividing the space into a series of green 'rooms', each with its own character. There are brambles and thistles, hazels and hollies, hawthorn, black poplar along with flowers and dragonflies and damselflies on the pond banks. There are many field trees - elder, field maple, and boundary oaks. There is a cluster of maintenance buildings in the centre. In the lower part are playing fields. .
Decoy Brook This stream rises from Sandy Heath where the sand meets the clay. It passes through a series of ponds on the Hampstead Heath Extension.
Ponds.There is a series of 7 ponds fed by the brook and runoff water from Sandy Heath. One pond is an old field pond first recorded in the 18th and the others were dug between 1907 and 1915 by unemployed immigrant labour. Known as The Seven Sisters they are the northern-most ponds on Hampstead Heath. Some of the ponds are enclosed within fencing and some are not.
The Walter Field Memorial Drinking Fountain. This is north of junction of Hampstead Way and Wildwood Road.
Ingram Avenue
Dr. Winnington Ingram was a Bishop of London and a supporter of Henrietta Barnett.
16 designed by Souter's office to be similar to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust offices in Finchley Road in 1935. The house was to be a wedding present for the son of the Chair of the Midland Bank, for whom Lutyens put a special frontage on it.
Kenwood Close
Built in 1936 with houses designed by Powell.
Spaniards End
This was originally a group of houses built in the 18th on the Highgate side of Spaniards Gate.
Heath End Cottage. 19th brick house. It is part of a row of outbuildings
The Firs – now divided into The White House and The Chantry. The original house dated from 1734 and it appears as an imposing house of white stucco
Casa Maria is the old Billiards Room of the main house. It had a Spanish appearance with arched openings,
12 a modern house, flat roofed with many horizontal planes
14 a bungalow with brick and tile hanging which uses the slope to give two storeys with balcony having a 1950s feel.
16 A modest house enlarged by ABA Architects. Known as the VXO house - The carport is held by thin posts and a large red vertical metallic circle and it has a timber clad cantilever supported on a red V-shaped column in front of a blue artwork wall by Simon Patterson, the garden gymnasium has red X -shaped supports.
18 a large, modern house, with a number of horizontal planes and interlocking blocks in blue brick,
24 The Firs, 1959 by Patrick Gwynne. Brick with timber boarding, large windows to the garden. In 1734 John Turner, a City tobacconist, built a house at Parkgate called The Firs after a clump of tree painted by Constable. The modern building externally looks a bit like a TV set but the screen is for those inside to see out. To the rear, the building had glass blocks plus there is a round ended structure and a curved pool which follow the line of the north-west wall.
New house on the site of the old tennis court,
17 used the awkwardly shaped plot and sloping site
15 this appears as a modest bungalow but it has been enlarged with conservatories and extensions
13a sandwiched between 13 and 15 it uses the awkward site and steep slope
13 by Higgins and Ney and once called “Highbrow”, it is now a diplomatic residence.
11 fairly plain building of red brick
Spaniards Road
The area is the result of the old sand diggings. The road appears as an embankment due to the gravel and sand diggings which brought in an income of the Wilsons, Lords of the Manor. Red and silver sand was used for sanding the floors of public houses. The area had otherwise belonged to Eton College. It is said to have been the site of a gibbet
This is the site of a gate into the Bishop's park, one of those installed before 1227. By the 14th people had to pay a toll to cross the park. There are boundary stones of the Bishops Park outside the inn,
Inkin Gate. This gateway into Kenwood goes to a path which goes through North Wood and emerges at the top of West Meadow. It was named for Christopher Ikin who was a local Solicitor and Historian
Spaniards Inn. A 16th weather boarded pub, associated with Dick Turpin (where isn’t? – it’s a sort of generic name for the highwaymen who were certainly around here). It was built in 1585 as part of the tollgate on the Finchley boundary, forming the entrance to the Bishop of London’s estate. The pub is thus in the Borough of Barnet and the tollhouse opposite in the Borough of Camden. There are a number of theories about the name - it is said to be the residence of the Spanish Ambassador to James I, or perhaps a previous landlord was Spanish or named after two Spanish brothers who killed each other in a duel. In the Gordon riots a mob set on looting Kenwood House were detailed there until the soldiers arrived – there were rifles in the bar. Dickens used this for the scene in Pickwick Papers where Mrs. Bardell is arrested for debt. It has a garden with an artificial mound from which views over London can be seen – and the odd ghost.
Tollhouse. The toll house at the junction of the modern boroughs of Barnet and Camden was built at the entrance to the Bishop’s estate. Traffic here is reduced to one lane nut A proposal to demolish it in 1961 was resisted. Built in the 18th it is a rectangular single storey building.
Erskine House. Next door to The Spaniards Inn and also to Evergreen Hill. This was the home of Thomas Erskine, a leading Whig, involved in reform movement of the 1790s. These estates - Evergreen Hill, and Heath End House - were landscaped with together with Kenwood. Eventually Lord Mansfield, of Kenwood, bought Evergreen Hill
Evergreen Hill. Built on the site of the original Erskine House and date from 1788. The front is weather boarded with brick behind. The wall at the in front is of red brick from the 18th. There is a plaque to the Barnett’s on the front wall.
Erskine House. This may include parts of a wing of the previous house on site.
Heath End House. It was the home of Rear-
Mount Tyndal - The roundhouse. Modern flat complex.
Turners Wood
Houses for the Hampstead Heath Extension Co. built 1915 by G. L. Sutcliffe
Turners Wood
Source of the Decoy Brook
Bird Sanctuary – private and protected
Wildwood Grove
Built by a local builder in 1866-7. Surprisingly urban
Wildwood Rise
Spaniard’s Field
2 this house won a Country Life competition. It was built by Cyril Farey and looks modem for 1912-13.
5 stone frontispiece and, Jacobean details; Built 1913 by Field and Summers.
Wildwood Road
This was built up between 1908 and 1914 using mainly brick..
4 designed in 1929 by C.H. James and with a black roof
8 the childhood home of Elizabeth Taylor
15 home of Frank Pick, London Transport director lived here 1828-1941
34-42 by C. Cowles-Voysey.
44 by James Bywater
48 by Robert Atkinson. Home of Myra Hess
Wildwood Terrace
Like Wildwood Grove
2 Home of Nikolaus Pevsner from 1936 until his death,
Winnington Road
Braewood. Like a miniature Jacobean mansion with shaped gables
61 Spaniards Mount, designed by Adrian Scott for himself in 1936.
Hampstead Golf Club. This was founded in 1893 and is the closest golf course to the centre of London.
Wyldes Close
Gates House. This includes putto cast from the Frampton sculpture at Selfridge’s entrance. Built by T. Laurence Dale 1915.
Far End. Built 1911 by Evelyn Simmons for himself
Wyldes Close Corner. Built by Parker & Unwin, 1912
Old Wyldes. The former farmhouse, timber framed, was built in the 17th. This is a two-storey lobby-entry house with weather boarded exterior and an 18th extension; another extension, of c.1820, links it to Wyldes. The area was very isolated in the 18th and the land belonged to Eton College. There is a plaque, erected in 1975, to John Linnell, and to William Blake, who stayed here as his guest. Dickens stayed here for five weeks in 1837 when it was known as Collins Farm. From 1884 it was occupied by Mrs Charlotte Wilson, an early Fabian, and became the meeting place of the Hampstead Historic Club, a radical political discussion group. She remodelled the house in 1885, giving it an oriel window and veranda, and completed the conversion of the barn. In 1905 the house was threatened by the proposed Underground extension; its site was to be a car park, and Hampstead Way was laid out as an approach road. Instead, it became the home of Raymond Unwin, the designer of Hampstead Garden Suburb. He reconstructed the barn as drawing and estate offices.
Wyldes. The converted barn to Wyldes Farm. It was planned that this should be the car park for an underground extension but instead Hampstead Garden Suburb designer, Raymond Unwin, moved in. used as the drawing and estate offices.
Sources
Behind the Blue Plaques
Blue Plaque Guide
Borer. Hampstead and Highgate
Camden History Record
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names,
GLIAS- Newsletter
Hampstead Golf Club. Web site
Hampstead Heath. Web site
London Borough of Barnet. Web site
London Borough of Camden. Web site
London Transport. Country Walks
London Encyclopaedia
Lost Hospitals. Web site
Meulemkamp and Wheatley. Follies
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex,
Miller. Hampstead Garden Suburb
Nairn. Modern Buildings,
Night and Day in London
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
Spaniards Inn. Wikipedia, web site.
Stevenson, Middlesex
Stokes. A walk along ancient boundaries in Kenwood
Thames Basin Archaeological Group survey
Troughs and Drinking Fountains
Wade. Hampstead Past
Walford. Highgate to the Lea,
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