Hampstead
Posts to the east Belsize Park
Post to the north Hampstead Heath
Post to the north Hampstead Heath
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This area consists of many roads where most buildings are listed and many have been lived in by a succession of famous people. This blog is supposed to be about workplaces and public buildings – so the amount of detail on architecture and celebrity has been drastically limited.
Akenside Road
Named for Mark Akenside poet and doctor lived at Golders Hill
Arkwright Road
Camden Arts Centre. Camden Arts Centre was built as Hampstead Central Library and designed by the Arnold Taylor and extended in 1926. It was opened in 1897 by its funder Henry Harben Deputy Chairman of the Prudential Assurance Company. The structure survived bombs and a V2 in the Second World War while used as an ARP post. In 1964 a new the Swiss Cottage library opened as part of a modern library service. Hampstead Arts Centre was opened here in 1965 with classes in painting, life drawing, pottery, printing and design. Refurbished 2004 by Tony Fretton. There is also a garden, bookshop, and café.
1 Senior House of St.Anthony’s School (fee paying, Catholic ‘preparatory’)
2 house used by Devonshire House School. (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
4 built for the artist F.W. Topham and there is a plaque to him on it. Used by Devonshire House School (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
6 built for writer Henry Arthur Jones Used by Devonshire House School (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
13b modernist house by Godfrey Samuel and Valentine Harding, a member of Tecton. Brick with concrete floors and glass bricks at the front. Built for Cecil Walton headmaster of University College School. Inside is a fireplace in flints.
21 home of Tobias Matthay 1858-1945. Matthay was a radical teacher of the piano. A plaque on the house was installed in 1979.
Back Lane
The road existed by 1745
5 Radius Works. Charities Advisory Trust
Belsize Court Gardens
Mews area named for the gardens of 18th Belsize Court, previously known as the White House, which lay slightly to the north of here in Belsize Lane
1 modernist house
Belsize Crescent
The Belsize area was developed from the 1840s by Daniel Tidey. He sublet an area to the north to William Willett who built this crescent of villas 1868-1875
Belsize Lane
32 St.Christopher’s School. On the site of Belsize Court School, which used Belsize Court. It was founded in the 1880s. This is yet another fee paying ‘preparatory’ school for girls.
Belsize Place
A footpath follows and old route through the area and links through to Lyndhust Road crossing the line of the Midland Railway which is underground here.
Belsize Court Garages. Red brick range built by Willett as livery stables
Bird in Hand Yard
This is a narrow alley associated with the Bird in Hand pub. It has brick walls on either side. Tram services started from here and the yard is said to have had stables for the LGOC horses. It had a covered entry from the High Street.
Church Row
Built 1710-1728 and considered one of the finest Georgian suburban streets in London. The original houses had no mews or stables. Most houses are listed and many have had famous residents.
Tollgate. Until the late 19th the access to Frognal at the north end of the road was barred by a tollgate.
St.John’s Church .1745-7 and not clear which St.John is intended. The medieval church had a wooden tower for the Benedictine monks of Westminster - the then owners - so that they could look up to it. The old church was in need of repair by the 18th and Henry Flitcroft, who was a local resident, offered to rebuild it in 1744. The parish rejected his designs and turned to another parishioner, Palladian architect John Sanderson. This building has a plain brown brick outside with the tower at the end to save money. The upper part of the tower rebuilt by Samuel Steemson in 1759, with battlements and a spike added in 1782-3. However this is a pretty church demonstrating the social life of Hampstead in the early 19th. Inside are box pews and umbrella stands. It became a parish church in 1860. A competition was held in 1874 for a new building, which led to a campaign to save the 18th tower. One result of this was that William Morris took to campaigning against ‘restoring’ churches. F.P. Cockerell was the winning competitor, and his work in 1877-8 turned it round. The Vicar was a friend of Byron – but following a dispute an evangelical vicar was appointed in 1832. In 1910 the congregation bought the Freehold. There are carved Hanoverian Royal Arms and Commandment Boards in the gallery and much other art work. The church has a long musical tradition which it maintains with a professional choir and high-profile concerts. The current organ was installed by Henry Willis in 1884.
Churchyard. This is a Garden with iron railings and wrought iron gates from the 1747 sale of Canons at Little Stanmore. The churchyard is enclosed by 19th wrought iron railings with a dwarf brick wall. There is long grass and mature trees. At the west entrance is an 18th wrought-iron gate from the 1747 sale of the Duke of Chandos' mansion Canons. The northern entrance has wrought and cast-iron railings an original Sugg 6-sided Westminster lantern and a lamp-holder with ladder bar incorporated in the railings. The brick churchyard walls date from the 18th. There are lots of tombs including that of John Constable 1837, John Harrison, Norman Shaw and Hugh Gaitskell as well as those of famous show business people and many more.
St John's Churchyard Extension An additional plot of land was purchased on the other side of Church Row in 1812. There are many monuments including one by Eric Gill and others using Coade stone
9 Hampstead Reformatory for Girls. Following the decision by the Rescue Society to close its reformatory at no 28 a new institution was founded here. It opened in 1860 and the inmates of 28 moved in. It closed in 1876 and the building was used by the .Field Lane Industrial School for Girls, from Clerkenwell. In 1893 some of the building had to be reconstructed and the school closed in 1901.
28 Reformatory for Girls. This opened in 1857 for ‘openly immoral’ young women. It closed in 1860.
Copper Beech Close
Modern housing on an infill site which appears to be built over the twin tunnels of the Midland Main Line out of Euston.
Daleham Gardens
The earliest houses here date from the 1880s
Air vent – an air vent to the Midland Main Line tunnels below are marked on maps for the north end of the road, east side.
33 Gloucester House. NHS Day Unit
Daleham Mews
Stable buildings tarted up by posh architects. Built up from the 1880s.
Old people flats
Denning Road
38 Denning Hall. Built as a mission hall in 1883, associated with St. Stephen’s Church, Rosslyn Hill. Later converted into artists' studios and as housing.
Downshire Hill
The western end of the street was originally called Albion Grove and was developed from 1813. Site of Red Lion Hill brickfields. Most houses in the road are listed and most have had famous residents – many of them successively.
1b Keats GP Group Practice. Built as a postal sorting office by the Office of Works in 1891 an apparently later used by the National Assistance Board.
14a former school of St. Johns Church. This was apparently built in the early 1830s at his own expense by John Willcox, who owned the church and with whom there were disputes and a court case. It was financed by subscriptions and a parliamentary grant. It was closed and transferred to St. Stephen’s elementary school in 1874-5. In the 1920s it was used as a studio by sculptor Sydney Carline and others, and appears to continue in studio and residential use today.
Ellerdale Road
The area belonged to the Greenhill estate and was built up in the early 1870s with grand gothic villas, many of them by T.K. Green
6 Institute of St Marcellina. This is an Italian Sisterhood providing accommodation for foreign students. Also called Hampstead Towers. It was Norman Shaw’s own house built for himself and daringly progressive. Built in 1874-6 by W.H. Lascelles for Shaw himself, who lived there until 1912. The house is tall and appears craggy.
24 King Alfred's school opened in 1898 here to practise modern theories of education. The school had no religious or political affiliations; discipline depended on the pupils' co-operation and competition was discouraged. It moved to Hendon in 1919.
Finchley Road
Finchley Road and Frognal Station. This opened in 1860 and now lies between Hampstead Heath and West Hampstead Stations on the North London Line. It was originally called Finchley Road Station on the Hampstead Junction Railway and the entrance was very humble. Tunnel from Hampstead Heath on North London Railway 1879s
Arkwright Mansions. These flats were part of a housing development for J.E. J and E. A. Cave, in 1896. The building was opened in 1900. There were lead covered spires on two of the dormers, besides a dome over the corner tower, which have survived. Work started at the Arkwright Road end and the building quality reduces down the length of the building, so cost must have been a factor.
Fitzjohns Avenue
The road was built as a link between Swiss Cottage and central Hampstead on land sold by the Maryon Wilsons to developers in 1875 and named after an estate of theirs in Essex. It opened up a large area between here and Finchley Road for development with large houses. From the 1920s houses were divided into flats
Source of the Tyburn. This is marked by a disused drinking fountain at the junction with Lyndhurst Road said to be near the site of Shepherd's Well.. This is marked as 'Conduit' on a map of 1814. The well when closed was 24 feet wide and lay about halfway between the fountain and the opposite corner of Akenside Road. The water is said to have clean and pure.
116 Monro House. This was The Royal Sailors' Orphan Girls' School and Home. It was founded by Major Powys in 1829 at Frognal House. In 1869 it moved to this new building designed by Edward Ellis. In 1871 two rooms were a school for 60 girls of all ages, learning for a future as household servants. It seems to have closed in 1957 and transferred to a similar organisation in Hull. The building is now flats for pensioners owned by LB Camden.
Air vent for the tunnel of the North London Line which runs under the road is marked on maps to the north of the Lyndhurst Road junction.
47 St Mary’s School. Fee paying private Roman Catholic School. Established here in 1926 founded by the Congregation of Jesus. The house dates from 1880 designed by George Lethbridge for L.M. Casella plus a 20th chapel. The house is in orange brick with decoration in high quality gauged and rubbed brickwork. There is a brick boundary wall in stepped sections with cast-iron railings and wrought-iron gates. This was an extremely expensive house to build and its quality is apparent. Casella was the inventor of the clinical thermometer.
66 Havelock Hall, a Baptist Training College. In the 1930s used as an annexe to Westminster Hospital
66 Marie Curie Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases had been founded at 2 Fitzjohn's Avenue in 1929. These buildings, except for the new wing and the shelter, were totally destroyed by a high explosive bomb in 1944. And they moved to the Westminster hospital annexe for temporary relocation. Following repairs and improvement, the 50-bedded Hospital was opened by Queen Mary in 1946. In 1965 it was decided to move the Hospital in its entirety to a ward at Mount Vernon Hospital, where the equipment of a modern radiotherapy department would be available and The Marie Curie Hospital closed in 1967. The Hospital buildings were demolished in 1969. The site has been redeveloped and now contains an apartment block fronting Akenside Road. , was replaced in 1969 by flats built for the Medical Research Council.
69 Devonshire House ‘Preparatory’ school, plus nursery. The house was built in 1877 for C. Kemp Wild.
73 alterations of 1901-3 by Voysey for P. A. Barendt
75 Uplands. This is a Gothic style house built in the 19th by T.K. Green for P.F. Poole, RA. It is in purple brick with black and white bands plus a carved monogram "PFP RA". Outside are stepped brick walls with timber gates.
77 Field Court. Housing for the local authority by Pollard Thomas & Edwards built 1977. This is made up of nine houses and twelve flats in a tall, block with pitched roofs intended to echo its 19th neighbours.
Flask Walk
Source of the Fleet. One source of the river Fleet was near Flask Walk. And a pond existed at the east end of the walk in 1762, possibly fed by the tributary spring. The engine pond was here for the use of fire engines.
The road is an 18th development of a country lane. Archway from the street which fell down in 1911
14 Flask Tavern. This was the ‘Lower Flask Inn’ or the ‘Thatched House’ selling bottled spa water from the Hampstead Wells. The Upper Flask was in Hampstead Hill and the clientele of the Lower Flask were considered socially inferior. The pub is now a 19th creation having been rebuilt by Cumming and Nixon in 1874, since when it has been known as ‘The Flask’. It has the original glass and mahogany partitions, bar counter and fittings, cast-iron fireplaces with tiles and "Victorian chromolithographs". A vaulted brick-built cellar was discovered in 1990. It has been a Young’s pub since 1904.
65 Subscription library set up in 1833 Hampstead Pubic Library of General Literature and Elementary Science. In 1885 a reading room was installed and the working classes let in by a side door
Public Baths of 1888 built by Camden Baths and Washhouses. The Wells and Campden Charity which was a major local landowner and the site was chosen for being near the original Chalybeate spring on Well Walk. It had 9 baths, a laundry, and drying-room. Closed in 1978 and now residential.
Village green. This is the old village green, with grass and a number of trees. It used to be larger and in 1712 the Hampstead Fair took –place here.Watch house and site of stocks at the side of the telephone kiosk. The watch house was moved here from, Heath Street by 1795. It had two’ dungeons’ for the miscreants and was demolished soon after 1839. By the early C20th the Green was owned and maintained by Hampstead Borough Council
Two Type K6 telephone kiosks on the village green. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935, fabricated by W MacFarlane of Glasgow.
Frognal
First recorded in the 15th as a ‘customary tenement’ – an estate held on the basis that local custom must be adhered to. It was a community in its own right in the 17th and 18th. A manor farm and cottages were scattered along the road, which winds uphill. It grew from a single house and as other houses were built they took on the ‘Frognal’ name. ‘Frognal’ means ‘a nook of land frequented by frogs', and the area was well watered, with a cattle pond fed by a brook. The road itself appears to follow a stream flowing into the Westbourne.. It became a village in the 17th from a single house and as other houses were built it took on the ‘Frognal’ name which had been used from the 14th.
Frognal Hall, Manor farm and buildings. These were near the junction with Frognal Lane together with a group of other houses. It was set back from the road in 1½ acres, adjoining the churchyard, and probably existed by 1646
66 classic modernist house by Connell, Ward 1937, built of concrete with plastered walls, and non structural blue brick. The entrance is at the first-floor level while the top floor is partly on stilts and planned as deck. Built for solicitor, Geoffrey Walford and designed by Colin Lucas.
99 St. Dorothy’s Residence. This offers accommodation to young ladies coming to study in London and run by the Sisters of Saint Dorothy. The building is called Frognal House. It is mid-c18 built on the site of the original Frognal House. De Gaulle lived here during the latter part of the Second World War
103 Upper Frognal Lodge. Coach house to Henry Flitcroft's house Frognal Grove. c1745-50. . Home of Ramsay MacDonald, first Labour Prime Minister, 1925-37;
105-111 Frognal Grove. Approached by Lime Walk, which is a right of way. The house is subdivided into four semi-detached house. The core is 1745 by Henry Flitcroft. There is also a former stable, adapted by A. & P. Smithson in 1960.
39 this was the home of illustrator Kate Greenaway 1886-1901. It is a building by Norman Shaw and there is a plaque to Kate.
41 house, in the International Modern style by Alexander Flinders, 1966-8.
University College School. The School was founded in Gower Street in 1830 as part of University College, and here in 1907. UCS was founded with a liberal philosophy. It has three separate schools: the Phoenix School takes boys and girls aged 3-7. The school opened in 2002. The Junior Branch educated education for boys aged 7-11. The Senior School caters for boys aged from 11-18. Sixth form. The school took girls from 2008. The buildings are from 1905-7 by Arnold Mitchell and originally planned for 500 pupils. It is brick with a stone frontispiece and cupola. There is a great hall restored by Michael Foster after a fire in 1978. There are additions from the 1059s.1970s and subsequently.
Frognal Close
Now close in international modern style designed by Ernst Freud, son of Sigmund.
Site of Frognal Priory. In 1815 until 1817 Manor Lodge in Frognal was occupied by John Thompson (a retired auctioneer. he kept some of the land and in 1818 built a house later called Frognal Priory plus a lodge. The house had Gothic crenellations, Renaissance windows, Dutch gables, turrets, and a cupola. Thompson filled it with furniture he said had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey and Elizabeth I. It was demolished in 1876.
Frognal Gardens
Laid out in the grounds of the Old Mansion. Alexander Gray bought the Old Mansion on the east side of old Frognal c. 1889, laid out an L-shaped road, Frognal Gardens, through the grounds, and commissioned James Neale, a former pupil
18 Frognal End. Built for Sir Walter Besant 1836-1901 –'novelist and antiquary lived and died here'. A later resident was, Hugh Gaitskill. Labour Party leader
Frognal Lane
Once called West End Lane and is a continuation of the road which still has that name.
Frognal Rise
This is one of Hampstead’s oldest roads connecting Holly Hill and Branch Hill. There are a number of large 18th and 19th houses here.
Mount Vernon Hospital for Tuberculosis and Diseases of the Lungs. The Hospital took over a house called Mount Vernon and work began here in 1880 to –build the North London Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest designed in a 17th French renaissance style and fronting on Frognal Rise. The western block with 34 beds opened in 1881. On the first floor was a female ward, with the men on the second floor and facilities in floors above. The central block with entrance hall, a dining room was opened by Princess Christian in 1893 ad she paid off the debts on the building. In 1902 X-ray apparatus was installed and high frequency electrical currents were used for treatment. The eastern block was completed in 1903 for 45 patients. In 1913, because of financial difficulties everything moved to Northwood and the Hampstead building was sold to for a National Institute for Medical Research. In the Great War at first it became the No. 1 Canadian Stationary Hospital. But the changes needed to make it fit for purpose took two months. The following day the unit was sent overseas. In 1915 it became The Military Hospital, Hampstead and huts were built in the grounds. In 1916 it became a special army research hospital for the study and treatment of cardiac cases. In 1917 it became the Royal Flying Corps Central Hospital and an Air Medical Investigation Committee was established here to investigate the problems associated with flying. The National Institute for Medical Research - renamed the Medical Research Council remained in the buildings until 1950 and until 1972 it was used by as the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. The buildings have now been converted into flats.
Mount Vernon House, built in 1800, which had been the residence of the Hospital Secretary, became the Nurses' Home.
Frognal Way
Road which continues as a foot path from what was the hamlet of Frognal to St John’s church
66 Sun House. Modernist concrete house by Maxwell Fry. 1934-5, an object lesson in facade.
Gainsborough Gardens
Only the southern portion of this estate is in this square
The area was part of the site of Hampstead Wells spa. In 1698 6 acres of swampy ground, were donated by the then Lords of the Manor of Hampstead, the Gainsborough family, hence the name of the gardens. The Wells Trust was set up to administer this gift. Gainsborough Gardens was the pleasure garden area of the spa with a bowling green and an ornamental pond with boathouse.
Gated private estate. This is an oval crescent around a central garden laid out and developed by the Wells and Camden Charity Trust, set up to administer the Gainsborough gift, and overseen by their surveyor, H.S. Legg. The central garden was the site of the Spa’s ornamental pond, including an ice house. The estate was built following the ethos pioneered at Bedford Park and also steps to limit expansion onto Hampstead Heath and the preservation of Parliament Hill Fields - attributed to CE Maurice who lived here and was married to the sister of Octavia Hill, founder of the National Trust. English Heritage says that the area’s prominent in the history of the protection of open spaces’.
Ice Well. Domed, south facing 18th ice well under a mound. Brick built entered through a brick tunnel in a timber shed. Has been used as an air raid shelter. Ice probably came from the lake to use in ices in the Long Room.
Gayton Road
The entrance to the road was the entrance to the White Hart Inn and some of the road is on what was the yard of the pub
Golden Yard
Cluster of cottages at the back of Heath Street, once owned by a family called Goulding. Said to be a 16th sand pit.
Greenhill
Raised roadway paralleling Rosslyn Avenue and providing a frontage for flats. This may have been a roadway serving Mount Grove House
Hampstead High Street
Street of tall late 19th shopping terraces. Once called Kingswell Street, the name changed in the Middle Ages to Hampstead Street or Hampstead Hill.
88 Stanfield Hall – to the rear of Stanfield House, in Prince Arthur Road. Headquarters of the Rosicrucian Society. Previously Fourth Ch. of Christ Scientist from 1953 and Closed in 1978
85 Stanfield House. Once the home of Clarkson Stanfield 19TH, theatrical scenic artist, marine and landscape painter, Royal Academician and has had a variety of uses, including a school. It is currently used by Turning Point, a charity dealing with problems of alcohol and drug abuse
North London Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest. This opened in what is now Stanfield House in 1860. Stanfield may still have been resident when the patients arrived and may have had TB himself. The Hospital treated the poor and Patients came from all parts of the United Kingdom –The dry, bracing air of Hampstead was considered to be beneficial to recovery. Stanfield House was sold in 1864 and the Hospital then leased it back. Work began on the new hospital in 1880 and the patients were transferred from Stanfield House to the new building at Mount Vernon.
"The Hampstead Public Library of General Literature and Elementary Science -this was a Subscription Library moved here from Flask Walk in 1884. This was on the ground floor of the house which was altered for the library. In 1966 the library was closed and the stock WS dispersed.
2 Trinity Presbyterian church. This was first built in 1844 for Scottish inhabitants and they used the Temperance Hall in Perrin's Court. The congregation then moved to Well Walk Chapel in 1853, and in 1861 bought 2 High Street. They built a new church which opened in 1862. It was demolished in 1962 and Shops were built on the site and the hall was converted into Trinity Close.
9a Hampstead Brewery. This was founded in 1720 by John Vincent. Later known as Harris & Co., Acquired by Reffells Brewery in 1931. The remains of the brewery are still standing at the rear of the property. The buildings stood, behind the King of Bohemia pub on Hampstead High Street and, by the end of the 1920s, employed 128 people. The site was refurbished in the 1970s and the adapted original buildings stand in Old Brewery Mews, designed by Dinerman, Davidson & Partners in 1973
10 King of Bohemia built here in 17th before 1680 and rebuilt in the 1930s. It was originally called The King of Bohemia's Head. It closed in the early 21st. The King of Bohemia was the Elector Palentine and son in law to James I.
14 The Three Tuns Tavern
17 White Hart, This pub was trading by 1762 but is now long gone. The entrance to Gayton Road is sited on the yard entrance
Penfold pillar box. This is outside no 23. It is of the Penfold type, c1866-79, a hexagonal box in cast-iron, with ‘VR’ on the door and ‘VR’ plus the Royal Arms above the mouth along with "Post" and "Office". It is no longer in use. In 1914 it was damaged by suffragettes. Smoke was seen coming from box - tar and oil had been poured in and set alight,
38/39 Bird in Hand. This pub dates from 1771, converted from a coffee house, and rebuilt in 1879. It is now Cafe Rouge and was previously a branch of Dome. There is a carved motif of a dove over the central door at first floor level. Said to be hidden sign ‘Alton Ales’.
Omnibus routes. Buses left from the Bird in Hand - Eight to the City in 1834. In 1856, most were acquired by the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Londres – this became the London General Omnibus Co. or L.G.O.C..
Hampstead station opened in 1907 it lies between Golders Green and Belsize Park on the Northern Line. It was opened by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway and taken over by Yerkes. Work started 1903. It was originally to be called Heath Street – there is some signage showing this at platform level. Its unusually shaped surface building is determined by the topography. It was designed by Leslie Green Like other Northern Line's stations there are rows of arches and ox-blood glazed tiles. It is the deepest station in London lying 250' below surface and the Second World War it was used as an air raid shelter. Its lift shaft is 181 feet down, originally housing Otis lifts which were modernised by the Wadsworth Lift Company, and again in 2014 by Accord. The metal roof structure houses the lift equipment. There is also a spiral emergency staircase with over 320 steps. Only the ticket hall and some isolated areas remain as original. The central entrance was blocked in the 1980s and the ticket hall modernised in 1988. The beamed ceilings and clock remain and there are original finishes by the Permanent Decorative Glass Company. .
Hampstead Hill Gardens,
This is a street with red brick artists' villas built 1875-83, or ’gentleman artists’ by Batterbury & Huxley, described as ’rosered villas’ with rubbed-brick ornaments.
Heath Street
Late 19th road but stands in an area mentioned in 19th charters. I he late19th road improvement and slum clearance led to development of the street
28 The Horseshoe pub. This pub was originally at 62 High Street, but moved here in 1890. It was then called the Three Horseshows. For a while it was a Wetherspoons. A brewing operation began in the cellar of the pub but by 2010, it was too big and moved out to become the Camden Town Brewery.
49 Hampstead Fire Station. Hampstead fire station, designed by George Vulliamy, opened in 1874 on the site of the former police station. For the Metropolitan Board of Works. It has patterned brick, and a comer clock tower, said to have been a watch tower but which has lost its pyramidal roof. There is a plaque on the building explaining all this.
64 Cinema. This was the Eldorado Cinematograph which opened 1909/10 but was not licenced until September 1909. In 1913, it was re-named Hampstead Picture Palace, and also the Hampstead Electric Theatre. It was closed in 1916, and in 1917 it was the Tube Tea Rooms. It has since become a restaurant.
68 Horse and Groom. Closed and now in other use. The name sign remains at first floor level.
79-81 Nags Head. For awhile this was The Cruel Sea and said to have murals on the walls. Now in other use’s
Baptist Church, in the 18th Baptists used a room in Holly Bush Hill but some left to set up an ‘Ebeneezer Strict Baptist Church’ in New End. The Heath Street building opened in 1861 and paid for by James Harvey, a London merchant the site had previously been a fruit and vegetable garden.
British School. This was connected to the chapel but eventually moved to a purpose built block in New End. It is said to have been ‘well regarded’. The building may remain as part of the chapel
Holly Bush Hill
This was in the 19th a pathway called Bradley’s Buildings
Romney House. This was the site of Cloth Hill designed by Samuel Bunce as a two-storeyed timber framed and weatherboarded house. The portrait painter George Romney bought the house in 1796. He wanted to build a studio with a museum of casts from the antique, where students would work under his supervision. The original house had a garden, a stable, and coach house. Romney built a new stable plus a "whimsical structure”. He left in 1799, and in 1807 it became the Hampstead Assembly Rooms with a tea room, ballroom and card room. The Hampstead Literary and Scientific Society began here in 1833, the Conversazione Society followed in 1846 and met here. From 1886 the Constitutional Club met here. In 1929 it was bought by Clough Williams-Ellis as his home and international writers were entertained here. The house was redesigned by 6a architects in 2012 and a staircase tower added. The stables became a pub. There is a London County Council plaque on the house
Green space –there are two small areas of green space maintained by Hampstead Borough Council, now by LB Camden. One is a narrow strip of land laid out as a shrubbery, and the other a small area of grass with some small trees with low post and chain boundary.
New Camden Court built 1887 by the Wells and Camden Charity but taken over eventually by the local authority,
Holly Bush Vale
Hampstead Parochial Schools. Boys’, girls' and infants' schools of 1856, having previously been in other premises from an organs charitable school. c. 1862 and 1887;
Everyman Cinema. The building dates from 1888 as an assembly room to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. It later became the Hampstead Drill Hall, and base for the Hampstead Regiment and Films were screened in the basement room the 1890’s. It opened as the Everyman Theatre in 1920 presenting plays by new playwrights and closed in 1933. It reopened as a cinema and was redesigned by Alistair Gladstone MacDonald, and equipped with a Western Electric sound system. From 1934 it showed foreign films which could only be seen there. It closed in 1940 and reopened in 1943 and from the end of the War it returned to showing foreign films. In 1954 it opened an art gallery in the foyer. And Sunday concerts were held. Despite a down turn it survived and was refurbished in 1984 with grants from the Greater London Council and Channel 4 TV. In 1986 a cafe/restaurant was opened, A Saturday morning children’s cinema club was introduced and cine-variety presentations ad live concerts held. Later a second screen was added and there is also a private screening room
Holly Hill
11 University College School Junior School, site of Holly Hill House This is the junior school of the school founded in Gower Street in 1830 as part of University College, London and moved here in 1907. It was founded to promote the Benthamite principles of liberal scholarship and education
Holly Mount
The Baptist Chapel is said to have originated in a building here built in 1818. It later became printers with the Hampstead and Highgate Express. Since 1911 it has been housing and a studio
Holly Bush Pub. Said to be built on the site of painter Romney’s stables and opened in 1897. Romney lived to the rear at 6 the Mount or Cloth Hill, in 1796. When he moved away in 1799, he converted the stables into Prospect House and studio. His son sold it in 1801 and it was converted into assembly rooms and the stables into the pub. This was a Beskins House and more recently Fullers.
18 this was the Holly Mount Laundry in the 1850s
Holly Place
4 St. Mary's RC Church. Built 1816 and in the centre of a recessed terrace of cottages. This is one of the earliest Roman Catholic churches in London and is a. Monument to Abbe Morel, founded by French émigrés at the expense of the congregation at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The stuccoed front was added by W. Wardell in 1850: it has a statue of the Virgin in a niche above, and an open belfry plus bell.
1 St Vincent's Orphanage for Little Boys. Soon after the church was built, two schools, for boys and girls, were set up next to the presbytery and supported by subscriptions. By the 1860s there was also an orphanage for boys. In 1871 a new priest had a new school built behind the church. The Franciscan Tertiary Sisters from St Joseph's College took over the school and orphanage and opened a convent at No 1. Eventually it had taken over all the buildings in the terrace south of the church. In 1907 the school was condemned by the Board of Education and demolished. In 1911, the orphanage was closed and the convent amalgamated with Sisters in Canning Town.
Holly Walk
9 The Watch House. Hampstead police watch house built 1830. A plaque says "in the 1830s the newly formed Hampstead Police Force set out on its patrol and nightly watch from this house." They moved out after four years
Kemplay Road
Laid out by the British Land Company in the late 1870s
Lakis Walk
Built in 1973 an alley of houses, grey brick and exposed concrete by Gerson Rottenberg.
Lyndhurst Gardens
17 The Hoo. This is a large house designed by Horace Field from 1888-90, and altered in 1987-88. It is built of red brick with tile-hanging on the upper storey. The house is now occupied by the Belsize, Gospel Oak and West Hampstead Community Health Teams. The archives of the Royal Free Hospital are also held here. Fleet Counselling, who offer affordable one-on-one counselling services are based here
26 Maria Montessori Children’s House Nursery. It is one of William Willett's developments, designed by H. B. Measures: tall detached gabled house
Marie Curie Hospice. in 1948 Not long before the Hampstead-based Marie Curie Hospital was transferred to the NHS, a group of committee members decided to preserve the name of Marie Curie in the charitable medical field and thus fund raised and set up the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation − a charity dedicated to alleviating suffering from cancer today − today known as Marie Curie Cancer Care.
Lyndhurst road
This was part of the Rosslyn Park Estate, which belonged to Westminster Abbey. Streets here were developed slowly from 1853, covering the grounds of Rosslyn House.
Tower Close. Built in 1982 by Pollard Thomas & Edwards, with a comer tower. Built on the site of Eldon House
Rosslyn House, this was one of four houses here built in the late 18th and named Rosslyn Lodge when it was the home of the Earl of Rosslyn in the early 19th. It later became The Royal Soldiers' Daughters' Home, founded in 1855 to relieve the families of soldiers in the Crimea.
Olave Centre. HQ of the World Association of Girl Guides has a core of Rosslyn Lodge a small stuccoed villa built c. 1800, with ogee-topped turret and shallow bow. Extensions, tactfully white-rendered but dwarfing the original house, by John Dangerfield, 1980-91. The centre serves the ten million Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from 145 countries across the world. It is the largest voluntary movement dedicated to girls and young women in the world. Olave of course was the first Chief Guide.
Rosslyn Grove. Late 18th brick house, standing behind the church
Congregational church building now the AIR Recording Studio. The church originated in services held in an iron building in 1876 and was formed in 1880. Members of the church bought land on the Rosslyn Grove estate, selling part to finance the construction of the church. The new church was opened in 1884 and a lecture hall and school were added later. In 1972 the church became part of the United Reformed churches and closed in 1978. The building is By Waterhouse and centrally planned. It is in Purple brick and coloured terracotta decoration; it was changed inside and subdivided as a concert hall and recording studios in 1991-2 by Bernard Parker of Heber-Percy & Parker.
AIR Studios. The studio began in 1969 when George Martin left EMI to establish an independent recording complex. A sister studio, in Montserrat, opened in mid 1970′s but was forced to close after a hurricane. In 1991 a new AIR Studios moved into Lyndhurst Hall. Sir George Martin opened it in 1992 with a gala performance of “Under Milk Wood” in the presence of The Prince of Wales.
19-21 Group of 3 houses, plus the old lodge to Rosslyn House attached at the corner. The houses were designed in 1897-8 by Horace Field; and the former lodge was built 1865 attributed to S.S. Teulon.
1-3 Lyndhurst Terrace. Gothic houses designed im 1864-5 by and for Alfred Bell, the stained-glass designer, and his father-in-law John Burlison, assistant to Gilbert Scott.
Maresfield Gardens
4 Cecil Sharp
16 for the Danish glass designer Arild Rosenkrantz, plain brick |
20 Freud Museum. a broad symmetrical Queen Anne house. home of Sigmund reud and where he died. interior alterations are by his son, Ernst. In 1938, Sigmund Freud left Vienna as a refugee from the Nazi occupation and came to England. He resumed work a year later. His collection of Eyptian, Greek, Ottoman and Oriental antiquities, his working library and papers, and his furniture including the desk and couch are here. These rooms were his laboratory, the site of his discoveries about the human psyche, and they offer insights into the nature of his achievements as the founder of pschoanalysis. The house was later the home of his daughter, Anna 1895-1982, whose development of her father's work is also part of the museum.
St, Thomas More RC church. 1968 elliptical. Undramatic.
58 1938-9 by H. Herry-Zwiegenthal for F Jolowitz, a modernist house of brick, with an angled projecting room carrying a bold pierced metal balcony
Netherhall Gardens
50 built at part of 61 Fitzjohn's Avenue in 1878 as a single house for the artist Edwin Long by Shaw. Thanks to the architect's inexhaustible fantasy motifs and composition from his own house in Ellerdale Road low, comfortable, broadly composed, with Dutch gables, and below, in the middle of them, a project studio with large bow at the end.
New Court
Flats. Consists of two bleak five-storey blocks of artisan tenements, one of 1854-5, and a slightly more decorative one of 1871, the latter perhaps by T. G. Jackson, whose father, Hugh Jackson, a local solicitor, paid for the earlier one.
55, The Tower, 1880 H.F. Baxter by T. Wimperis. Massive Baronial creation, stone balconies and tourelles; grand gate piers and gates
47 St Mary's Convent is by George Lethbridge for L. Casella, c. 1880; much terracotta detail.
6, Three Gables, 1881 Shaw for Frank Holl, demolished
Flockhart's studio house for Pettie. Now demolished.
6 1882-3 for Thomas Davidson, by Batterbury & Huxley, with a large studio wing with big leaded-light window. The best house in the hinterland.
New End
Area of gambling and souvenir shops in the early 18th. Later dominated by the hospital.
Workhouse. The parish workhouse had been in Frognal but was moved here n 1891 because of conditions there. A large house was bought here and extended under Henry White. This remained until 1842 when inmates were moved to Edmonton and this building went into other use. In 1848 Hampstead became a Poor Law authority and sanctioned a new building by H.E.Kendall and these are the buildings fronting onto New End. It is said that the stone breaking cells are still extant. In 1878 the infirmary was extended and in 1883 a new circular ward block was built. In 1896 another infirmary block was added on the corner with Heath Street. In the Great War the whole complex was a military hospital and facilities were improved, with X-rays and an operating theatre – it was thought wounds healed more quickly the higher the altitude. From 1922 the buildings were back with Hampstead Guardians and renamed the New End Hospital.
New End Hospital. The workhouse infirmary was renamed a hospital in 1922. In 1930 it was taken over by the London County Council and became a general hospital, including space for children and a maternity department. There was also an Out-patients Department and a Casualty Department. In 1931 a Thyroid Clinic gained an international reputation for the treatment of patients suffering from toxic goitre and myasthenia gravis. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948 and it became recognised as a hospital for acutely sick patients and a centre for endocrinology. By 1955 the world's most modern radioactive iodine isotope was developed in the basement. From 1972 when the new Royal Free Hospital opened New End Hospital became a geriatric hospital. The site was closed in 1986, despite much opposition. The site is now a gated estate developed by Berkeley Homes, 1996-7. The old ward blocks were converted and refurbished for residential use in 1996-1998. The the main frontage to New End has been preserved. This area is own called Upper Hampstead walk
Rotunda. This is a hospital ward with attached an ablution and water tank tower 1884-5 by Charles Bell, an early example of a circular ward, with central chimney and square tower to one side, with 3 floors containing wards, with accommodation staff. The tower includes a cast-iron water tank. It had a ventilation system and was the first free-standing example of the circular "ward tower" in the country. The design gave improved air, light and ventilation with the advantage of only needing a small site.
Boiler house chimney. This was built in 1898 and Designed by Keith D Young, built by Frederick Gough and Co of Hendon. As part of New End Hospital. It is in Red brick with Portland stone dressings, tapering towards the top. It is the only surviving part of the boiler and laundry house
16 Heathside Preparatory School. Middle school. This is a boarding and day ’preparatory 'school with five other sites nearby. Following some problems with Ofsted the school is now owed by Dukes Education and has a new head. After its parent company of 27 years, Remus White Limited went into administration. This site also contains their head office
23 Duke of Hamilton Pub. This pub has strong community focus which fields its own cricket and rugby teams. Named after a Civil War Royalist, it opened in 1721 rebuilt 1930s. It was a popular meeting place for actors Peter O'Toole, Oliver Reed and Richard Burton. Reed would be seen for long periods at the pub on a daily basis. . In 2015, its landlord barred some 800 members of community group Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum after their successful campaign to make the pub an Asset of Community Value against his wishes.]The pub closed in July 2017, and was reopened in early 2018 as the "Hampstead Lounge & Jazz Club and the Hampstead Jazz Club is based in its cellar.
27 Mortuary. This was –part of the hospital and was linked to the hospital across the road by a tunnel. It is where Karl Marx was laid out. It became the New End Theatre in 1974. It is now the Village Shul.
27 New End Theatre founded in 1974 in the converted mortuary. It had a number of successes which transferred to both the West End and Broadway and also showed world premieres of works by Jean Anouilh, Steven Berkoff, and Arnold Wesker. It closed in 2011 because of declining audiences
27 Village Shul. An independent Orthodox congregation of around 50 families
16c Hampstead Provident Dispensary. This was built by local fundraising in thanks for escaping the cholera epidemic. IT was founded in 1846 by the Rev Thomas Ainger as a sick relief club and dispensary. Initially they used rooms in the workhouse but in 1850 following collections in churches land was purchased at New End and a three storied building opened in 1853. In January 1879 they amalgamated with the Hampstead Dispensary in Heath Street and then both operating from the New End premises. From 1911 Following the National Insurance Act it declined in importance and closed in 1948 on the creation of the National Health Service. The building was sold in 1950.and is now a private school
Samuel Hoare's British School. Opened by 1811 in a building. Paid for by Hoare, who also paid master's salary and other expenses? After the Parochial school was united with National Society but without religious test, Hoare closed the school, it later became the Baptist chapel.
Ebenezer Baptist chapel. In 1825 a group of seceders from a Hampstead Baptist congregation founded Ebenezer Strict Baptist chapel in New End, at first meeting in a house. The Ebenezer chapel opened 1827 in a former schoolroom. In 1938 the Chapel was compulsorily purchased for flats
New End Square
Built to accommodate visitors to the Spa
Burgh House. Saved from conversion to offices in 1979. The house hosts regular art exhibitions, serves as a classical concert venue and is home to the Hampstead Museum. The house was built in 1704 and was the home of the Hampstead Spa's physician, Dr. William Gibbons. The current wrought-iron gate carries his initials. Until the 1870s the house was known as Lewis House after another resident. In 1858 Burgh House was taken over by the Royal East Middlesex Militia, and served as the headquarters and officers' mess until 1881. The house returned to residential use in 1884. From 1937 until after the Second World War it was empty and it was eventually bought and restored by the local authority. This included demolition of barrack blocks in front of the building. In 1947 it reopened as a community centre with a Citizen's Advice Bureau in its basement. Problems with dry rot led to another closure in 1977, local residents launched a "Keep Burgh House" appeal, as a result leased the house. In 1979, it reopened with the museum
40 this was once a pub called The Hawk. Opened before 1748. It was rebuilt in 1815, and closed in the 1840s or 1850s.
Well Walk Pottery. This was the workshop of Christopher Magarshack. He made ceramics of all sorts, as well as woodwork and in later years stained glass. The pottery had originated in 1957 when his family bought Sidney Spall’s Grocer’s Shop and opened it as a studio.
North London Railway
The North London Railway from Hampstead Heath Station continues south westwards mainly through a tunnel in this section.
Perrin’s Court
This is a private road, partly made of mews type buildings. It has a granite sett surface.
Temperance Hall. Used by the Presbyterian congregation in the 1840s.
Perrin's Lane
A very old lane which linked Hampstead village to Frognal. It was earlier called Church Lane Perrin was the land owner
2 Henry Holiday stained-glass painter, set up a glassworks here in the late 1891. He made stained glass, mosaics, enamels and sacerdotal objects.
Pilgrim’s Lane
The northern part of the road was once Worsley Road. The road is named after Charles Pilgrim who had bought the manor
Prince Arthur Road
2a this was a Christian Science Church
Railway – North London Line
The North London Line is in a tunnel here – as it has been in the two squares to the east. This was opened in 1860 . Excavations for it were cut in two depth stages- the first about half of the depth needed but three times as wide in order to make a working area for men and machinery. the centre of the trench was to be the final tunnel area. The tunnel was narrower than most other tunnels although the reason is not known. The width of the line crossing Finchley Road is also narrow and it could be guesed that the reason was financial. It is also likely that constant pumping was needed because of underground water. The tunnel was the subject of major works in 1995 to install overhead electric wiring for Eurostar.
Rosslyn Hill
Was at one time called Red Lion Hill after a pub which was on the site of the later police station. Named after Alexander Wedderburn, Earl of Rosslyn, and Lord Chancellor who was sacked from the Woolsack in 1861.
Mount Grove. This was the home of Longman the publisher, with an exhibition garden and many big trees. Also called the Rookery. The building of Prince Arthur Road shaved away a northern strip of the site. The cedar trees are said to have been kept but the rooks had cleared off
Hampstead Wesleyan Church. Built 1870 and demolished about 1934. This was on some of the Mount Grove site and was on the corner of Prince Arthur Road. They had previously been in South Hill Park from 1869 and bought this Site in 1870. The building was red brick by Charles Bell. A gallery was added in 1878 but the tower was never built. The site includes a school, vestries, and a caretaker's house. The site is now flats.
65 Vane House. This was named after 17th Henry Vane who was an ex-American settler who became an administrator under the Commonwealth. Eventually he quarrelled with Cromwell. He was executed on Tower Hill after the Restoration. The House demolished but RSA plaque of 1897 remains on a surviving gate pier 'statesman lived here. There were subsequently a number of distinguished residents and it was eventually bought by the Soldiers' Daughters' Home and demolished in 1972
65 The Soldiers' Daughters' Home. This was founded in 1855 with the object 'to nurse, clothe, board, and educate the destitute female children ... of soldiers’. Initially they were at Rosslyn House. The girls did all the household work themselves, assisted in the kitchen, nursery and sick room, and so on. Following extensive fund-raising, they bought Vane House, to build permanent premises and a new building, was opened in 1858, by Prince Albert. The building for 200 girls was in the Early English style by William Munt. From 1924, the Home was maintained by the London County Council. But 1945 when the charity turned into an independent all-age boarding school and girls attended local schools. In the late 1960s, a modern building was constructed and the old ones demolished. A modern housing estate was built. In 1987 –now called Vane Close - the Home was renamed the Royal School, Hampstead, with girls being admitted from all armed services, plus civilian pupils.. In 2011 it was closed and in 2012 North Bridge House Senior School took over the Royal School site with an address in Vane Close.
Drinking fountain. In the wall of 65. This dates from around c1875 and may be associated with the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association. It is in polished granite. And has a semicircular animal bowl at the bottom which says ‘"The merciful man is merciful to his beast". The main fountain is a projecting semicircular basin with a slab which says "Jesus said 'Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst". An also around the arch "Ask and ye shall receive: Seek and ye shall find".
48 Rosslyn Arms. This pub was established as the Red Lion and was rebuilt in 1869. It was then called the Rosslyn Arms. It Closed in 2012
40 Lloyds Bank Built 1891 by Horace Field, with a corner entrance
Red Lion Inn. This was a very old, maybe 14th, house. It was leased from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, on condition that a truss of hay was given for the horse of the mass-priest, who came up from the Abbey on Sundays... This inn is long gone.
26 Police Station. Desiged by, Dixon Butler in 1910-13. They had previously been on the other side of the road. It included a stable and harness room, railings and lamps. .This building is no longer n use by the police.
K6 telephone box: outside the police station this is a K6
Police station. The police moved here in 1868 to a site was next to the sailors’ daughters’ home. They moved across the road to no 26 in 191.
64-66 buildings of 1890s on the site of the Chicken House Inn. This may have been a 17th hunting lodge. There was a window and a plaque to say that the King and the Duke of Buckingham has slept there. It later became a pub and was demolished in the 19th. Originally it was a low brick building. It pub closed around 1754
Queen Elizabeth's House. This building had a local tradition that Queen Elizabeth once spent a night there. Various 19th historians who knew the building were very disparaging about this claim. Later it was taken over by a religious order that changed its name to "St. Elizabeth's Home." And ran it as girls’ boarding school – presumably one of the many that were in his area in the 19th.
Unitarian Chapel built 1862 by John Johnson in Kentish rag. The aisle and chancel built 1885 by Thomas Worthington. The main entrance was moved to Rosslyn Hill in 1898 and a line of shops was demolished to achieve this. Furnishings and monuments of high quality indicate the strength of Hampstead Unitarianism.
Rudall Crescent
Laid out in 1878
13a Penn Studios, with plaque to artist Mark Gertler. There is a sculpture gallery at eaves level.
Shepherd's Walk,
Royal Mail Delivery Office
4a The Old Chapel. This is an architect’s office
Streatley Place
A tiny passage between the workhouse site and New End School. It continues as a footpath through the old hospital estate and eventually gets to Back Lane.
New End Primary School. Built as New End Board School in 1905-6, by the London County Council Schools branch and designed by .T.J. Bailey. Pevsner says it is ‘one of his most remarkable buildings; squeezed onto a tiny hillside site, and handled in an exceptionally confident free Baroque manner’. It is dramatically tall. It is said to have been built above a spring going down to the river Fleet. Since 1951 it has been New End Primary school.
12 City Arms. This pub became the school house for New End School from around 1910. It closed as a pub in 1905
Waterhouse Close
Waterhouse Close. Housing for the elderly by Camden Architect's Department, 1980-2.
Wedderburn Road
Another road named after Alexander Wedderburn, future Earl Rosslyn – Scottish lawyer and Lord Chancellor.
Wedderburn House. Small mansion block of 1884
Well Road
White Bear Place. The Old White Bear pub dates back to 1704, rebuilt 1930s and closed in 2014. It is the subject of a long-running campaign for it to be restored as a pub
Well Walk
Well Walk ran from the centre of Hampstead to The Wells. (Which are to the north of this square).
Willoughby Road,
On grounds of Carlisle House, sold to the British Land Co. in 1875,
Trinity Court. This was the Sunday School for the Presbyterian Church which stood on the corner with Rosslyn Road and converted in the early 1960s.
Willow Road
The road s built on the Line of stream going to the river Fleet. The source arose near Flask Walk. Until the early 19th the stream supported watercress beds
Retaining walls and brick arches include a brick stairway which went to Willow Buildings, 19th flats above.
Windmill Hill
Mount Vernon House originally called Windmill Hill House was built on the site of the other windmill between 1725 and 1728 by William Knight, a Hampstead timber smith.
Sources
Acorn Archive. Web site
AIR studios web site
Beamon. The Ice Houses of Britain
Borer. Hampstead and Highgate
British History Online. Hampstead. Web site
British Listed Buildings Web site
Camden History review
Camden History review
Children’s Homes. Web site
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
English Heritage. Blue Plaque Guide
Field. London place names
Hampstead Baptist Church. Web site
Hillman. London Under London
Historic England. Web site
London Borough of Camden. Web site.
London Encyclopaedia,
London Gardens online. Web site
London Remembers. Web site
London Transport. Country Walks
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Lucas. London
Mitchell and Smith. North London Line
Nairn. Modern Buildings
national Archives, Web site
National Archives, Web site
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
St. Anthony’s School. Web site.
St.Johns Church. Web site
Summerson. Georgian London
The Underground Map. Web site
Wade. Hampstead Past
WAGGS. Web site
Walford. Highgate to the Lea
Wikipedia. As appropriate
This area consists of many roads where most buildings are listed and many have been lived in by a succession of famous people. This blog is supposed to be about workplaces and public buildings – so the amount of detail on architecture and celebrity has been drastically limited.
Akenside Road
Named for Mark Akenside poet and doctor lived at Golders Hill
Arkwright Road
Camden Arts Centre. Camden Arts Centre was built as Hampstead Central Library and designed by the Arnold Taylor and extended in 1926. It was opened in 1897 by its funder Henry Harben Deputy Chairman of the Prudential Assurance Company. The structure survived bombs and a V2 in the Second World War while used as an ARP post. In 1964 a new the Swiss Cottage library opened as part of a modern library service. Hampstead Arts Centre was opened here in 1965 with classes in painting, life drawing, pottery, printing and design. Refurbished 2004 by Tony Fretton. There is also a garden, bookshop, and café.
1 Senior House of St.Anthony’s School (fee paying, Catholic ‘preparatory’)
2 house used by Devonshire House School. (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
4 built for the artist F.W. Topham and there is a plaque to him on it. Used by Devonshire House School (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
6 built for writer Henry Arthur Jones Used by Devonshire House School (fee paying, ‘preparatory’)
13b modernist house by Godfrey Samuel and Valentine Harding, a member of Tecton. Brick with concrete floors and glass bricks at the front. Built for Cecil Walton headmaster of University College School. Inside is a fireplace in flints.
21 home of Tobias Matthay 1858-1945. Matthay was a radical teacher of the piano. A plaque on the house was installed in 1979.
Back Lane
The road existed by 1745
5 Radius Works. Charities Advisory Trust
Belsize Court Gardens
Mews area named for the gardens of 18th Belsize Court, previously known as the White House, which lay slightly to the north of here in Belsize Lane
1 modernist house
Belsize Crescent
The Belsize area was developed from the 1840s by Daniel Tidey. He sublet an area to the north to William Willett who built this crescent of villas 1868-1875
Belsize Lane
32 St.Christopher’s School. On the site of Belsize Court School, which used Belsize Court. It was founded in the 1880s. This is yet another fee paying ‘preparatory’ school for girls.
Belsize Place
A footpath follows and old route through the area and links through to Lyndhust Road crossing the line of the Midland Railway which is underground here.
Belsize Court Garages. Red brick range built by Willett as livery stables
Bird in Hand Yard
This is a narrow alley associated with the Bird in Hand pub. It has brick walls on either side. Tram services started from here and the yard is said to have had stables for the LGOC horses. It had a covered entry from the High Street.
Church Row
Built 1710-1728 and considered one of the finest Georgian suburban streets in London. The original houses had no mews or stables. Most houses are listed and many have had famous residents.
Tollgate. Until the late 19th the access to Frognal at the north end of the road was barred by a tollgate.
St.John’s Church .1745-7 and not clear which St.John is intended. The medieval church had a wooden tower for the Benedictine monks of Westminster - the then owners - so that they could look up to it. The old church was in need of repair by the 18th and Henry Flitcroft, who was a local resident, offered to rebuild it in 1744. The parish rejected his designs and turned to another parishioner, Palladian architect John Sanderson. This building has a plain brown brick outside with the tower at the end to save money. The upper part of the tower rebuilt by Samuel Steemson in 1759, with battlements and a spike added in 1782-3. However this is a pretty church demonstrating the social life of Hampstead in the early 19th. Inside are box pews and umbrella stands. It became a parish church in 1860. A competition was held in 1874 for a new building, which led to a campaign to save the 18th tower. One result of this was that William Morris took to campaigning against ‘restoring’ churches. F.P. Cockerell was the winning competitor, and his work in 1877-8 turned it round. The Vicar was a friend of Byron – but following a dispute an evangelical vicar was appointed in 1832. In 1910 the congregation bought the Freehold. There are carved Hanoverian Royal Arms and Commandment Boards in the gallery and much other art work. The church has a long musical tradition which it maintains with a professional choir and high-profile concerts. The current organ was installed by Henry Willis in 1884.
Churchyard. This is a Garden with iron railings and wrought iron gates from the 1747 sale of Canons at Little Stanmore. The churchyard is enclosed by 19th wrought iron railings with a dwarf brick wall. There is long grass and mature trees. At the west entrance is an 18th wrought-iron gate from the 1747 sale of the Duke of Chandos' mansion Canons. The northern entrance has wrought and cast-iron railings an original Sugg 6-sided Westminster lantern and a lamp-holder with ladder bar incorporated in the railings. The brick churchyard walls date from the 18th. There are lots of tombs including that of John Constable 1837, John Harrison, Norman Shaw and Hugh Gaitskell as well as those of famous show business people and many more.
St John's Churchyard Extension An additional plot of land was purchased on the other side of Church Row in 1812. There are many monuments including one by Eric Gill and others using Coade stone
9 Hampstead Reformatory for Girls. Following the decision by the Rescue Society to close its reformatory at no 28 a new institution was founded here. It opened in 1860 and the inmates of 28 moved in. It closed in 1876 and the building was used by the .Field Lane Industrial School for Girls, from Clerkenwell. In 1893 some of the building had to be reconstructed and the school closed in 1901.
28 Reformatory for Girls. This opened in 1857 for ‘openly immoral’ young women. It closed in 1860.
Copper Beech Close
Modern housing on an infill site which appears to be built over the twin tunnels of the Midland Main Line out of Euston.
Daleham Gardens
The earliest houses here date from the 1880s
Air vent – an air vent to the Midland Main Line tunnels below are marked on maps for the north end of the road, east side.
33 Gloucester House. NHS Day Unit
Daleham Mews
Stable buildings tarted up by posh architects. Built up from the 1880s.
Old people flats
Denning Road
38 Denning Hall. Built as a mission hall in 1883, associated with St. Stephen’s Church, Rosslyn Hill. Later converted into artists' studios and as housing.
Downshire Hill
The western end of the street was originally called Albion Grove and was developed from 1813. Site of Red Lion Hill brickfields. Most houses in the road are listed and most have had famous residents – many of them successively.
1b Keats GP Group Practice. Built as a postal sorting office by the Office of Works in 1891 an apparently later used by the National Assistance Board.
14a former school of St. Johns Church. This was apparently built in the early 1830s at his own expense by John Willcox, who owned the church and with whom there were disputes and a court case. It was financed by subscriptions and a parliamentary grant. It was closed and transferred to St. Stephen’s elementary school in 1874-5. In the 1920s it was used as a studio by sculptor Sydney Carline and others, and appears to continue in studio and residential use today.
Ellerdale Road
The area belonged to the Greenhill estate and was built up in the early 1870s with grand gothic villas, many of them by T.K. Green
6 Institute of St Marcellina. This is an Italian Sisterhood providing accommodation for foreign students. Also called Hampstead Towers. It was Norman Shaw’s own house built for himself and daringly progressive. Built in 1874-6 by W.H. Lascelles for Shaw himself, who lived there until 1912. The house is tall and appears craggy.
24 King Alfred's school opened in 1898 here to practise modern theories of education. The school had no religious or political affiliations; discipline depended on the pupils' co-operation and competition was discouraged. It moved to Hendon in 1919.
Finchley Road
Finchley Road and Frognal Station. This opened in 1860 and now lies between Hampstead Heath and West Hampstead Stations on the North London Line. It was originally called Finchley Road Station on the Hampstead Junction Railway and the entrance was very humble. Tunnel from Hampstead Heath on North London Railway 1879s
Arkwright Mansions. These flats were part of a housing development for J.E. J and E. A. Cave, in 1896. The building was opened in 1900. There were lead covered spires on two of the dormers, besides a dome over the corner tower, which have survived. Work started at the Arkwright Road end and the building quality reduces down the length of the building, so cost must have been a factor.
Fitzjohns Avenue
The road was built as a link between Swiss Cottage and central Hampstead on land sold by the Maryon Wilsons to developers in 1875 and named after an estate of theirs in Essex. It opened up a large area between here and Finchley Road for development with large houses. From the 1920s houses were divided into flats
Source of the Tyburn. This is marked by a disused drinking fountain at the junction with Lyndhurst Road said to be near the site of Shepherd's Well.. This is marked as 'Conduit' on a map of 1814. The well when closed was 24 feet wide and lay about halfway between the fountain and the opposite corner of Akenside Road. The water is said to have clean and pure.
116 Monro House. This was The Royal Sailors' Orphan Girls' School and Home. It was founded by Major Powys in 1829 at Frognal House. In 1869 it moved to this new building designed by Edward Ellis. In 1871 two rooms were a school for 60 girls of all ages, learning for a future as household servants. It seems to have closed in 1957 and transferred to a similar organisation in Hull. The building is now flats for pensioners owned by LB Camden.
Air vent for the tunnel of the North London Line which runs under the road is marked on maps to the north of the Lyndhurst Road junction.
47 St Mary’s School. Fee paying private Roman Catholic School. Established here in 1926 founded by the Congregation of Jesus. The house dates from 1880 designed by George Lethbridge for L.M. Casella plus a 20th chapel. The house is in orange brick with decoration in high quality gauged and rubbed brickwork. There is a brick boundary wall in stepped sections with cast-iron railings and wrought-iron gates. This was an extremely expensive house to build and its quality is apparent. Casella was the inventor of the clinical thermometer.
66 Havelock Hall, a Baptist Training College. In the 1930s used as an annexe to Westminster Hospital
66 Marie Curie Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases had been founded at 2 Fitzjohn's Avenue in 1929. These buildings, except for the new wing and the shelter, were totally destroyed by a high explosive bomb in 1944. And they moved to the Westminster hospital annexe for temporary relocation. Following repairs and improvement, the 50-bedded Hospital was opened by Queen Mary in 1946. In 1965 it was decided to move the Hospital in its entirety to a ward at Mount Vernon Hospital, where the equipment of a modern radiotherapy department would be available and The Marie Curie Hospital closed in 1967. The Hospital buildings were demolished in 1969. The site has been redeveloped and now contains an apartment block fronting Akenside Road. , was replaced in 1969 by flats built for the Medical Research Council.
69 Devonshire House ‘Preparatory’ school, plus nursery. The house was built in 1877 for C. Kemp Wild.
73 alterations of 1901-3 by Voysey for P. A. Barendt
75 Uplands. This is a Gothic style house built in the 19th by T.K. Green for P.F. Poole, RA. It is in purple brick with black and white bands plus a carved monogram "PFP RA". Outside are stepped brick walls with timber gates.
77 Field Court. Housing for the local authority by Pollard Thomas & Edwards built 1977. This is made up of nine houses and twelve flats in a tall, block with pitched roofs intended to echo its 19th neighbours.
Flask Walk
Source of the Fleet. One source of the river Fleet was near Flask Walk. And a pond existed at the east end of the walk in 1762, possibly fed by the tributary spring. The engine pond was here for the use of fire engines.
The road is an 18th development of a country lane. Archway from the street which fell down in 1911
14 Flask Tavern. This was the ‘Lower Flask Inn’ or the ‘Thatched House’ selling bottled spa water from the Hampstead Wells. The Upper Flask was in Hampstead Hill and the clientele of the Lower Flask were considered socially inferior. The pub is now a 19th creation having been rebuilt by Cumming and Nixon in 1874, since when it has been known as ‘The Flask’. It has the original glass and mahogany partitions, bar counter and fittings, cast-iron fireplaces with tiles and "Victorian chromolithographs". A vaulted brick-built cellar was discovered in 1990. It has been a Young’s pub since 1904.
65 Subscription library set up in 1833 Hampstead Pubic Library of General Literature and Elementary Science. In 1885 a reading room was installed and the working classes let in by a side door
Public Baths of 1888 built by Camden Baths and Washhouses. The Wells and Campden Charity which was a major local landowner and the site was chosen for being near the original Chalybeate spring on Well Walk. It had 9 baths, a laundry, and drying-room. Closed in 1978 and now residential.
Village green. This is the old village green, with grass and a number of trees. It used to be larger and in 1712 the Hampstead Fair took –place here.Watch house and site of stocks at the side of the telephone kiosk. The watch house was moved here from, Heath Street by 1795. It had two’ dungeons’ for the miscreants and was demolished soon after 1839. By the early C20th the Green was owned and maintained by Hampstead Borough Council
Two Type K6 telephone kiosks on the village green. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935, fabricated by W MacFarlane of Glasgow.
Frognal
First recorded in the 15th as a ‘customary tenement’ – an estate held on the basis that local custom must be adhered to. It was a community in its own right in the 17th and 18th. A manor farm and cottages were scattered along the road, which winds uphill. It grew from a single house and as other houses were built they took on the ‘Frognal’ name. ‘Frognal’ means ‘a nook of land frequented by frogs', and the area was well watered, with a cattle pond fed by a brook. The road itself appears to follow a stream flowing into the Westbourne.. It became a village in the 17th from a single house and as other houses were built it took on the ‘Frognal’ name which had been used from the 14th.
Frognal Hall, Manor farm and buildings. These were near the junction with Frognal Lane together with a group of other houses. It was set back from the road in 1½ acres, adjoining the churchyard, and probably existed by 1646
66 classic modernist house by Connell, Ward 1937, built of concrete with plastered walls, and non structural blue brick. The entrance is at the first-floor level while the top floor is partly on stilts and planned as deck. Built for solicitor, Geoffrey Walford and designed by Colin Lucas.
99 St. Dorothy’s Residence. This offers accommodation to young ladies coming to study in London and run by the Sisters of Saint Dorothy. The building is called Frognal House. It is mid-c18 built on the site of the original Frognal House. De Gaulle lived here during the latter part of the Second World War
103 Upper Frognal Lodge. Coach house to Henry Flitcroft's house Frognal Grove. c1745-50. . Home of Ramsay MacDonald, first Labour Prime Minister, 1925-37;
105-111 Frognal Grove. Approached by Lime Walk, which is a right of way. The house is subdivided into four semi-detached house. The core is 1745 by Henry Flitcroft. There is also a former stable, adapted by A. & P. Smithson in 1960.
39 this was the home of illustrator Kate Greenaway 1886-1901. It is a building by Norman Shaw and there is a plaque to Kate.
41 house, in the International Modern style by Alexander Flinders, 1966-8.
University College School. The School was founded in Gower Street in 1830 as part of University College, and here in 1907. UCS was founded with a liberal philosophy. It has three separate schools: the Phoenix School takes boys and girls aged 3-7. The school opened in 2002. The Junior Branch educated education for boys aged 7-11. The Senior School caters for boys aged from 11-18. Sixth form. The school took girls from 2008. The buildings are from 1905-7 by Arnold Mitchell and originally planned for 500 pupils. It is brick with a stone frontispiece and cupola. There is a great hall restored by Michael Foster after a fire in 1978. There are additions from the 1059s.1970s and subsequently.
Frognal Close
Now close in international modern style designed by Ernst Freud, son of Sigmund.
Site of Frognal Priory. In 1815 until 1817 Manor Lodge in Frognal was occupied by John Thompson (a retired auctioneer. he kept some of the land and in 1818 built a house later called Frognal Priory plus a lodge. The house had Gothic crenellations, Renaissance windows, Dutch gables, turrets, and a cupola. Thompson filled it with furniture he said had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey and Elizabeth I. It was demolished in 1876.
Frognal Gardens
Laid out in the grounds of the Old Mansion. Alexander Gray bought the Old Mansion on the east side of old Frognal c. 1889, laid out an L-shaped road, Frognal Gardens, through the grounds, and commissioned James Neale, a former pupil
18 Frognal End. Built for Sir Walter Besant 1836-1901 –'novelist and antiquary lived and died here'. A later resident was, Hugh Gaitskill. Labour Party leader
Frognal Lane
Once called West End Lane and is a continuation of the road which still has that name.
Frognal Rise
This is one of Hampstead’s oldest roads connecting Holly Hill and Branch Hill. There are a number of large 18th and 19th houses here.
Mount Vernon Hospital for Tuberculosis and Diseases of the Lungs. The Hospital took over a house called Mount Vernon and work began here in 1880 to –build the North London Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest designed in a 17th French renaissance style and fronting on Frognal Rise. The western block with 34 beds opened in 1881. On the first floor was a female ward, with the men on the second floor and facilities in floors above. The central block with entrance hall, a dining room was opened by Princess Christian in 1893 ad she paid off the debts on the building. In 1902 X-ray apparatus was installed and high frequency electrical currents were used for treatment. The eastern block was completed in 1903 for 45 patients. In 1913, because of financial difficulties everything moved to Northwood and the Hampstead building was sold to for a National Institute for Medical Research. In the Great War at first it became the No. 1 Canadian Stationary Hospital. But the changes needed to make it fit for purpose took two months. The following day the unit was sent overseas. In 1915 it became The Military Hospital, Hampstead and huts were built in the grounds. In 1916 it became a special army research hospital for the study and treatment of cardiac cases. In 1917 it became the Royal Flying Corps Central Hospital and an Air Medical Investigation Committee was established here to investigate the problems associated with flying. The National Institute for Medical Research - renamed the Medical Research Council remained in the buildings until 1950 and until 1972 it was used by as the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. The buildings have now been converted into flats.
Mount Vernon House, built in 1800, which had been the residence of the Hospital Secretary, became the Nurses' Home.
Frognal Way
Road which continues as a foot path from what was the hamlet of Frognal to St John’s church
66 Sun House. Modernist concrete house by Maxwell Fry. 1934-5, an object lesson in facade.
Gainsborough Gardens
Only the southern portion of this estate is in this square
The area was part of the site of Hampstead Wells spa. In 1698 6 acres of swampy ground, were donated by the then Lords of the Manor of Hampstead, the Gainsborough family, hence the name of the gardens. The Wells Trust was set up to administer this gift. Gainsborough Gardens was the pleasure garden area of the spa with a bowling green and an ornamental pond with boathouse.
Gated private estate. This is an oval crescent around a central garden laid out and developed by the Wells and Camden Charity Trust, set up to administer the Gainsborough gift, and overseen by their surveyor, H.S. Legg. The central garden was the site of the Spa’s ornamental pond, including an ice house. The estate was built following the ethos pioneered at Bedford Park and also steps to limit expansion onto Hampstead Heath and the preservation of Parliament Hill Fields - attributed to CE Maurice who lived here and was married to the sister of Octavia Hill, founder of the National Trust. English Heritage says that the area’s prominent in the history of the protection of open spaces’.
Ice Well. Domed, south facing 18th ice well under a mound. Brick built entered through a brick tunnel in a timber shed. Has been used as an air raid shelter. Ice probably came from the lake to use in ices in the Long Room.
Gayton Road
The entrance to the road was the entrance to the White Hart Inn and some of the road is on what was the yard of the pub
Golden Yard
Cluster of cottages at the back of Heath Street, once owned by a family called Goulding. Said to be a 16th sand pit.
Greenhill
Raised roadway paralleling Rosslyn Avenue and providing a frontage for flats. This may have been a roadway serving Mount Grove House
Hampstead High Street
Street of tall late 19th shopping terraces. Once called Kingswell Street, the name changed in the Middle Ages to Hampstead Street or Hampstead Hill.
88 Stanfield Hall – to the rear of Stanfield House, in Prince Arthur Road. Headquarters of the Rosicrucian Society. Previously Fourth Ch. of Christ Scientist from 1953 and Closed in 1978
85 Stanfield House. Once the home of Clarkson Stanfield 19TH, theatrical scenic artist, marine and landscape painter, Royal Academician and has had a variety of uses, including a school. It is currently used by Turning Point, a charity dealing with problems of alcohol and drug abuse
North London Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest. This opened in what is now Stanfield House in 1860. Stanfield may still have been resident when the patients arrived and may have had TB himself. The Hospital treated the poor and Patients came from all parts of the United Kingdom –The dry, bracing air of Hampstead was considered to be beneficial to recovery. Stanfield House was sold in 1864 and the Hospital then leased it back. Work began on the new hospital in 1880 and the patients were transferred from Stanfield House to the new building at Mount Vernon.
"The Hampstead Public Library of General Literature and Elementary Science -this was a Subscription Library moved here from Flask Walk in 1884. This was on the ground floor of the house which was altered for the library. In 1966 the library was closed and the stock WS dispersed.
2 Trinity Presbyterian church. This was first built in 1844 for Scottish inhabitants and they used the Temperance Hall in Perrin's Court. The congregation then moved to Well Walk Chapel in 1853, and in 1861 bought 2 High Street. They built a new church which opened in 1862. It was demolished in 1962 and Shops were built on the site and the hall was converted into Trinity Close.
9a Hampstead Brewery. This was founded in 1720 by John Vincent. Later known as Harris & Co., Acquired by Reffells Brewery in 1931. The remains of the brewery are still standing at the rear of the property. The buildings stood, behind the King of Bohemia pub on Hampstead High Street and, by the end of the 1920s, employed 128 people. The site was refurbished in the 1970s and the adapted original buildings stand in Old Brewery Mews, designed by Dinerman, Davidson & Partners in 1973
10 King of Bohemia built here in 17th before 1680 and rebuilt in the 1930s. It was originally called The King of Bohemia's Head. It closed in the early 21st. The King of Bohemia was the Elector Palentine and son in law to James I.
14 The Three Tuns Tavern
17 White Hart, This pub was trading by 1762 but is now long gone. The entrance to Gayton Road is sited on the yard entrance
Penfold pillar box. This is outside no 23. It is of the Penfold type, c1866-79, a hexagonal box in cast-iron, with ‘VR’ on the door and ‘VR’ plus the Royal Arms above the mouth along with "Post" and "Office". It is no longer in use. In 1914 it was damaged by suffragettes. Smoke was seen coming from box - tar and oil had been poured in and set alight,
38/39 Bird in Hand. This pub dates from 1771, converted from a coffee house, and rebuilt in 1879. It is now Cafe Rouge and was previously a branch of Dome. There is a carved motif of a dove over the central door at first floor level. Said to be hidden sign ‘Alton Ales’.
Omnibus routes. Buses left from the Bird in Hand - Eight to the City in 1834. In 1856, most were acquired by the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Londres – this became the London General Omnibus Co. or L.G.O.C..
Hampstead station opened in 1907 it lies between Golders Green and Belsize Park on the Northern Line. It was opened by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway and taken over by Yerkes. Work started 1903. It was originally to be called Heath Street – there is some signage showing this at platform level. Its unusually shaped surface building is determined by the topography. It was designed by Leslie Green Like other Northern Line's stations there are rows of arches and ox-blood glazed tiles. It is the deepest station in London lying 250' below surface and the Second World War it was used as an air raid shelter. Its lift shaft is 181 feet down, originally housing Otis lifts which were modernised by the Wadsworth Lift Company, and again in 2014 by Accord. The metal roof structure houses the lift equipment. There is also a spiral emergency staircase with over 320 steps. Only the ticket hall and some isolated areas remain as original. The central entrance was blocked in the 1980s and the ticket hall modernised in 1988. The beamed ceilings and clock remain and there are original finishes by the Permanent Decorative Glass Company. .
Hampstead Hill Gardens,
This is a street with red brick artists' villas built 1875-83, or ’gentleman artists’ by Batterbury & Huxley, described as ’rosered villas’ with rubbed-brick ornaments.
Heath Street
Late 19th road but stands in an area mentioned in 19th charters. I he late19th road improvement and slum clearance led to development of the street
28 The Horseshoe pub. This pub was originally at 62 High Street, but moved here in 1890. It was then called the Three Horseshows. For a while it was a Wetherspoons. A brewing operation began in the cellar of the pub but by 2010, it was too big and moved out to become the Camden Town Brewery.
49 Hampstead Fire Station. Hampstead fire station, designed by George Vulliamy, opened in 1874 on the site of the former police station. For the Metropolitan Board of Works. It has patterned brick, and a comer clock tower, said to have been a watch tower but which has lost its pyramidal roof. There is a plaque on the building explaining all this.
64 Cinema. This was the Eldorado Cinematograph which opened 1909/10 but was not licenced until September 1909. In 1913, it was re-named Hampstead Picture Palace, and also the Hampstead Electric Theatre. It was closed in 1916, and in 1917 it was the Tube Tea Rooms. It has since become a restaurant.
68 Horse and Groom. Closed and now in other use. The name sign remains at first floor level.
79-81 Nags Head. For awhile this was The Cruel Sea and said to have murals on the walls. Now in other use’s
Baptist Church, in the 18th Baptists used a room in Holly Bush Hill but some left to set up an ‘Ebeneezer Strict Baptist Church’ in New End. The Heath Street building opened in 1861 and paid for by James Harvey, a London merchant the site had previously been a fruit and vegetable garden.
British School. This was connected to the chapel but eventually moved to a purpose built block in New End. It is said to have been ‘well regarded’. The building may remain as part of the chapel
Holly Bush Hill
This was in the 19th a pathway called Bradley’s Buildings
Romney House. This was the site of Cloth Hill designed by Samuel Bunce as a two-storeyed timber framed and weatherboarded house. The portrait painter George Romney bought the house in 1796. He wanted to build a studio with a museum of casts from the antique, where students would work under his supervision. The original house had a garden, a stable, and coach house. Romney built a new stable plus a "whimsical structure”. He left in 1799, and in 1807 it became the Hampstead Assembly Rooms with a tea room, ballroom and card room. The Hampstead Literary and Scientific Society began here in 1833, the Conversazione Society followed in 1846 and met here. From 1886 the Constitutional Club met here. In 1929 it was bought by Clough Williams-Ellis as his home and international writers were entertained here. The house was redesigned by 6a architects in 2012 and a staircase tower added. The stables became a pub. There is a London County Council plaque on the house
Green space –there are two small areas of green space maintained by Hampstead Borough Council, now by LB Camden. One is a narrow strip of land laid out as a shrubbery, and the other a small area of grass with some small trees with low post and chain boundary.
New Camden Court built 1887 by the Wells and Camden Charity but taken over eventually by the local authority,
Holly Bush Vale
Hampstead Parochial Schools. Boys’, girls' and infants' schools of 1856, having previously been in other premises from an organs charitable school. c. 1862 and 1887;
Everyman Cinema. The building dates from 1888 as an assembly room to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. It later became the Hampstead Drill Hall, and base for the Hampstead Regiment and Films were screened in the basement room the 1890’s. It opened as the Everyman Theatre in 1920 presenting plays by new playwrights and closed in 1933. It reopened as a cinema and was redesigned by Alistair Gladstone MacDonald, and equipped with a Western Electric sound system. From 1934 it showed foreign films which could only be seen there. It closed in 1940 and reopened in 1943 and from the end of the War it returned to showing foreign films. In 1954 it opened an art gallery in the foyer. And Sunday concerts were held. Despite a down turn it survived and was refurbished in 1984 with grants from the Greater London Council and Channel 4 TV. In 1986 a cafe/restaurant was opened, A Saturday morning children’s cinema club was introduced and cine-variety presentations ad live concerts held. Later a second screen was added and there is also a private screening room
Holly Hill
11 University College School Junior School, site of Holly Hill House This is the junior school of the school founded in Gower Street in 1830 as part of University College, London and moved here in 1907. It was founded to promote the Benthamite principles of liberal scholarship and education
Holly Mount
The Baptist Chapel is said to have originated in a building here built in 1818. It later became printers with the Hampstead and Highgate Express. Since 1911 it has been housing and a studio
Holly Bush Pub. Said to be built on the site of painter Romney’s stables and opened in 1897. Romney lived to the rear at 6 the Mount or Cloth Hill, in 1796. When he moved away in 1799, he converted the stables into Prospect House and studio. His son sold it in 1801 and it was converted into assembly rooms and the stables into the pub. This was a Beskins House and more recently Fullers.
18 this was the Holly Mount Laundry in the 1850s
Holly Place
4 St. Mary's RC Church. Built 1816 and in the centre of a recessed terrace of cottages. This is one of the earliest Roman Catholic churches in London and is a. Monument to Abbe Morel, founded by French émigrés at the expense of the congregation at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The stuccoed front was added by W. Wardell in 1850: it has a statue of the Virgin in a niche above, and an open belfry plus bell.
1 St Vincent's Orphanage for Little Boys. Soon after the church was built, two schools, for boys and girls, were set up next to the presbytery and supported by subscriptions. By the 1860s there was also an orphanage for boys. In 1871 a new priest had a new school built behind the church. The Franciscan Tertiary Sisters from St Joseph's College took over the school and orphanage and opened a convent at No 1. Eventually it had taken over all the buildings in the terrace south of the church. In 1907 the school was condemned by the Board of Education and demolished. In 1911, the orphanage was closed and the convent amalgamated with Sisters in Canning Town.
Holly Walk
9 The Watch House. Hampstead police watch house built 1830. A plaque says "in the 1830s the newly formed Hampstead Police Force set out on its patrol and nightly watch from this house." They moved out after four years
Kemplay Road
Laid out by the British Land Company in the late 1870s
Lakis Walk
Built in 1973 an alley of houses, grey brick and exposed concrete by Gerson Rottenberg.
Lyndhurst Gardens
17 The Hoo. This is a large house designed by Horace Field from 1888-90, and altered in 1987-88. It is built of red brick with tile-hanging on the upper storey. The house is now occupied by the Belsize, Gospel Oak and West Hampstead Community Health Teams. The archives of the Royal Free Hospital are also held here. Fleet Counselling, who offer affordable one-on-one counselling services are based here
26 Maria Montessori Children’s House Nursery. It is one of William Willett's developments, designed by H. B. Measures: tall detached gabled house
Marie Curie Hospice. in 1948 Not long before the Hampstead-based Marie Curie Hospital was transferred to the NHS, a group of committee members decided to preserve the name of Marie Curie in the charitable medical field and thus fund raised and set up the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation − a charity dedicated to alleviating suffering from cancer today − today known as Marie Curie Cancer Care.
Lyndhurst road
This was part of the Rosslyn Park Estate, which belonged to Westminster Abbey. Streets here were developed slowly from 1853, covering the grounds of Rosslyn House.
Tower Close. Built in 1982 by Pollard Thomas & Edwards, with a comer tower. Built on the site of Eldon House
Rosslyn House, this was one of four houses here built in the late 18th and named Rosslyn Lodge when it was the home of the Earl of Rosslyn in the early 19th. It later became The Royal Soldiers' Daughters' Home, founded in 1855 to relieve the families of soldiers in the Crimea.
Olave Centre. HQ of the World Association of Girl Guides has a core of Rosslyn Lodge a small stuccoed villa built c. 1800, with ogee-topped turret and shallow bow. Extensions, tactfully white-rendered but dwarfing the original house, by John Dangerfield, 1980-91. The centre serves the ten million Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from 145 countries across the world. It is the largest voluntary movement dedicated to girls and young women in the world. Olave of course was the first Chief Guide.
Rosslyn Grove. Late 18th brick house, standing behind the church
Congregational church building now the AIR Recording Studio. The church originated in services held in an iron building in 1876 and was formed in 1880. Members of the church bought land on the Rosslyn Grove estate, selling part to finance the construction of the church. The new church was opened in 1884 and a lecture hall and school were added later. In 1972 the church became part of the United Reformed churches and closed in 1978. The building is By Waterhouse and centrally planned. It is in Purple brick and coloured terracotta decoration; it was changed inside and subdivided as a concert hall and recording studios in 1991-2 by Bernard Parker of Heber-Percy & Parker.
AIR Studios. The studio began in 1969 when George Martin left EMI to establish an independent recording complex. A sister studio, in Montserrat, opened in mid 1970′s but was forced to close after a hurricane. In 1991 a new AIR Studios moved into Lyndhurst Hall. Sir George Martin opened it in 1992 with a gala performance of “Under Milk Wood” in the presence of The Prince of Wales.
19-21 Group of 3 houses, plus the old lodge to Rosslyn House attached at the corner. The houses were designed in 1897-8 by Horace Field; and the former lodge was built 1865 attributed to S.S. Teulon.
1-3 Lyndhurst Terrace. Gothic houses designed im 1864-5 by and for Alfred Bell, the stained-glass designer, and his father-in-law John Burlison, assistant to Gilbert Scott.
Maresfield Gardens
4 Cecil Sharp
16 for the Danish glass designer Arild Rosenkrantz, plain brick |
20 Freud Museum. a broad symmetrical Queen Anne house. home of Sigmund reud and where he died. interior alterations are by his son, Ernst. In 1938, Sigmund Freud left Vienna as a refugee from the Nazi occupation and came to England. He resumed work a year later. His collection of Eyptian, Greek, Ottoman and Oriental antiquities, his working library and papers, and his furniture including the desk and couch are here. These rooms were his laboratory, the site of his discoveries about the human psyche, and they offer insights into the nature of his achievements as the founder of pschoanalysis. The house was later the home of his daughter, Anna 1895-1982, whose development of her father's work is also part of the museum.
St, Thomas More RC church. 1968 elliptical. Undramatic.
58 1938-9 by H. Herry-Zwiegenthal for F Jolowitz, a modernist house of brick, with an angled projecting room carrying a bold pierced metal balcony
Netherhall Gardens
50 built at part of 61 Fitzjohn's Avenue in 1878 as a single house for the artist Edwin Long by Shaw. Thanks to the architect's inexhaustible fantasy motifs and composition from his own house in Ellerdale Road low, comfortable, broadly composed, with Dutch gables, and below, in the middle of them, a project studio with large bow at the end.
New Court
Flats. Consists of two bleak five-storey blocks of artisan tenements, one of 1854-5, and a slightly more decorative one of 1871, the latter perhaps by T. G. Jackson, whose father, Hugh Jackson, a local solicitor, paid for the earlier one.
55, The Tower, 1880 H.F. Baxter by T. Wimperis. Massive Baronial creation, stone balconies and tourelles; grand gate piers and gates
47 St Mary's Convent is by George Lethbridge for L. Casella, c. 1880; much terracotta detail.
6, Three Gables, 1881 Shaw for Frank Holl, demolished
Flockhart's studio house for Pettie. Now demolished.
6 1882-3 for Thomas Davidson, by Batterbury & Huxley, with a large studio wing with big leaded-light window. The best house in the hinterland.
New End
Area of gambling and souvenir shops in the early 18th. Later dominated by the hospital.
Workhouse. The parish workhouse had been in Frognal but was moved here n 1891 because of conditions there. A large house was bought here and extended under Henry White. This remained until 1842 when inmates were moved to Edmonton and this building went into other use. In 1848 Hampstead became a Poor Law authority and sanctioned a new building by H.E.Kendall and these are the buildings fronting onto New End. It is said that the stone breaking cells are still extant. In 1878 the infirmary was extended and in 1883 a new circular ward block was built. In 1896 another infirmary block was added on the corner with Heath Street. In the Great War the whole complex was a military hospital and facilities were improved, with X-rays and an operating theatre – it was thought wounds healed more quickly the higher the altitude. From 1922 the buildings were back with Hampstead Guardians and renamed the New End Hospital.
New End Hospital. The workhouse infirmary was renamed a hospital in 1922. In 1930 it was taken over by the London County Council and became a general hospital, including space for children and a maternity department. There was also an Out-patients Department and a Casualty Department. In 1931 a Thyroid Clinic gained an international reputation for the treatment of patients suffering from toxic goitre and myasthenia gravis. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948 and it became recognised as a hospital for acutely sick patients and a centre for endocrinology. By 1955 the world's most modern radioactive iodine isotope was developed in the basement. From 1972 when the new Royal Free Hospital opened New End Hospital became a geriatric hospital. The site was closed in 1986, despite much opposition. The site is now a gated estate developed by Berkeley Homes, 1996-7. The old ward blocks were converted and refurbished for residential use in 1996-1998. The the main frontage to New End has been preserved. This area is own called Upper Hampstead walk
Rotunda. This is a hospital ward with attached an ablution and water tank tower 1884-5 by Charles Bell, an early example of a circular ward, with central chimney and square tower to one side, with 3 floors containing wards, with accommodation staff. The tower includes a cast-iron water tank. It had a ventilation system and was the first free-standing example of the circular "ward tower" in the country. The design gave improved air, light and ventilation with the advantage of only needing a small site.
Boiler house chimney. This was built in 1898 and Designed by Keith D Young, built by Frederick Gough and Co of Hendon. As part of New End Hospital. It is in Red brick with Portland stone dressings, tapering towards the top. It is the only surviving part of the boiler and laundry house
16 Heathside Preparatory School. Middle school. This is a boarding and day ’preparatory 'school with five other sites nearby. Following some problems with Ofsted the school is now owed by Dukes Education and has a new head. After its parent company of 27 years, Remus White Limited went into administration. This site also contains their head office
23 Duke of Hamilton Pub. This pub has strong community focus which fields its own cricket and rugby teams. Named after a Civil War Royalist, it opened in 1721 rebuilt 1930s. It was a popular meeting place for actors Peter O'Toole, Oliver Reed and Richard Burton. Reed would be seen for long periods at the pub on a daily basis. . In 2015, its landlord barred some 800 members of community group Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum after their successful campaign to make the pub an Asset of Community Value against his wishes.]The pub closed in July 2017, and was reopened in early 2018 as the "Hampstead Lounge & Jazz Club and the Hampstead Jazz Club is based in its cellar.
27 Mortuary. This was –part of the hospital and was linked to the hospital across the road by a tunnel. It is where Karl Marx was laid out. It became the New End Theatre in 1974. It is now the Village Shul.
27 New End Theatre founded in 1974 in the converted mortuary. It had a number of successes which transferred to both the West End and Broadway and also showed world premieres of works by Jean Anouilh, Steven Berkoff, and Arnold Wesker. It closed in 2011 because of declining audiences
27 Village Shul. An independent Orthodox congregation of around 50 families
16c Hampstead Provident Dispensary. This was built by local fundraising in thanks for escaping the cholera epidemic. IT was founded in 1846 by the Rev Thomas Ainger as a sick relief club and dispensary. Initially they used rooms in the workhouse but in 1850 following collections in churches land was purchased at New End and a three storied building opened in 1853. In January 1879 they amalgamated with the Hampstead Dispensary in Heath Street and then both operating from the New End premises. From 1911 Following the National Insurance Act it declined in importance and closed in 1948 on the creation of the National Health Service. The building was sold in 1950.and is now a private school
Samuel Hoare's British School. Opened by 1811 in a building. Paid for by Hoare, who also paid master's salary and other expenses? After the Parochial school was united with National Society but without religious test, Hoare closed the school, it later became the Baptist chapel.
Ebenezer Baptist chapel. In 1825 a group of seceders from a Hampstead Baptist congregation founded Ebenezer Strict Baptist chapel in New End, at first meeting in a house. The Ebenezer chapel opened 1827 in a former schoolroom. In 1938 the Chapel was compulsorily purchased for flats
New End Square
Built to accommodate visitors to the Spa
Burgh House. Saved from conversion to offices in 1979. The house hosts regular art exhibitions, serves as a classical concert venue and is home to the Hampstead Museum. The house was built in 1704 and was the home of the Hampstead Spa's physician, Dr. William Gibbons. The current wrought-iron gate carries his initials. Until the 1870s the house was known as Lewis House after another resident. In 1858 Burgh House was taken over by the Royal East Middlesex Militia, and served as the headquarters and officers' mess until 1881. The house returned to residential use in 1884. From 1937 until after the Second World War it was empty and it was eventually bought and restored by the local authority. This included demolition of barrack blocks in front of the building. In 1947 it reopened as a community centre with a Citizen's Advice Bureau in its basement. Problems with dry rot led to another closure in 1977, local residents launched a "Keep Burgh House" appeal, as a result leased the house. In 1979, it reopened with the museum
40 this was once a pub called The Hawk. Opened before 1748. It was rebuilt in 1815, and closed in the 1840s or 1850s.
Well Walk Pottery. This was the workshop of Christopher Magarshack. He made ceramics of all sorts, as well as woodwork and in later years stained glass. The pottery had originated in 1957 when his family bought Sidney Spall’s Grocer’s Shop and opened it as a studio.
North London Railway
The North London Railway from Hampstead Heath Station continues south westwards mainly through a tunnel in this section.
Perrin’s Court
This is a private road, partly made of mews type buildings. It has a granite sett surface.
Temperance Hall. Used by the Presbyterian congregation in the 1840s.
Perrin's Lane
A very old lane which linked Hampstead village to Frognal. It was earlier called Church Lane Perrin was the land owner
2 Henry Holiday stained-glass painter, set up a glassworks here in the late 1891. He made stained glass, mosaics, enamels and sacerdotal objects.
Pilgrim’s Lane
The northern part of the road was once Worsley Road. The road is named after Charles Pilgrim who had bought the manor
Prince Arthur Road
2a this was a Christian Science Church
Railway – North London Line
The North London Line is in a tunnel here – as it has been in the two squares to the east. This was opened in 1860 . Excavations for it were cut in two depth stages- the first about half of the depth needed but three times as wide in order to make a working area for men and machinery. the centre of the trench was to be the final tunnel area. The tunnel was narrower than most other tunnels although the reason is not known. The width of the line crossing Finchley Road is also narrow and it could be guesed that the reason was financial. It is also likely that constant pumping was needed because of underground water. The tunnel was the subject of major works in 1995 to install overhead electric wiring for Eurostar.
Rosslyn Hill
Was at one time called Red Lion Hill after a pub which was on the site of the later police station. Named after Alexander Wedderburn, Earl of Rosslyn, and Lord Chancellor who was sacked from the Woolsack in 1861.
Mount Grove. This was the home of Longman the publisher, with an exhibition garden and many big trees. Also called the Rookery. The building of Prince Arthur Road shaved away a northern strip of the site. The cedar trees are said to have been kept but the rooks had cleared off
Hampstead Wesleyan Church. Built 1870 and demolished about 1934. This was on some of the Mount Grove site and was on the corner of Prince Arthur Road. They had previously been in South Hill Park from 1869 and bought this Site in 1870. The building was red brick by Charles Bell. A gallery was added in 1878 but the tower was never built. The site includes a school, vestries, and a caretaker's house. The site is now flats.
65 Vane House. This was named after 17th Henry Vane who was an ex-American settler who became an administrator under the Commonwealth. Eventually he quarrelled with Cromwell. He was executed on Tower Hill after the Restoration. The House demolished but RSA plaque of 1897 remains on a surviving gate pier 'statesman lived here. There were subsequently a number of distinguished residents and it was eventually bought by the Soldiers' Daughters' Home and demolished in 1972
65 The Soldiers' Daughters' Home. This was founded in 1855 with the object 'to nurse, clothe, board, and educate the destitute female children ... of soldiers’. Initially they were at Rosslyn House. The girls did all the household work themselves, assisted in the kitchen, nursery and sick room, and so on. Following extensive fund-raising, they bought Vane House, to build permanent premises and a new building, was opened in 1858, by Prince Albert. The building for 200 girls was in the Early English style by William Munt. From 1924, the Home was maintained by the London County Council. But 1945 when the charity turned into an independent all-age boarding school and girls attended local schools. In the late 1960s, a modern building was constructed and the old ones demolished. A modern housing estate was built. In 1987 –now called Vane Close - the Home was renamed the Royal School, Hampstead, with girls being admitted from all armed services, plus civilian pupils.. In 2011 it was closed and in 2012 North Bridge House Senior School took over the Royal School site with an address in Vane Close.
Drinking fountain. In the wall of 65. This dates from around c1875 and may be associated with the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association. It is in polished granite. And has a semicircular animal bowl at the bottom which says ‘"The merciful man is merciful to his beast". The main fountain is a projecting semicircular basin with a slab which says "Jesus said 'Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst". An also around the arch "Ask and ye shall receive: Seek and ye shall find".
48 Rosslyn Arms. This pub was established as the Red Lion and was rebuilt in 1869. It was then called the Rosslyn Arms. It Closed in 2012
40 Lloyds Bank Built 1891 by Horace Field, with a corner entrance
Red Lion Inn. This was a very old, maybe 14th, house. It was leased from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, on condition that a truss of hay was given for the horse of the mass-priest, who came up from the Abbey on Sundays... This inn is long gone.
26 Police Station. Desiged by, Dixon Butler in 1910-13. They had previously been on the other side of the road. It included a stable and harness room, railings and lamps. .This building is no longer n use by the police.
K6 telephone box: outside the police station this is a K6
Police station. The police moved here in 1868 to a site was next to the sailors’ daughters’ home. They moved across the road to no 26 in 191.
64-66 buildings of 1890s on the site of the Chicken House Inn. This may have been a 17th hunting lodge. There was a window and a plaque to say that the King and the Duke of Buckingham has slept there. It later became a pub and was demolished in the 19th. Originally it was a low brick building. It pub closed around 1754
Queen Elizabeth's House. This building had a local tradition that Queen Elizabeth once spent a night there. Various 19th historians who knew the building were very disparaging about this claim. Later it was taken over by a religious order that changed its name to "St. Elizabeth's Home." And ran it as girls’ boarding school – presumably one of the many that were in his area in the 19th.
Unitarian Chapel built 1862 by John Johnson in Kentish rag. The aisle and chancel built 1885 by Thomas Worthington. The main entrance was moved to Rosslyn Hill in 1898 and a line of shops was demolished to achieve this. Furnishings and monuments of high quality indicate the strength of Hampstead Unitarianism.
Rudall Crescent
Laid out in 1878
13a Penn Studios, with plaque to artist Mark Gertler. There is a sculpture gallery at eaves level.
Shepherd's Walk,
Royal Mail Delivery Office
4a The Old Chapel. This is an architect’s office
Streatley Place
A tiny passage between the workhouse site and New End School. It continues as a footpath through the old hospital estate and eventually gets to Back Lane.
New End Primary School. Built as New End Board School in 1905-6, by the London County Council Schools branch and designed by .T.J. Bailey. Pevsner says it is ‘one of his most remarkable buildings; squeezed onto a tiny hillside site, and handled in an exceptionally confident free Baroque manner’. It is dramatically tall. It is said to have been built above a spring going down to the river Fleet. Since 1951 it has been New End Primary school.
12 City Arms. This pub became the school house for New End School from around 1910. It closed as a pub in 1905
Waterhouse Close
Waterhouse Close. Housing for the elderly by Camden Architect's Department, 1980-2.
Wedderburn Road
Another road named after Alexander Wedderburn, future Earl Rosslyn – Scottish lawyer and Lord Chancellor.
Wedderburn House. Small mansion block of 1884
Well Road
White Bear Place. The Old White Bear pub dates back to 1704, rebuilt 1930s and closed in 2014. It is the subject of a long-running campaign for it to be restored as a pub
Well Walk
Well Walk ran from the centre of Hampstead to The Wells. (Which are to the north of this square).
Willoughby Road,
On grounds of Carlisle House, sold to the British Land Co. in 1875,
Trinity Court. This was the Sunday School for the Presbyterian Church which stood on the corner with Rosslyn Road and converted in the early 1960s.
Willow Road
The road s built on the Line of stream going to the river Fleet. The source arose near Flask Walk. Until the early 19th the stream supported watercress beds
Retaining walls and brick arches include a brick stairway which went to Willow Buildings, 19th flats above.
Windmill Hill
Mount Vernon House originally called Windmill Hill House was built on the site of the other windmill between 1725 and 1728 by William Knight, a Hampstead timber smith.
Sources
Acorn Archive. Web site
AIR studios web site
Beamon. The Ice Houses of Britain
Borer. Hampstead and Highgate
British History Online. Hampstead. Web site
British Listed Buildings Web site
Camden History review
Camden History review
Children’s Homes. Web site
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
English Heritage. Blue Plaque Guide
Field. London place names
Hampstead Baptist Church. Web site
Hillman. London Under London
Historic England. Web site
London Borough of Camden. Web site.
London Encyclopaedia,
London Gardens online. Web site
London Remembers. Web site
London Transport. Country Walks
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Lucas. London
Mitchell and Smith. North London Line
Nairn. Modern Buildings
national Archives, Web site
National Archives, Web site
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
St. Anthony’s School. Web site.
St.Johns Church. Web site
Summerson. Georgian London
The Underground Map. Web site
Wade. Hampstead Past
WAGGS. Web site
Walford. Highgate to the Lea
Wikipedia. As appropriate
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