Hampstead Heath

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Post to the north Spaniards

Post to the west Golders Hill

Post to the east Parliament Hill

Post to the south Hampstead


Admiral's Walk
Driveway for carriages to the house of Admiral Barton
Admiral's House.  Admiral's House is said to have been built by Admiral Matthew Barton (1715-95), complete with flat-topped roof and cannon.  However, Barton lived first in New End and then at Vane House, in the High Street, but never at Admiral's House. It was 'the sailor squire', Fountain North, 'who ran away to sea in his youth and lived part of his life in a house he built at Hampstead with a roof, bulwarks and port holes, like a man-of-war deck, on which he used to pace up and down firing off cannon from it on all great occasions and birthdays'.  The original building was erected in 1700 by one Charles Keys. He enlarged the grounds; and in 1709 acquired a small piece of land for use as a herb garden by Richard Bull, Druggist, who was renting the house at that time. When Keys died in 1753 his daughter, Rebecca Mackworth, inherited the house, then known as Golden Spikes  - possibly because of Masonic connections. She leased the house to Charles Dingley, a London merchant, in 1755 and then others. Fountain North 1749-1811 was descended from a noble family who came from Rougham in Norfolk. He bought the freehold in 1791 and he planted rows of elm trees in 1806 and Golden Spikes became known as The Grove. He also built a coach house and stables on the site of the present Hampstead Reservoir. The bricked-up doorway, which once led to the stables, can still be seen in the wall of Grove End. After his death the house was sold and passed to other residents. A LCC plaque commemorates the next famous resident at The Grove, Sir George Gilbert Scott. He left his mark on The Grove by adding three beautiful bas reliefs to the wall of the stone-paved loggia adjoining the rose garden.  
Grove Lodge.  John Galsworthy’s home and the ‘birthplace’ of many of the later generation of Forsytes. Plaque to Galsworthy, 1867-1933 which says 'novelist and playwright lived here 1918-1933'. He spent the last thirteen years of his life here. He became a barrister but preferred writing. He could be seen striding the adjacent Heath in all weathers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.  Plaque erected 1950.  John Constable also lived here for a while.


Benham Place?

Boade’s Mews.
Former garage of High Close

Branch Hill
Branch Hill Estate 1974-8 by Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth for London Borough of Camden. Stepping down the slope in the village fashion made popular in the 1960s bone of the last large-scale enterprises from an adventurous decade of Camden housing. 
The Gardens Former Lodge. Attractively quirky little building dated 1868, may be by Teulon.
105 Branch Hill Lodge, old people's home, and an Edwardian monster in red brick terracotta 1901. On the site of c18 mansion altered by Flitcroft c. 1745, by George Gibson c. 1800, and Teulon in the 1860s.  
Little valley is the source of the Westbourne, stream followed from there down to Kilburn
Oak Tree House

Cannon Lane
Parish lock up of c. 1730. 
Two cannon from the East India Co.

Cannon Place
From the church where the Victorian tea gardens once were to Squires Mount
10 originally Christ Church vicarage. 
Cannon Lodge early c18, originally twice its size, 
5 plaque to Flinders Petrie. Sir William Matthew Flinders 1853-1942 says ‘Egyptologist lived here'.  Petrie was responsible for excavating Memphis, and, the 1st dynasty tombs at Abydos, and many items of discovery found their way to the British Museum. Professor of Egyptology at University College, London and author of some 100 books. Renowned for Spartan tastes, he continued working well into his eighties. Plaque erected 1954.
11 grilles in the wall show the position of the old lock up
14 Cannon Hall. Onxw Hampstead Courthouse -  Magistrates once held courts in the house. Its own gaol built into the garden wall.  Home of James Melville, Secretary to the East India Co. Low stable block projecting. Plaque to Gerald Du Maurier 1873-1934 – it says 'actor manager, lived here from 1916 until his death'.  Gerald the youngest child of George Du Maurier was born in London and educated at Harrow. He started off as an actor but it was as a theatre manager and producer that he reached prominence. he became manager of Wyndhams and from 1925, the St. James's Theatre. In 1922 he was knighted for his services to the stage. 
Cannon kitchen posts
Squire's Mount, Built by Squire. 
Squire's Mount Croft, 1704 of 1714 with an extension by Horace Field 
Western arm of Fleet
Bollards
Eighteenth century cottages, 1702, built for the spa, intact

Christ Church Lane,
Before the church was Green Man Lane, tea gardens on the site

Cannon Lane
Cannon House was old lock up 1730-80 plaque. Garden open to the public

Christchurch Hill
Christ Church School. Pretty with teachers house.   A mid-c19 example 1854-5 by W. & E. Habershon, with porch of 1879.

East Heath Road
Track in the 1700s with mansions
Congenor, 17th built by Maryon Wilson as a try on. Became the resort where the Bank Holiday fairs were held, races held on the heath from 1730-1750. Whitfield preached here in 1739
11 Foley House 1698. Built in 1698 J. Duffield, the first spa manager Early c18 stables, weather boarded
17 plaque to Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murray. In 1918, Katherine married John Murray, having lived with him since 1912, and they moved to Hampstead. Plaque erected 1969.
The elephant

Heath Side

Elm Row
End terraces older than the church
Everyman Cinema. Previously a Drill Hall of 1888, which became the Embassy cinema in 1933. It was transformed into a theatre shortly after the Great War.  Some of the greatest of modern plays were performed on its stage – for example Noel Coward's The Vortex was first given here. Sir Gerald du Maurier presided at the opening ceremony of the building as a cinema.
Horse pond


Gainsborough Gardens,
Circus – shape dictated by old lake. Baptist Hicks was Earl of Gainsborough, 1698. Hon Susannah Noel for son. Earl of Gainsborough gave 6 acres of heath for the poor. Springs there. Wells Trust set up to exploit them and sold water to London apothecaries. 1701 appointed Duffield as manager, built Long Room, and set up a spa. Disreputable and closed down. 1730s new Long Room on this site. Assembly Rooms, Museum of Cards, bowls. Exclusive development of 1886 exclusive development begun 1884, a private road with. Houses are arranged around a well-planted oval.  
Lodge by Hogg 1886

Golden Square

Grove Place
Old White Bear Inn, 1704

Hampstead
Named Hampstead in 975.On an old track up from Tottenham Road. Stratospherically expensive.  ‘Hemstede’ name recorded in 959 and means simply ‘homestead’. 

Hampstead Grove
houses colonized in the c19 and c20 by eminent artists and writers, as the blue and red plaques show
Fenton House.  Given to the National Trust in 1952. Built probably in 1693 – the date on a chimneystack stack. In 1707 it was bought by Joshua Gee, a silk merchant, then by Philip Fenton, a Baltic merchant. In 1786 called Ostend House and then Clock House - there is a clock over the entrance. The original approach is through an iron gate with Gee's initials. . The simple details reflect the straightforward domestic classicism of the William and Mary period. he building now houses the fine porcelain collection of the last owner, Lady Binning, and the Benton Fletcher Collection of musical instruments given to the National Trust in 1937.  The rooms are immaculately dignified - there is a priceless collection of Meissen figurines, including a Kandler Commedia del 'Arte set. 
walled garden has a high raised terrace walk on its sides, probably original to the house and designed to overlook a formal parterre.  Gates are nice at the entrance to the east front. Overlooks old Grove, 1805 described as a Plantation.  It cannot have changed. A formal lawn contrasts with the rustic charm of the kitchen garden and orchard. Vine house built in 1998.
28 New Grove House, Home of George Du Maurier – Punch illustrator and novelist. Tudorised 1840. C18 brick, 
Cottages thought to be mediaeval
Old Grove House, eighteenth century house and 1730 wing, stables cottage. Now Grange House. Crane used it.  A complex early c18 house with Regency ironwork, and a yard with a cottage.  Parker & Unwin renovated the main house c. 1912; 
Mount Vernon.  It was built as a Consumption Hospital in 1880 by T. Roger Smith; and wings added 1893 and 1903.  The hospital moved to its Northwood (Hillingdon) branch in 1913 and the buildings became the National Institute for Medical Research.  Converted to flats in 1997 by IKA Architects. 
Workhouse The Workhouse was opened in 1729. Prior -to that date the poor had lived in several cottages.  A large house in Frognal was rented for £20 a year, and by 1731 there were twenty inmates of whom eight or nine were children.  The house was on a site now occupied by the grounds of the National Institute for Medical Research; it was what Barratt described as a 'picturesque Tudor mansion.'  By 1800 the house was regarded as thoroughly unsafe and unsound. In December 1734 hopsacks had to be hung against the lathe and plaster behind the bed of the compiler of the account book where the rain beat through 'like a sieve'.  The house had the advantage of having grounds where vegetables could be grown to supplement food purchases.

Frognal Rise.
Frognal Hall, eighteenth century mansion. Associated with Ware, Guyon family, Lord Chief Justice Alvanley
House early c19, with carved stone porch of c. 1907-8 attributed to Parker & Unwin, and bold garden walls and gate of the same period
Conservatory to Frognal Rise. Derelict Edwardian conservatory in grounds of Grade II listed house. In highly prominent position within the conservation area.                                        

Hampstead Heath
800 hilly acres of mown grass, scrub and rough woodland, criss-crossed by muddy tracks and gravel and tarmac paths.  Was managed by L.C.C.  In February 1867, when the Metropolitan Board of Works entered into negotiations with Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson for the purchase of Hampstead Heath.  That rapacious individual valued his rights at the preposterous figure of £5,000 per acre for what he claimed as his building land.  His 240 acres at that price would have brought him in a sum of £1,200,000, but needless to say Sir John Thwaites, the Chairman of the Board, deemed it useless to continue the negotiations.  In 1856 Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson applied for a Bill in the House of Commons giving him power to enclose Hampstead Heath, but this was strenuously opposed by the surrounding districts at a public meeting held in the St Pancras Vestry Hall on 21 April 1856.  In 1866 he actually began to build on the Heath, but he died in 1870 and was succeeded by his brother.  Sir J. M. Wilson, who sold his rights to the Metropolitan Board of Works in October 1870 for the very moderate figure of £45,000.  In January 1872 the Board took formal possession of the Heath, and the Hampstead Vestry gave a luncheon to celebrate this happy event.  Before that time the great majority of Londoners knew no more of the beautiful lanes and walks within an hour's omnibus ride of the Bank of England than they did of New Zealand or Brazil.  About fifty years ago another eighty acres of land were added to Hampstead Heath on the north-west side by the Eton College Trustees, who have been owners of 320 acres of agricultural land in this district since the days of Henry VIII
Beacon during the Armada
Hampstead Ponds Three, formerly four, very early reservoirs.  .   With the growth of the Citythe citizens were 'forced to seek sweete waters abroad.'  , in 1543/44 the City Corporation obtained an Act of Parliament,  authorising it to make use of 'dyvers great and plentyfull sprynges at Hampstede Hethe'. steps were taken in 1589 to impound the waters from springs at Hampstead by building an embankment in the valley below the summit of Hampstead Heath and establishing the reservoirs known as the Hampstead Ponds. It was intended both to supply the City and also to scour the River Fleet, but the scheme was a failure. The Hampstead Ponds were leased on 10 January 1692/3 by the City Corporation to William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, for a term of 31 years The partnership was known as the Hampstead Water Company and supplied an area from below Hampstead which, extended as far as parts of Westminster.   As the population in  increased Another reservoir pond was added in 1777 to the three already in existence, bringing up the area to twelve acres. No. 1 Pond was filled in in 1892. An agreement was made in January in 1856 for the Hampstead undertaking to be acquired by the New River Company. A  perpetual rent charge of £3,500 per annum is still paid bv the Thames Water Authority to the holders of the 600 shares in the Partnership  of  the Hampstead Aqueducts. The lease of the ponds from the City of London, at a rental of £80 per annum, expired at midsummer 1936 and was not renewed, but as recently as 1934  nearly 150,000 gallons a year had been drawn from this source for the purpose of flushing the Metropolitan Cattle Market.
Well.  In 1833-5, the Hampstead water undertaking sank a well into the chalk at the lower end of Hampstead Heath, between Nos. 1 and 2 of the Hampstead Ponds on a level with the northern end of South End Road. It was 7ft in diameter and 320 ft deep. In 1835 a steam pumping engine was installed to assist the company's supply to Kentish Town and Camden Town. This engine was housed in an octagonal 'pepperpot' tower . the engine was removed in 858.. The tower remained as a residence by the New Company, but was demolished by the Metropolitan Water owing to settlement. The well was filled in by the MWB in 1928.

Hampstead Square
Observatory on the site of the Reservoir 1856 which covered site of Hampstead village green used for parliamentary elections. Society founded in 1899.  1910 built above the reservoir to make it higher.  Six inch refractor telescope by Thomas Cook of York presented to the Society in 1923. In the 1970s put on a modern equatorial mounting. Driven by a motor.
Weather station alongside which has been checked daily since 1910 and is the longest continuous weather record in the country. The Hampstead Scientific Society weather station was started on 1 January 1910. It is of special interest not only on account of its 70 year record, but also because it is on top of the highest hill in London, 450 feet above sea level.  The two rain Daily rainfall measurements have been made by Water Board staff (or turn- cocks to give them their official titles), as well as temperatures and sunshine. Cloudiness, present weather and wind speeds and directions are also recorded. Despite two world wars, not many days have been missed and, when this occurs, estimates have been made from records of neighbouring stations. Returns of all elements and calculations of totals for each month, and averages, were made by the late E.L. Hawke for the first 55 years of this period. These were sent to the headquarters of the Meteorological Office at Bracknell. Now operated by computer. 
Christ Church, 1851-2 by K Daukes.  Built to replace a proprietary chapel in Well Walk. organ pipe front by Gilbert Scott, a member of the congregation.  Scott gallery of 1860 was removed; it had been praised for its lightness and beauty by the Illustrated London News.  
Hampstead Water Co.

Heath Street
32  Louis’s Patisserie. 
Bell Moor flats. Top is above the level of St.Paul’s. Site of Bell Moor c20 Neo-Tudor flats, 
Heath Street Baptist church. Two towers. 1871 wing for a British school. Public etc. on site of Independent Chapel. 1860-1 by C G Searle. a Second World War memorial by Walter Godfrey.
Queen Mary House. Was a military maternity hospital. Neo-Georgian of 1921-2 by B. Kitchin and T. Danby-Smith. converted 1990—1 by Stillman Eastwick-Field as a home for the elderly.
Pond. 
Friends Meeting House. 1907 by Fred Rowntree.  Arts and Crafts design in free style. Library.

Holford Road,
Family living there in eighteenth century, paid for from voluntary cargo in the Napoleonic wars

Judges Walk
North London Hospital for Consumption, became National Institute for Medical Research pretentious mass. Built as consumption hospital in 1880. Wings added but moved and now National Institute to Medical Research, then converted to flats.
1-6 said to be where the judges held courts in the Great Plaque, once called King's Bench Avenue

Lower Heath

Lower Terrace
10 Netley Cottage supposed to be where Dick Turpin hid. Grille in the wall reaches to a little cave where several men could be sheltered and a passageway to Adelaide House. A late C18 former farmhouse
1-4 pretty late Georgian terrace facing s
2 Constable lived. Terraced cottage 1820s making endless studies of atmospheric effects in the big Hampstead skies

Mount Square,
8 stables of the Grove 

North End Way
North End. It is so marked on Rocque's map of 1741-5 and on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822, 'the northern district of Hampstead', thus distinguished from the hamlet of West End.
Upper Flask Inn, 1735, Kit Kat club
Queen Mary's maternity Home, 1921, site of Upper Flask tavern, turned into private house called the Upper Heath, 1750s Upper Flask Inn, 1735, Kit Kat club
Eton College estates
Henry Miller hung in chains, 450' above sea level
Jack Straw's Castle. ‘Incongruous’ .. yet it looks very old, with clapboard in green and cream colours. It is a timber framed building with white boarding, crenellations, and intersecting Gothic glazing bars, but on a scale that is unmistakably 20th . It was bombed and rebuilt in 1963 by Raymond Erith in Georgian Gothick.  it is the Deodand of the Lord Mayor of London and had been an old coaching inn named after Jack Straw, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Dick Turpin's ring is said to have been found in what is now the car park. John Sadler MP for Sligo, committed suicide behind the pub on 17th February 1856 - he was Dickens’ model for Mr.Merdle in Little Dorrit. Dickens knew the pub as did Marx and Engels. The building has since been redeveloped as flats.
Heath House. Walled garden at junction of road to Golder's Green and Highgate.  . Home of Sir Sanuel Hoare Quaker banker 1776. 
Heath Lodge was built on the heath by Mrs. Lessingham actress Associations with Congreve, eighteenth century, Moyne. In 1906 it was bought by William Lever who also owned Hill House. He demolished Heath House and linked the two across a right of way. Still quarrelling over the right of way when he died. Wedding present for his son. Given to Manor House Hospital by Lord Inverforth. Home of A.Weir shipping magnate Owned by Manor House Hospital, rest became public in 1963. Rabbit grazed lawns. Pergolas restored by City Corporation.
19 Michael Ventris 1922-1956. Plaque erected 1990.

North End
Named in Saxon charter then called Sandgate. Once an isolated hamlet among woodland on the Hampstead border. documented in the mid-18th onwards.
Plaque to the birthplace of John Gurney Hoare
Gibbet The exact location of the gibbet is not known. It was beside the road leading from North End to the Whitestone pond and  this road used to be called 'Gibbet Hill'. Tradition placed it halfway up the hill on the right hand side. Here, in the 19th  were two elms - the 'gibbet elms'.

North End Way
Bull and Bush Pub.  The first record of a building here is that of a farmhouse in 1645  when Charles Ii stopped nearby, It was was licensed in 1721, and called Bull beause of the farming connections.  It is said the painter Hogarth, drank here and planted the pub garden, and even may have lived here. Other habituees were said to be Reynolds, Gainsborough and David Garrick.  . The pub had a music licence in 1867 under Henry Humphries and Florrie Ford sang the well known mjusical hall song "Down at the old Bull and Bush".  It became associated with the Pearly Kings and Queens and the Hampstead Fair.  It was rebuilt in 1924  under Ind Coope amd again in 1987. Since 2006 it has been a Mitchell and Butlers house in their Premium Country Dining Group brand. It is a now a gastropub with an open kitchen.

North End Avenue
Pitt House.  Site of what was originally Wildwood House or North End House. This was a big, gloomy, 18th mansion at one time the largest in Hampstead. A brick pedimented archway in the woodland may be part of improvements made in 1766-7 by James Paine. This is where the elder Pitt, Lord North, came to nurse his depression in 1766. He lived for a year, while also being Prime Minister during which time he saw no one and talked to no one. It was demolished in 1952 after bomb damage. There is a London County Council plaque. The area was added to heath in 1954 and two modern villas now stand on the site of the house
The Hill.  Also Hill house and Inverforth house are other names for it.  Home of Viscount Leverhulme.  1925 founder of the soap firm Lever Brothers and creator of Port Sunlight, near Birkenhead.  Later known as Inverforth House, when it was part of the Manor House Hospital.  in 1996-8 converted to flats with some new houses.  Most of the grounds and great pergola adjoining the Heath were acquired by the LCC for public use in 1960, passing to the Corporation of London in 1989.  The house had been rebuilt c. 1895, and was bought by W. H. Lever as he then was in 1904.  His passion for building resulted in successive remodellings and enlargements, right up until the time of his death in 1925, with some of the architects who were active at Port Sunlight being employed.  Equally characteristic was the development of spectacular gardens, which, were entrusted to Thomas H. Mawson.  Of all his many houses, however, only at the Hill was accommodation provided specifically for parts of his constantly growing art collection.  The upper parts are post-Leverhulme, in connection with hospital use.  Some plasterwork only remains of a barrel-vaulted Carolean music room, which occupied the wing.  James Lomax-Simpson, later company architect of Lever Brothers, worked on this while articled to Edward Ould.  In the wing were small rooms for showing ceramics; the Stuart Room, incorporating c17 woodwork, was fitted up c. 1917.  By Grayson & Ould, possibly c. 1905, is a terrace extending along the garden front.  Mawson built an Ionic veranda onto it c. 1910, and the whole was reconstructed and widened when a ballroom by Leslie Mansfield was formed underneath in 1923.  The ballroom ceiling was originally painted to show the night sky with constellations in position for Leverhulme's birthday.  Most of the formal grounds are now a public garden, and have been little altered.  The original sloping site became a terraced layout, raised above Hampstead Heath.  Curving steps by Lomax-Simpson, and a pool with a boy-and-dolphin statue by Derwent Wood. Raised Doric pergolas give a disciplined architectural unity, though initially their continuity was broken by a conservatory and by a loggia.  Leverhulme bought and demolished two neighbouring houses, so as to include their gardens with his own.  An ingenious link was formed to one of these c.1912, extending the main axis from where the conservatory had stood earlier.  Flanked by further colonnaded pergolas, the route bridges a public footpath, changes direction at a circular domed Temple and ends at a Belvedere with a view towards Harrow on the w horizon.  A flight of steps descends from here to the garden.  The second extension was southwards; after long neglect it was repaired by the Corporation of London and given a new garden at the foot of the pergola in 1995.  Very magnificent and the gardens are even better.  Converted to flats in 1996

Prospect Place
Moreton House 1896 with a rendered front by Gamer, in the style of a Jacobean manor house. Most of its terraced garden has disappeared beneath mediocre late C20 houses.
St. John's churchyard extension, old burying ground full 1811

Sandy Lane
Atmospheric lime trees planted by London County Council in 1905,
Crossing stone commemorating replanting of the avenue in 1987


Stamford Close?
Stamford Lodge house site of Friends Meeting House
Kirten House 1693 'all very simple' of an undenied rightness. .

The Mount
Ford Madox Brown's painting Work portrays this spot corner Heath Street and the Mount
Money's Yard
6 Cloth Hall Romney lived there. Behind a good iron gateway: 1694, 
Nags Head, was for a while The Cruel Sea
Caroline House mid-Georgian, each of two bays
Holly Cottage mid-Georgian, each of two bays.

Upper Heath Street
Kingswell Centre

Upper Terrace
Upper Terrace Cottage, Mrs. Siddons, called Siddons Cottage or Capo di Monte stuccoed cottage orne
Upper Terrace Lodge
Upper Terrace House with gardens to Judges' Walk has a restrained classical front of nine bays. Three c18 houses remodelled as one in 1931-3 by Oliver Hills for Colonel Reginald Cooper.   

Vale of Health
Name could be ironic. Inhabited from 10th. Manor Hatchetts or Hatchetts Bottom. It was once the mosquito-infested home and workplace of a group of washerwomen.  It had nothing to do with the plague, and it is an eighteenth century name. It was a very unhealthy area for very poor people, paupers. Called Hatches Bottom and in 1800 drained and posh houses built. It was the lakeside hamlet where Keats came to thank Leigh Hunt for publishing his first poem.  Lord of the Manor of Hampstead, Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson wanted to increase the Heath, it was very nasty and he tried to lay out roads and there is a causeway here, subsequent big row. He was stopped by residents time and again. Metropolitan Board of Works began negotiations with Maryon Wilson who claimed it was building land. Thwaites continued to negotiate. 1856, Wilson applied for a Bill to build. He was opposed by public meetings and by St.Pancras Vestry. He died in 1868 and after his death, 1872 a new Maryon Wilson sold it to the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Vale was drained at the beginning of the 19th century and given its present name. A few modern flats have not destroyed the charm of this unique spot, where narrow passages connect the few streets. 17th century statute of Merton.  Lord Eversley and Rolf Hunter. Commons Preservation Society 1865. National Trust.
Pond. Country-like and below the retaining wall of the fairground was a sandspit projecting into it. Seals. 18th reservoir. Suicide’s Pond. Containing duck-eating pike
Old fairground, a persistent reminder of the Fair, which recurs at public holidays.
Spencer House, five-storey block of flats, built in the late 1960s. Site of a large hotel that once stood alongside the fairground. At this hotel Stanley Spencer had his studio and painted some of his best known works, including the fantasy Resurrection at Cookham.
1 BryonVillas.  Home of D.H.Lawrence 1885-1930. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, spent only a few months here but here Lawrence met those who would later help him get published. Plaque erected 1969.
South Villa, North Villa, Associations with Edgar Wallace, Compton Mackenzie. All claim to having been built on the site of Leigh Hunt's little cottage Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt and Lamb all visited Hunt here, and Hunt wrote of Shelley'... he swam his paper boats on the ponds, and delighted to play with my children'.  Hunt went to prison for libeling the Prince Regent.  A blue plaque tells of the visit to the Vale of Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet, in 1912.
Aberdeen Court Arts and Crafts group was here. It was a small hospital 1863 then a factory and a lecture hall and a club. S.Amy, 1910. Anglo-German club. Spencer House is the site of the Heath Tavern where Stanley Spencer lived
Hollycot.  Plaque to J. & B. Hammond says ‘social historians, lived here 1906-1913'.  
Hunt Cottage.  Alfred Harmsworth. Claim to be built on the site of Leigh Hunt’s cottage
Spring one source of the Fleet
Vale of Health Tavern
Viaduct Viaduct of red brick and terra cotta carries road across the pond in the Vale of Health. Built as a carriage way into a prospective building site, Maryon Wilson 1844 grand estate of East Park and began work on the road. Softness of the soil made the viaduct collapse, Wilson's folly

Well Road
Inception of the old fountain. Spring discovered in 1698 so Lady of the Manor, Earls of Gainsborough gave six acres for the poor, pump room etc. In Gainsborough Gardens. Area belongs to the Borough. Duffield, who built the spa, built lots of houses in 1706. Possibly Foley House on the site of 21/27 Well Walk by 1722. Left end of £575 arrears of rent. 4 year court case. Spa had collapsed meanwhile. 1725 pump room was an Episcopal chapel. Lay room 1794. Private walk W??? House, watercress beds to the west. Raised pavement. Present wall to the memory of the 3rd Earl of Gainsborough, who gave the well and six acres of land, power in 1698
Gateway to the Logs elaborate with lions. The Logs now subdivided and partly called Lion House. 

Well Walk
1 Keats moved here with his brothers in 1817 and his brother Tom died here. Demolished
Wells Tavern. Once known as the Green Man
11 towering late Victorian date from 1879, part of the development of the area by the landowner, the Wells and Campden Charity
13 Plaque to, Henry Mayers Hyndman 1842-1921 saying ‘socialist leader lived and died here' It was previously the home of John Masefield 1914-16.
14 home of Marie Stopes and from where she published Married Love.
19 Keats
Contemporary buildings on Wells and Campden Charity land more consciously artistic as a result of a campaign by local residents
28 home of J.B.Priestly.  Here he wrote The Good Companions
30 Wells Hotel dignified early   C19, with arched first-floor windows,
40 John Constable.  Lived and painted here in the summer. Dignified Georgian house.  A London County Council plaque says  'painter, lived here'.   Following his marriage, Constable spent a considerable time in London and for his wife Maria's sake moved to what was then a rural part of Hampstead. She died there but he remained for some years as his children grew up.  Plaque erected 1923.
46 originally adjoined the pump room and long room. 
Burgh House. A handsome mansion acquired by the Borough of Hampstead in 1947, but in such a state they nearly demolished it. It is run by the Burgh House Trust as a community arts centre and local museum. Built in 1703, probably for a Quaker family called Sewell, and from 1720 it belonged to William Gibbons, physician to Hampstead Wells, whose initials are on the gates. He was the first man to draw attention to the medicinal qualities of Hampstead’s spa water and started Hampstead Wells. The name comes from a c19 owner, the Rev. Allatson Burgh.  . The Music Room at the front dates from the 1920s and is a rebuilding of a drill hall added when the house was the Middlesex Militia Barracks and in this room is c18 panelling which probably comes from Weatherall House, which used to stand in Well Walk.  In the 1930s the occupant was Kipling’s daughter and he often visited. 1703.Wedgwood Service for the Empress of Russia.
Garden - The front terrace was laid out by Gertrude Jekyll in 1908 and is the only part of the garden, which has survived. 
Little stone fountain all that is left. Victorian drinking fountain marks the site of the chalybeate well.  F 1882 by the Charity’s surveyor, H.S. Legg
Moore
Old Pump Room 3rd Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps

Wells Terrace
Hampstead Wells. In 1680 trustees were appointed to manage the springs. Water sold in London pubs. Flask tiles in pub, water guaranteed here. J. Duffield there and supplied it. Widow Keys
40 home of John Constable London County Council plaque

White Stones Lane
Flagstaff put up by Maryon Wilson to mark old beacon site
Maryon Wilson built a house there that was pulled down overnight by the residents
White milestone still in a little enclosure
Whitestone pond, was a dew pond.  Victorians put a horse ramp in so they could walk out the other side. Shelley Pond enlarged by the vestry in 1875, Source of the Westbourne. Bridge over the Vale of Health. 420 ft above sea level.  Old horse pond to refresh horses which had pulled carts up the steep streets.  This once attractive meeting point of West Heath and the main Heath is now overwhelmed by traffic.
Hampstead Reservoir, south of Whitestone Pond. 1859 for the New River Co., with iron roof pillars and a rare, 40ft high cast-standpipe.


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