Belsize Park

Post to the south Primrose Hill

Post to the north Parliament Hill

Post square to the west Hampstead
Post square to the east Gospel Oak  and Gospel Oak and Kentish Town


Aspern Grove
Local authority housing on the site of Russell and Aspern Nurseries and sports grounds. Built in 1980s on land previously owned by the railways, designed by Bill Forrest and Oscar Palacio, Camden Architects Department in post-modern style. It was the borough's last new-build housing; plain pale brick terraces. Previously this area was owned by the railway and a tunnel runs underneath. Post war it was leased to John Russell (Hampstead) Ltd., who developed here a nursery garden, jazz club and public tennis courts plus some light industry. In the 1980s it was developed for housing and following community action the three woodland areas were created alongside.

Belsize Avenue
The road was originally the carriage drive to Belsize House. At the Haverstock Hill end of the road the road surface is lowered and footpaths are raised with railings.

Belsize Wood
These sites are at the eastern end of the Aspern and Russell Nurseries estates and are between them and Lawn Road
Belsize Wood is a Local Nature Reserve is a steeply sloping site. There are two parts, one which is always open and another only open at weekends. It stands above the London and Midland railway Lismore Circus railway tunnel built in the 1860s. There are forest trees and an understorey of hawthorn and elder
Railway ventilation shaft in the North West corner of Belsize Wood
Russell Nurseries Woods. These have a network of paths and steps and some biodiversity enhancements. There is a bird feeding area and some Stag Beetle loggeries as well as an owl box.
Belsize Sensory Garden. Associated with this is a Green Gym.

Belsize Lane
5 Hunters Lodge. Gothic building from 1810 built for a merchant, William Tate.  Designed by Joseph Parkinson.

Fleet Road
Fleet Road is said to follow the Fleet River. However, a tributary to the river appears to have run to the north of this section of the road, only joining it to run alongside in the square to the east.  In this section the south side of the road is entirely covered with outbuildings and sub entrances of the Royal Free Hospital, including a long stretch of wall which may date from its fever hospital predecessor
154 White Horse pub. This pub is said to have been established early in the 18th. It was rebuilt in 1904 as a big prominent corner put with a clock at the pinnacle of the frontage. Inside original ironwork features survive.
Byron Mews. This new housing is on the site of the tramway depot (in the square to the north)
77 Royal Free Hospital Recreation Centre and Club.  Run by the Royal Free Charity this provides sports and swimming facilities as well as studio and other spaces.

Hampstead Green
This area was described as manorial waste land in the 18th and became the site of big houses and was adjacent to others.  There appears at one time to have been a small green here and in 1746 was an open space with an avenue of trees and a few buildings and a railed triangular site is now managed for wildlife, planted with a wild flower meadow. The site was owned by St Stephens’s church from 1869-75. Later it was called the Pond Street Enclosure and protected under the London Squares Act of 1931.
A Cabman's Shelter stood near the Green in  1935.
Bartram House. Bartram’s had been an ancient estate in this area with various buildings. Bartram House was built around 1806 north of the copyhold estate. It was the home from 1849 of Sir Rowland Hill whose family continued to own the site. Land to the south was purchased by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for a fever hospital and following objections in 1883 the board bought Bartram House and it was then used as a nurses' home but was exchanged in 1901 for land belonging to Hampstead General Hospital
Hampstead General Hospital. This had been founded in South Hill Park in 1882 but needed to expand. Land opposite Hampstead Green was acquired in 1901 and then exchanged with the Hampstead Fever Hospital for Bartram House which was then demolished.  It opened as Hampstead General Hospital in 1905 in a building by Young & Hall and in 1907 merged with the North-West London Hospital and began to expand its services.  In 1948 it joined the NHS and was closed and demolished in 1975 to be replaced with buildings of the Royal Free Hospital. The site became a car park and a small garden adjacent was dedicated to Dr. W. Heath Strange, the hospital’s founder.
Strange Garden. This memorial garden to Dr. Strange and the Hampstead General Hospital includes the frieze which was on the facade and which is laid out on a sloping lawn. There are other memorials on site: a Mulberry tree donated by the League of the Royal Free Hospital Nurses to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Hospital; a tree in memory of Broderick Dewhurst, clinical nurse manager 1990; a stone n memory of Helen Hendrick; a plaque in memory of Annette Mendelsohn. This garden is being moved because of redevelopment plans.
The Institute of Immunity and Transplantation is now being built on the car park and will be called the Pears Building after its donor. Along with this will be a new development, some of which will be sheltered housing ‘retirement living but not as you know it’.

Haverstock Hill
Stretch of road linking Chalk Farm and Belsize Park. The name – which dates to at least the 17th - means the place where oats are grown and it seems to have referred to the whole slope of the hill. It was also called Hampstead or London Road.
250 The George.  Established in 1666 and on Red Lion Hill in 1826. It was rebuilt in the 1920s in 'brewers' Tudor' style and has latterly been called The Rat and Parrot.
238 Rosary Roman Catholic primary school. This was originally Bartram’s Roman Catholic School and part of the orphanage run by the Sisters of Providence in Rowland Hill Street. Although it received a parliamentary grant it was not recognised as a public school but was maintained by the London County Council after 1921. After the Second World War it became Rosary School as a Roman Catholic voluntary aided primary.  It is a 19th red brick building set back from street with four storeys and an attic.
230 Maternity Welfare Centre. This was extant in the 1950s but the building is later described as a ‘Spastic Centre’.  The site appears now to be part of the Rosary School.
George V pillar box. This is on the corner with Ornan Road. It has ornate lettering cast into the door and ‘GR’ set below a crown.
WAC Arts, Arts trainbing organisation in the old Town Hall.  This was the Vestry Hall of 1877-8 built by Hampstead Vestry following a competition won by I. F Kendall and Frederick Mears. It is in red brick and stone, with a pediment on two of its sides and a corner tower. Inside is an imperial stair with cast-iron balustrades to a public hall on the first floor – the fireproof back arched floor of the hall is visible in the vestry room -later the council chamber – below. .  Alterations by Frederick Nie in 1886 included a large new committee room. In 1910-11 Hampstead Borough Council extended the building along Belsize Avenue to designs by John Murray. In 1965 the new London Borough of Camden chose St Pancras Town Hall as its main headquarters. In 1998 this was converted to an Arts Centre by Burrell, Foley
210 Shelter at the end of a drive alongside a shop – currently a Costa. This is a circular concrete pillbox with a square brick ventilation shaft on the roof. To the south is an open vertical shaft surrounded by corrugated iron with a system for dropping items into the tunnels by pulley. To the west is a low concrete structure which was probably a water or fuel tank. This was built during the Second World War with sleeping accommodation and facilities for 1,200 people. These shelters were designed as two parallel tunnels, so that they could be part of a future – but never built - express railway. Tunnels were on two floors with iron bunk, first aid facilities, wardens, and lavatories in hoppers under the works.
Ventilation shaft – modern structure painted white the brick is unpainted.
Odeon Cinema.  This opened in 1934 and with an Art Deco interior by T.P. Bennett & Son. It also has a Compton 3Manual/6Rank theatre organ with solo cello and an illuminated console. It was badly German bombed in 1941 and was. It reopened in 1954 and was by then a Rank Organisation Cinema. It closed in 1972 and was demolished leaving its adjacent shops and flats, one of the original shop units became the entrance to a new Screen on the Hill.
203 Screen on the Hill, this is in part of the site of the former Odeon Cinema, The entrance is in one of the parade of shops that was built as part of the original Odeon and retains the cream faience tiles from it. It opened in 1977 by Mainline Pictures. It has since been expanded and is now known as the Everyman Belsize Park
Belsize Park Station. Opened in 1907 this lies between Hampstead and Chalk Farm on the Northern Line. It was an original station on the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway taken over by Yerkes and now known as the Northern Line. It is a Leslie Green designed station with with rows of arches and ox-blood glazed tiles. It was refurbished in the late 1980s and although the lettering above the façade has gone there are bronzed poster surrounds from the 1920s and the original clock has been restored.  The staircase to the emergency stairs also survives in its original tiling and the original wooden lifts survived into the 1990s.  . The station was built back from the building line and this has left a small forecourt with Edwardian railings and stone plinths.
210 Deep Shelters. A quarter of a mile of twin tunnels lie below the station, constructed in n1944 as war rooms. In 1940 it was announced that a limited programme of deep public shelters would be available.
Shelter. At the junction of with Downside Crescent. This is a circular pillbox giving the northern entrance to the tunnel complex. There is a brick extension in Downside Crescent which is the current entrance and behind it a brick tower with a door at the bottom. There also a low rectangular concrete structure which is, probably a water or fuel tank. Most of the structure is painted white.


Pond Street
15 Roebuck pub. Probably dates from the mid-19th and was a Hoare’s house
Royal Free Hospital.  This originally opened in Hatton Garden and later Gray's Inn Road from 1840. It had been founded in 1828 to provide free healthcare to those who could not afford medical treatment. The title 'Royal' was added under Queen Victoria in 1837 because of work done with cholera patients. It was then the only hospital in London to offer medical training to women and work began with the London School of Medicine for Women, later renamed the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine.   A decision was taken to move out of central London after the Second World War. The site here had been occupied by the North Western Fever Hospital, which begun in temporary buildings in 1870, and the Hampstead General Hospital.  The first phase was by Watkins Gray Wood International, was built 1968-75.  These are wards in tower blocks of eighteen storeys with concentric balconies. The hospital has expanded enormously since.  In April 1991 the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust was established. Outside is a decorative iron tympanum of 1894, brought from Gray's Inn Road.  Sculpture by Jesse Watkins, two interlocking curved forms, 1974.  .
Marks and Spencer.  This is on the site of the Hampstead Picture Playhouse which opened in 1914.  It closed in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War and, despite opening again, was closed in 1940 and re-opened in 1946 as the Hampstead Playhouse. It was taken over by the Classic Cinemas chain in 1965 and then re-named Classic Cinema  It was modernised in 1968 and frontage changed and then converted into a triple screen in 1978. In 1985 it was taken over by the Cannon Group and re-named Cannon. There was a bad fire in 1986 and in 1991 it became the MGM and in 1995 taken over by Virgin.  It went on to a management buy-out and was re-named ABC. It closed in 2000 following which it was used for illegal raves and squatters. It was then bought by the Royal Free Hospital and demolished. The new building has hospital staff accommodation as well as the shop.

Railway
The Belsize Tunnel and the Belsize New Tunnel run under much of this area, east/west. The first was built for the Midland Railway by William Barlow in 1865. It was duplicated in the 1880s. It lies between Kentish Town and West Hampstead Stations.

Rosslyn Hill
St. Stephen's. This was designed by S.S.Teulon as his most expensive project.  It opened in 1870 and was funded by local Lord of the Manor Thomas Maryon Wilson. It was constantly prone to subsidence from its hillside location and by the late 1960s there were real concerns. It was closed in 1977. It was not demolished because of its listed status and instead it was squatted. It has since been refurbished following fund raising appeals and is in use by Hampstead Hill School and as a community lifelong learning centre. It is also available for community and other events.

Rowland Hill Street
North Western  Hospital. The Metropolitan Asylums Board purchased part of the Bartram’s estate for its earliest smallpox and infectious diseases hospital.  Temporary wooden and corrugated iron huts were built in 1869 and the   Hampstead Smallpox Hospital opened in 1870. Nursing care was provided by the Anglican Sisters of St Margaret, from East Grinstead.  The Hospital closed when the epidemic subsided, but reopened for a smallpox epidemic later that year. Additional huts had to be built. There were complains about possible infection and the Hospital was closed in 1872.  the Hospital buildings were then used to accommodate mentally handicapped children until Darenth Park School was ready and permanent hospital was planned for the Hampstead site.  In 1876 another smallpox epidemic began and local residents took to the courts.  Following a Royal Commission in 1881 it was renamed the North-Western Fever Hospital, treating scarlet fever and diphtheria. Bartram House was sold to them who used it as a Nurses' Home.  More land was acquired and more wards and other blocks were built.  In 1930, control of the Hospital was transferred to the London County Council.  It joined the NHS and was renamed the North-Western Hospital and became a branch of the Royal Free Hospital then still in central London.  The first kidney transplants were performed here in the 1960s, as well as the development of home dialysis was pioneered here too. The North-Western Hospital was demolished in 1973 and its site was used to build the new Royal Free Hospital.
Convent by the Sisters of Providence of the Immaculate Conception bought part of Bartram’s in 1867. they opened a private boarding school for girls in Belle Vue house and an orphanage and day school for girls in Bartram House, A new block was added in 1887 – still in use as a school. The old house was demolished and a hostel with a chapel built
Bartram’s Residential Hostel
Bartram Park. This was a large house to the south of Bartram House. it was sold to Midland Railway Co in 1867,

The North London Railway (ex Hampstead Junction) runs west from Gospel Oak Station but begins to turn south west after Hampstead Heath Station.


This posting covers only the north west quarter of the square
The south west corner of the square is Belsize Park.
The south east corner of the square is South End and Gospel Oak

Post square to the east Gospel Oak  and Gospel Oak and Kentish Town

Square to the west Hampstead

Byron Mews
Housing built in 1995 by developer, St.George’s, on the western end of the LCC Tramway Depot which fronted on to Cressy Street (in square to the east). The entrance is through a break in the terrace which appears to date from the Second World War or shortly after. Byron Mews is curved in form and is said to be ‘situated in a basin below the level of Fleet Road’.  This basin is not visible on older maps showing the tram depot and earlier.

Constantine Road
18 Clock Mosaic in the front paving showing the time at 12.20, the exact moment when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953.

Downshire Hill
Developed by William Coleman from 1812 on copyhold land owned by the Maryon Wilson family. The site had previously possibly been brickfields
32 Freemasons Arms. Large pub built in 1936 replaced a succession of previous pubs. The previous building was found to be unsafe during work to extend it and had to be demolished but dated to before 1819. The pub is said to be the only place where London Skittles is played with nine pins and with a lignum vitae cheese, which is thrown and not rolled at the pins. The skittle alley is in the pub cellar and put in when the pub was rebuilt. There is a Hampstead Lawn Billiard and Skittle Club
14a former school of St. Johns Church founded in 1830 had become St Stephen's National School by 1885. During the Great War it was used as a studio by the Carline family and meeting place for people called the Hampstead Set or the Downshire Hill Group.
St John's Chapel. Opened in 23 as a Proprietary chapel.    In 1813, the land for the building was bought by a builder William Woods, lawyer Edward Carlisle and James Curry, a Christian minister who financed it. St John’s was thus privately financed and not a parish church – called a proprietary chapel. It was founded within an Evangelical tradition. The copyhold of the chapel was bought by John Wilcox in order to carry on Whitefield’s legacy of preaching and some disputes ensued. In 1872, Henry Wright became minister and was associated with the Church Missionary Society and this used missionaries as his curates. The church may have been designed by Cockerell. . It is a stuccoed building which may once have had more ornament.  Inside is light with three galleries between columns. It was restored by Horace Field in 1896 and by Edward Cullinan in 1964-71, when the glass screens at the end were added.   The Bevington & Sons organ was built in 1873 and installed in 1880. There are wooden box pews lining the walls – some proprietary chapels replied on pew rents for income. Outside, below the bellcote is a black and gold clock made by John Moore and Son of Clerkenwell in 1823.

Fleet Road
154 White Horse pub.  Late 19th red brick public house. Rebuilt by J. T. Davies in 1904 with Albert E. Pridmore as Architect and C. Gray Hill Contractor.  It has decorative stone columns windows with leaded upper lights. Ironwork at ground floor level, full height stone pilasters, decorative stucco broken pediment with clock and surrounding balustrade at roof level.

Hampstead Hill Gardens
14-20 and 25-33. Development began in the 1870s with these stuccoed semi- detached villas.
The Hampstead tunnel on the Hampstead Junction Railway was built between Hampstead Heath Station and Finchley Road and Frognal Station in 1860 and lies unseen beneath Hampstead Hill Gardens. The tunnel is 1166 yards and has recently been refurbished and upgraded

Hampstead Ponds
This square covers Ponds 1 and 2 in Pryors Field.  The pond chains were originally formed from tributaries of the River Fleet which still flow through them. They were dammed 300 years ago and are thus “historic earth filled dams” and do not have engineered spillways. As reservoirs they provided drinking water until taken over by the Hampstead Water Company in 1692.  This was formed by William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England to exploit statutory powers belonging to the City Corporation since 1543.  The company was eventually taken over by the New River Company in 1856 for a perpetual rent of £3,500, and the water stopped being piped for domestic use. The Metropolitan Water Board eventually took over the New River Co and continued to leas the ponds until 1936, when it was not renewed.  They are now managed directly by the City Corporation. There are now some concerns about future possibilities of flooding and proposed work by the Corporation.  A lively protest movement has ensued.
Hampstead No.1 Pond. This is classified as a reservoir and inspected as such.
Hampstead No2 Pond There are 20 oak trees near. Fishing is allowed in this pond for pike, carp and roach


Heath Hurst Road
Originally called Heathhurst Road. 29 houses were built between 1897 and 1899. It was built on the site of a field behind Keats Grove, where cottages had to be developed to put the new road school.

Keats Grove
Was originally called Albion Grove and then John Street, developed from 1812 by William Coleman smart villas.
10 Keats House Built as one of a semi-detached pair called Wentworth Place. Built in 1814 by William Woods, a local builder. The larger side of the property was first occupied by Charles Wentworth Dilke while the smaller, eastern side was occupied by Charles Brown which is where John Keats lived in 1818, staying here for just 17 months before travelling to Italy. The other house was taken by Mrs. Brawne and her two daughters, and Keats fell in love with Fanny.  In the summer of 1820, he was advised, for the sake of his rapidly declining health, to go to live in Italy and he died In Rome. Fanny became curator of a museum opened to honour him, but then at last married. In 1838 the house was bought by Eliza Jane Chester who knocked through the walls to create a single house. In 1920, it was threatened with demolition the Keats Memorial Committee was set up to fund raise and the house was opened in 1924 by Quiller Couch with a Memorial Library next door opened by the Council. There is a Royal Society of Arts plaque from 1896 which says 'poet, lived in this house'
Library.  A discreetly designed branch 1931 by Sydney Trent.  It is now Keats Community Library which opened in 2012 taking over the building previously known as the Heath Library which was run by Camden Council. So it is one of these libraries run by unpaid staff.

Park End
Built on the site of the stagnant heath pond which filled in by developer Joseph Pickett

Parliament Hill
Originally called South Hill Park Road. Parliament Hill, the street, along with the South Hill Park area was built by Joseph Pickett from 1878 on land bought from the ecclesiastical commissioners which had been the northern part of South End Farm.  The railway had foaled to provide crossings to access this area. The road itself was intended to go north but was cut off by the development of Parliament Hill Fields as parkland.  The original houses are Ruskinesque Gothic
Parliament Court. A long block of 1930s art deco houses going up the hillside

Pond Street (East end of north side only)
So called because it led to a pond at South End Green, filled in 1835. South End Green, was later transformed by the London Street Tramways Co.'s extension to a terminus there. In 1886 the street was widened and run across the green
23 until recently used as offices. Recent archaeology has found the foundations of earlier buildings beneath them.
35 -35a terraced houses from the 18th with a studio extension- built in 1946 for graphic designer Frederick Henrion plus later rear extension by Richard Rogers. The houses themselves re in red brick
Drill Hall. This hall, built probably in the 1890s, is now a commercial fitness centre. It is also known as the Harben Armoury - part of charity run by the Cordwainers Company in association with the Royal Fusiliers.
Royal Free Staff Day Nursery – at one time Hampstead and North St Pancras Day Nursery

South End Green
Pond where two springs going into the Fleet.  Long-since filled-in Old pond at the end of South End Grove source of the river Fleet. The pond site was later used as the terminus for trams from the London Tramway Co.whose depot was just round the corner. It is now a bus route terminus.
Drinking fountain, erected in 1880 it is in granite Gothic style by J.H. Evin. The inscription says “This fountain was erected by Miss Crump of Hereford House in memory of her cousin Wm. Warburton Pearce Esqre. Who died March 1st 1872 also of her uncle James Bradley Chamberlain Esqre. Who died May 5th 1880. Every one come to the waters.  1880”. ”. Hereford House was in South end Green and Ann was housekeeper to James Bradley Chamberlain who was an Optician and his step-son William Warburton Pearce, an art dealer.
Toilets. These are classic, underground Edwardian lavatories, with wooden cubicles and in the gents two rows of urinals, with elaborate green and cream tiling, and lots of dark wood panelling
Tramway mens' shelter. This dark green timber building with shingled roof topped by a square louvred cupola is a purpose built tramwaymens' shelter from about 1893. The London Tramway Company had extended its trams to South End Green by 1886 and this shelter was provided for them – said to have been by a local resident, or by the London County Council
South End Close.  Built on the site of Pickett's Farm in 1920 by the local authority, as a large block containing 140 flats

South End Road
Holylands, or South End Farm, belonged to Westminster Abbey. When the Hampstead Junction Railway bought some of the farm it was divided into two and in 1881 the southern part went to T.E. Gibb, a Kentish Town developer.
bakers shop on the site of Booklovers Corner. Where George Orwell worked and based Keep the Aspidistra flying on it. A plaque and portrait bust of Orwell on the shop may no longer be there.
14 Garden Gate pub. This 19th pub used to be called The Railway.
Hampstead Heath Station. Opened in 1869 and it now lies between Gospel Oak Station and Finchley Road and Frognal Station on the North London Line, ex Hampstead Junction Railway. In 1890 there was a garden but on Easter Monday 1892 six people were killed in a crush at the station. It was bombed in the 1940s and has since been rebuilt in the 1990s in pseudo antique style. The station canopies are in concrete and installed in 1953.
Tower built over a well by the Hampstead Water Co. in 1835 with a steam pumping engine. This was eventually closed after 1870 by the New River Company. The building became a private house and was demolished in 1907 because of subsidence. It was on the east side of the road roughly where the road bends towards Willow Road.
71 Russell House, this is  one of a pair of 19th houses, with visible alterations by Voysey done in 1890 and  his earliest surviving work in London

South Hill Park
This is a 19th encroachment into the corner of the Heath. Only built because the Hampstead Heath Extension Act was not passed soon enough to stop it.
2a Magdala Tavern. Where Ruth Ellis shot her lover in 1955, allegedly the bullet holes are still there.  She was the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

St Crispin’s Close
Housing on the site of the Hampstead Heath station goods yard

Willow Road
2 part of a terrace of three houses designed by Ernő Goldfinger and completed in 1939. It has been managed by the National Trust since 1995. It was built as a family home to considerable public opposition

North London Line
The North London Line (ex Hampstead Junction Railway) continues in a westward direction from Gospel Oak Station

This posting covers only the north east quarter of this square
The post to the south west is Belsize Park
The post to the north east is South End

Post square to the west Hampstead
Post square to the east Gospel Oak  and Gospel Oak and Kentish Town

Agincourt Road
In 1880 Thomas E. Gibb, a developer from Kentish Town bought some of South End farm and leased the rest. He wanted to build 120 small houses at 'the lower end of middle-class respectability'. He also agreed to construct a sewer. Gibb laid out this road and began brick making on the Salter estate. The first house here was completed in 1888, and by 1891 50 more had been built. By 1894 75 houses had been built by Robert Thorne, who lived at ‘Sunnyside’.
Agincourt House School. The Fleet Road site was purchased in 1877 by the London School Board for an elementary school which opened in 1879.  The adjacent Agincourt Road site was bought in 1882 and opened as a junior mixed school in 1884.  The infants building was opened in 1890 and one chimney of this remains.   In 1953 Robert Matthew, of Camden Architects’ Department altered Agincourt to become a House Craft Centre. It was later used as Fleet Educational Centre, a cookery school and a manual training centre.  Now used as a Pupil Referral Unit
Sunnyside. Home of builder Robert Thorne,
VR Pillar Box

Constantine Road
Developer Gibb planned Constantine Road as a direct route from Gospel Oak and Kentish Town to South End Green and the Heath.  Building began in 1887. The road was fully built up by 1900 by Robert Thorne.

Courthope road
2a studio and workshop in premises which was a dairy in the 1950s.  There are granite setts in the dairy entrance.
All Hallows Church. The East End of the Church faces this road. It was begun by William Turner and completed in 1892.
Vicarage.   This is opposite the east end of the church and was also designed by James Brooks and built in 1889-91.   In 1891 the Vicar was the Rev Charles Mackeson.
Church Hall. This has been used Hampstead Hill Pre-preparatory School since the undercroft of the church was converted for the parish. In 2009 Camden Council leased it for ‘Educational purposes’ – to make good the shortfall in primary school places.

Cressy Road
Laid out by developer Gibb.
Camden Ambulance Station.  Built in 1975 by GLC on the site of the paper factory.  
3-5 Roy Shaw Centre. Camden Council call centre and computer HQ named after long serving Camden politician.
Public Cleansing Depot, 1981. Functional metal box with exposed steel frame and corrugated cladding by John Winter
Mansell, Hunt and Catty - founded in 1891 their ‘paper mill’ was on the east side of the road on the site now covered by the ambulance station. They made a wide range of fancy and functional goods - table stationery, cardboard boxes for confectionery, Christmas crackers, confectioners’ sundries and many other items. They become major employers, finally closing in 1969.  They are said to have had a subway under Cressy Road to reach an extension on the west side.
Hampstead Model Steam Laundry lay to the east of the paper goods factory, who eventually took their site over.
London Street Tramways depot. This was originally a horse tram depot built near the tram terminus. The L.C.C took them over. The depot was opened in 1914 for electric trams and had 16 roads connected to a transverse. It could hold 157 vehicles but was generally used under capacity. It was used by the military in the Great War and returned to public use in 1920.  It is said that in the 1930s its use was similar to the post-war use of the Charlton ‘tramatorium’ scrap yard. It remained in use as a tram store until the final days of the London-wide system in 1949. The depot included a skating rink.
BRS depot. British Road Services used the old tramway site as a lorry storage depot from 1954.

Ella Mews
Housing development on the tramway depot site.
L.C.C Tramway Cover. At the entrance to the Mews. These were used for to cover operating points at depot entrances and at ram ‘pinches’ and crossing places. 
Tram depot buildings. The perimeter walls, entrance and offices all still stand, some in use as offices. . 
Lisburne Road
Laid out by developer, Gibb. By 1894 houses had been built by Robert Thorne, and by John Sanders who lived in Lisburne Road
The boundary of the Kenwood estate coming from the Heath and the railway line goes along the end of back gardens between Lisburne and Roderick Roads.
Methodist Church and hall. There have been a number of buildings here. Some members of the Prince of Wales Road Chapel formed a society in 1875 and by 1880 decided to build a chapel at Gospel Oak. They bought a site in Agincourt Road, which was then being developed as a building estate. A chapel was built in 1882, and this building is now the used as the hall. In 1900 a new octagonal church was opened to the design of Beresford Pite. This was the last building to be made of the red brick from the Gospel Oak brickworks. This was replaced by the present chapel in 1971.  There are several inscribed foundation stones on the original building.

Mackeson Road
Developer Gibb died in 1894 and the estate was finished by F.T. Binnington. Mackeson Roads is named after the first vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Mansfield Road
VR Post Box

Nassington Road
The Kenwood estate boundary eventually reaches the railway line here
L.C.C. iron boundary posts at the corner of the Road and by the railway fence.

Parliament Hill
Running Track. This is a base for the Highgate Harriers and the London Heathside clubs. This was originally a 6 lane cinder track opened in 1939. It was the headquarters of Shaftesbury Harriers. It was upgraded to a synthetic track in the late 1970s and was resurfaced in 1987. In 2001 various improvements were made.

Roderick Road
The area bounded by Roderick, Savernake and Mansfield roads was part of the Manor of Tottenhall which lay between Camden Town and Kenwood, and belonged to St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1803, it was the site of Dairyman’s farm and belonged to Earl Mansfield. The southern boundary was the footpath from Kentish Town to Hampstead along the banks of the Fleet River.   The Kenwood estate boundary now runs along the end of back gardens between Lisburne and Roderick Roads. In 1854 the Hampstead Junction Railway was built which bisected the farm land. The first houses to be built on the Earl of Mansfield’s estates included Roderick Road.
33/35 includes some original pre-Second World War railings.

Savernake Road
Savernake Road completed in 1899.
VR Post box
Footbridge access to the over the railway heath paid for in 1895 by the London County Council

Shirlock Street
All Hallows Church was originally called the Church of the Good Shepherd, and was designed by James Brooks, and said to be his masterpiece. The east end faces Courthope Road. The church was the result of work by Charles Makeson who was a civil servant and lay evangelist at a mission hall locally.  He was ordained and designated as Vicar of All Hallows when the district was set up. The original church was in Mansfield Road and land for the new church wad bought from the Earl of Mansfield in 1888 – fundraising took a long time.   The foundation stone of the new church was laid by the Duchess of Teck in 1892, and Charles Mackeson died in 1899 and Brooks too died in 1901. The Chancel was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in 1914.  A four-manual organ was installed a year later and the last new organ made by the Hill company, it is still in its original condition.   Bells from St Stephen’s Church in Hampstead have been recast and installed here. A donation was promised from the sale of Wren Church of All Hallows the Great in 1894 but the amount received was not enough yet there was a condition that the name of the new Church should be changed to All Hallows – and there are some parts of that church incorporated. Inside near the south west corner are stones which formed the first course of one of the columns of that church from before the fire of 1666. The Pulpit comes from St.Peter, the Stations of the Cross from St.Alban,  Holborn. A brick porch from 17th was installed by William Butterfield. Table and base of pillar, Jacobean, from All Hallows the Great, Thames Street. 
War Memorial. Outside the church on the corner of Shirlock Road and Savernake Roads in the form of a Calvary.  Stone with inscription “Pray for the souls of the servers and members of this choir and congregation of this church who died in the Great War and in whose memory this cross was dedicated Easter A.D. MCMXVIII. R.I.P.”


Tanza Road
Lord Mansfield developed this area in the 1890s. The road joined up two pre-existing streets. It was originally called Tanser Road - this is a place in Northamptonshire near Nassingham  - and was intended to cross the railway to join other streets.
VR Post Box


Belsize Avenue

The road was originally the carriage drive to Belsize House. At the Haverstock Hill end of the road the road surface is lowered and footpaths are raised with railings.

Belsize Wood

These sites are at the eastern end of the Aspern and Russell Nurseries estates and are between them and Lawn Road

Belsize Wood is a Local Nature Reserve is a steeply sloping site. There are two parts, one which is always open and another only open at weekends. It stands above the London and Midland railway Lismore Circus railway tunnel built in the 1860s. There are forest trees and an understorey of hawthorn and elder

Railway ventilation shaft in the North West corner of Belsize Wood

Russell Nurseries Woods. These have a network of paths and steps and some biodiversity enhancements. There is a bird feeding area and some Stag Beetle loggeries as well as an owl box.

Belsize Sensory Garden

Belsize Lane

5 Hunters Lodge. Gothic building from 1810 built for a merchant, William Tate.  Designed by Joseph Parkinson.

Fleet Road

Fleet Road is said to follow the Fleet River. However, a tributary to the river appears to have run to the north of this section of the road, only joining it to run alongside in the square to the east.  In this section the south side of the road is entirely covered with outbuildings and sub entrances of the Royal Free Hospital, including a long stretch of wall which may date from its fever hospital predecessor

154 White Horse pub. This pub is said to have been established early in the 18th. It was rebuilt in 1904 as a big prominent corner put with a clock at the pinnacle of the frontage. Inside original ironwork features survive.

Byron Mews. This new housing is on the site of the tramway depot (in the square to the north)

77 Royal Free Hospital Recreation Centre and Club.  Run by the Royal Free Charity this provides sports and swimming facilities as well as studio and other spaces.

Hampstead Green

This area was described as waste land in the 18th and became the site of big houses and was adjacent to others.

Bartram House. Bartrams had been an ancient estate in this area with various buildings. Bartram House was built around 1806 north of the copyhold estate. It was the home from 1849 of Sir Rowland Hill whose family continued to own the site. Land to the south was purchased by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for a fever hospital and following objections in 1883 the board bought Bartram House and it was then used as a nurses' home but was exchanged in 1901 for land belonging to Hampstead General Hospital

Hampstead General Hospital. This had been founded in South Hill Park in 1882 but needed to expand. Land opposite Hampstead Green was acquired in 1901 and then exchanged with the Hampstead Fever Hospital for Bartram House which was then demolished.  It opened as Hampstead General Hospital in 1905 and in 1907 merged with the North-West London Hospital and began to expand its services.  In 1948 it joined the NHS and was closed and demolished in 1975 to be replaced with buildings of the Royal Free Hospital. The site became a car park and a small garden adjacent was dedicated to Dr. W. Heath Strange, the hospital’s founder.  The Institute of Immunity and Transplantation is now being built on the car park and will be called the Pears Building after its donor.

Strange Garden., This memorial garden to Dr. Strange and the Hampstead General Hospital includes the frieze which was on the facade and which is laid out on a sloping lawn. There are other memorials on site: a Mulberry tree donated by the League of the Royal Free Hospital Nurses to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Hospital; a tree in memory of Broderick Dewhurst, clinical nurse manager 1990; a stone n memory of Helen Hendrick; a plaque in memory of Annette Mendelsohn. This garden is being moved because of redevelopment plans.

 

Hampstead hill Gardens

Haverstock Hill

Stretch of road linking Chalk Farm and Belsize Park, but it is shown on older maps as a distinct place. Name means the place where oats are grown and seems to have referred to the whole slope of the hill. Otherwise the name is obscure – it is shown on the Roque Map and the early ordnance survey. Could be manorial and perhaps derive from a stoke family or the place once called Haverstoke near Chelmsford. The road itself was called Hampstead or London Road.   

Belsize Park Station. 22nd June 1907. Between Hampstead and Chalk Farm on the Northern Line. An original station on the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway which became the Northern Line. Work started in 1903. Taken over by Yerkes. Leslie Green plinths for taller structures, dark red tiles, ground floor, mezzanine floor, framed in steel, 350' long station platforms It is a  Leslie Green designed station with rows of arches and characteristic ox-blood glazed tiles.   In addition to the tube station a Deep shelter was built here during the Second World War with sleeping accommodation and facilities for 1,200 people. The shelters were designed in two parallel tunnels, so that they could be part of an express railway in the future but they remained in military use for a long time. Built by LT as agents for Minister of Home Security with sleeping accommodation for 1,200 people. Ten shelters In 1,400 ft tunnels, 16' 6" diameter. Tunnels on two floors with iron bunks, right angle extensions for first aid, wardens, ventilation, lavatories below street level so sanitation in hoppers under the works.   The station was modernised in the late 1980s but many original features remain. Lettering above the façade has gone. No buildings above although this is likely not to be the case much longer.  It was built back from the building line and this has left a small forecourt with Edwardian railings and stone plinths. There are bronzed poster surrounds from the 1920s.  The original wooden lifts survived into the 1990s.  The staircase to the emergency stairs survives in its original tiling.  Cream and red tiles here used as on the other Hampstead Branch stations.  The original clock has been restored.

Baratamd parl. The rest of the estate was purchased by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for a smallpox hospital. (fn. 292) Bartram Park, a large house with double bay windows behind, set in 10 a. in the southern part of the copyhold Bartrams estate, was occupied by the Winfield family until c. 1851 and by John Fleming, a Baltic merchant, in 1860-1. (fn. 293)The Winfields sold the estate in 1867 to the Midland Railway Co., (fn. 294) which in 1875 offered for sale 2½ a. and the house, (fn. 295) which became a girls' industrial home, called Tre Wint. (fn. 296)

 

210 Deep Shelters. A quarter of a mile of twin tunnels lie below the station, constructed in n1944 as war rooms. In 1940 it was announced that a limited programme of deep public shelters would be available.

210 Shelter at the end of a drive alongside the premises. This is a circular concrete pillbox with a square brick ventilation shaft on the roof . To the south is an open vertical shaft surrounded by corrugated iron with a system for dropping items into the tunnels by pulley. To the west is a low concrete structure which was probably a water or fuel tank.

Ventilation shaft – modern structure painted white the brick is unpainted.

Shelter. At the junction of with Downside Crescent. This is a circular pillbox giving the northern entrance to the tunnel complex. There is a brick extension in Downside Crescent which is the current entrance and behind it a brick tower with a door at the bottom. There also a low rectangular concrete structure which is, probably a water or fuel tank. Most of the structure is painted white.

Fleet, 1878, in 21 hours. 90 inches of rain

Avenue of Elms were entrance to Belsize House

Drinking fountain on the kerbside

Orphan's Working School

Playground. Managed by Vestry of Hampstead

Tailors' Asylum, built for the relief of aged and infirm journeyman tailors, and opened in 1843. This institution was founded on 10 February 1837, and the first stone of the new building was laid by the Marquess of Salisbury on 31 May 1842.

Town Hall. Arts Centre by Burrell, Foley, Fisher with a new dance and concert hall, created 1998-2000 from the Vestry Hall of 1877-8 built originally for the settlement of Haverstock Hill.  Hampstead erected this redbrick and Portland stone building in 1877-8, after a competition won by I. F Kendall and Frederick Mears. A common-sense style of classic, suitable for the official departments of a parish vestry Hall.  Crushingly mean and a disgrace to so prosperous and artistic a Borough. Red brick and stone, Italianate with a pediment on two of its sides and a corner tower. Top lit hall, imperial stair with cast-iron balustrades to a Public hall on the first floor.  Unusually the fireproof back arched floor of the upper public hall is visible in the vestry room  -later the council chamber.  Alterations by Frederick Nie in 1886 included a large new committee room. In 1910-11 Hampstead Borough Council extended the building along Belsize Avenue to designs by John Murray. The building lost its function in 1965 when Camden chose St Pancras Town Hall as its main headquarters.

97 Sir Richard Steele

123-125

193 Belsize Bookshop

204 Thomas Walton, manufacturing chemist, 1885

Moll King's house

Ironmonger

Seventh day Adventist church was Oxenden Presbyterian

Screen on the Hill.

Odeon Compton Organ installed 29 September 1934. With illuminated console.

Ornan Road

40 House

Percival Avenue

Pond Street

Marks and Spencer.  This is on the site of the Hampstead Picture Playhouse which opened in 1914.  It closed in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War and,despite opening again, was closed in 1940 and re-opened in 1946 as the Hampstead Playhouse. It was taken over by the Classic Cinemas chain in 1965 and then re-named Classic Cinema  It was modernised in 1968 and frontage changed and then converted into a triple screen in 1978. In 1985 it was taken over by the Cannon Group and re-named Cannon. There was a bad fire in 1986 and in 1991 it became the MGM and in 1995 taen over by Virgin.  It went on to a a management buy-out and was re-named ABC. It closed in 2000 following which it was used for illegal raves and squatters, It was then bought by the Royal Free Hospital and demolished. The new building has hospital staff acommodation as well as the shop.

Harben Armoury

1 Large L-shaped garden, overflowing with spring colour, divided into three, reached via a sheltered courtyard with colourful containers, herb troughs and water feature. Circular lawn bordered by an old stone path. Subtle use of colour in the beds with many unusual shrubs and perennials, tulips, roses, clematis and other climbers.

6 Brett

17 Hilda Carline

17-21

31 Huxley

New Spa

Old pond at the end of South End Grove source of the river Fleet

Hampstead reservoir 1859 for the New River co. iron roof pillars and rate 40ft cast iron standpipe

Flagstaff and beacon

Housing development on the summit looks like Alcatraz

Royal Free Hospital, Hospital Green. The Royal Free, in Hatton Gardens from 1828 and in Gray's Inn Road from 1840, several other centrally located hospitals, determined on a move out of central London after the Second World War. The decisions taken in 1954; the first phase, by Watkins Gray Wood International, was built 1968-75. The dominant feature is a cruciform tower wards.  It is of eighteen storeys, with a forceful pattern of concentric balconies.  Outside, a decorative iron tympanum of 1894, from Gray's Inn Road.  The fifteen-acre site was inherited from earlier establishments which had become part of the Royal Free group in 1948: the North Western Fever Hospital, which begun in temporary buildings in 1870, and the Hampstead General Hospital of 1905 by Young & Hall, both now demolished.  Sculpture by Jesse Watkins, two interlocking curved forms 1974.  1870 Metropolitan Asylums Board put up a small hospital. Moved out in 1872, smallpox, North Western Fever Hospital. Some of the posh houses are hospital offices. 

Hare and Hounds bombed and rebuilt

George Inn

Hampstead Green

33-35

Memorial like a death mask on the wall to commemorate George Orwell’s work in a local bookshop

Booklovers Corner. Where Orwell worked was the corner shop. He based Keep the
Aspidistra flying
on it.

Railway

Belsize new tunnel.

Belsize old tunnel;

Deep shelter

Rosslyn hill

Rowland Hill Street

Mater Ecclesiae

convent by the Sisters of Providence, who added an orphanage, school, and chapel in 1878 and 1887 in a Gothic style designed by C. G. Wray

Russell place

Tudor close

Wood walk


Sources
Borer. Hampstead and Highgate
British History on line. Camden. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Camden History Review
Freemasons Arms. Web site
GLIAS  Newsletter,
Hillman. London Under London
Grace’s Guide. Web site
London Borough of Camden. Web site
London Gardens On line. Web site
Mitchell and Smith. North London Line
Pevsner and Cherry.  London North
St.Johns Church. Web site
Wade. Hampstead Past


S

Comments

June said…
I attended Bartrams R.C. Primary School, as it was then known, from 1946 - 1950 It was my first school. The school, being funded by the old LCC, had to take pupils who were not RC.
I remember my first day, clutching my pennies as milk money. I was taken to the school gate by my grandfather who had carefully explained why I was being left and so on.
At 10.30 a.m. those pupils staying for school dinners were taken to be shown the dining room. I lived near enough to go home for lunch. I thought the others were actually going for food - so I went home. Naturally I had to be taken back to school until the proper time.
As rare treats we were taken to the grotto in the garden behind the school, no doubt the site of the Bartrams hostel built later on. At Christmas-time we were taken into the small house ( adjoining the shops) then housing for the nuns. The crypt of it had a Nativity scene set up for our visit.

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