DAVID TUCKER
Hampstead is London’s skybox. It’s steeped in privilege. It’s fabulously well appointed. It affords the best views in London. As John Constable put it nearly two centuries ago, ‘this little house1 is to my wife’s heart’s content. Our little drawing room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe – from Gravesend to Westminster Abbey.’ It was ever thus.
The best views in London
A FEW THOUSAND years ago a small band of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers pitched camp on the West Heath (as it’s known today). From their camp it was a fifty-yard stroll up to the summit, from where they could see forever.
Indeed, there’s an eyrie as soon as you come out of Hampstead tube station: the clock tower. It’s part of the old Victorian fire station. They mounted a round-the-clock fire watch from the top of the clock tower because from up there you could see right across the village. And for that matter, you can think of the tube station itself as London’s North Face. It’s the deepest station in the system. It’s no surprise that it was an important bomb shelter during the Second World War.
Steeped and steep (and stepped). Steep is every which way in Hampstead. Out of the tube Hampstead High Street and Fitzjohn’s Avenue are practically in free fall. About face, and Holly Hill and Heath Street are almost as vertical as the ‘ascenders’ in their names.
You hear it said: ‘There’s something about Hampstead. Something in the air.’ Ah, the wisdom of crowds. There is something in the air. Hampstead itself. Clouds scudding overhead. Air cleaner and clearer. And thinner? It’s, well, exhilarating. But also maybe a little giddy, precarious, vertiginous even – like being out on a yardarm.
WHERE TO READ THIS
Recommended reading venue is the Holly Bush, the wonderful old pub in Holly Mount. Or the park bench on the summit, the one with the view to forever. It’s just off Spaniards Road, just a little way along from Heath House. Your eyes will tell you when you’re there.
You get that ‘read’ just about everywhere in Hampstead. Even in Church Row, the finest – it’s well-nigh perfect – Georgian ensemble in London. It’s right on the edge, clinging to the narrow shelf at the top of the Fitzjohn’s Avenue slope. At the far end – down by St John’s, the parish church – there’s a loophole on your left. It’s like looking down the trough of a wave. It’s a reminder that the delightful curiosity halfway along on the other side of Church Row – the house with the first floor that juts out over the pavement, a first floor that’s made out of white weatherboarding and looks like a fo’c’sle – perhaps isn’t so out of place after all.
Shall we inch further out on the ‘yardarm’? Surging up from Church Row is Holly Walk. And billowing up right alongside it is the churchyard annex – the overflow (so to speak) graveyard. It’s bookended at the top by two handsome old weatherboarded houses. The second one in from Holly Walk was Dame Judi Dench’s house. The weatherboarding is the key. It’s another touch of old maritime England. The pair of them could be sloops riding out a nor’wester, pitching and yawing up above the whitecaps – the gravestones. And just a few doors further up Holly Walk is that pretty little row of white cottages with their painter’s-palette doors. You’d be forgiven for thinking they’d washed up here from Corfu or Santorini.
Or head off in the other direction – up Heath Street. Running off it there are narrow, serpentine footways that are so steep they’re hand-railed. Making your way up them you half feel as though you should have a cutlass clenched between your teeth – it’s like being in a boarding party using grappling irons and tackle to scramble up the side of a ship. You think I’m kidding? Climb the first one, oh ye of little faith. Following it up you come over the top and you think you’re on a ship’s poop deck. Complete with a semi-circular railing. And you’re looking out over the ocean, the ocean being London. Way in the distance you can see the southeastern rim of the bowl of hills that girdles the Thames basin, the bowl of hills that embraces Greater London. Beyond that rampart is the Weald of Kent. And ten miles beyond that is the sea.
Much nearer of course – well, if five to ten miles or so is near – is central London. The Eye. The Post Office Tower. Tower 42. The Gherkin. Manhattan-on-Thames (Docklands, in other words). And then look at your immediate surroundings, the foreground. Hampstead houses. You’re standing on the northern rim of that bowl of hills. And if ‘ocean’ isn’t far-fetched, well neither is a touch of vertigo. Because in Hampstead, you’re ridge walking.
Another refocusing – and then it hits you: widows’ walks. Well, that’s what they look like. The balconies and lookouts and roof terraces. Hampstead is bristling with them. Get them into your purview and it all comes together in a rush: widows’ walks, windmills and water. That’s Hampstead. (Windmill Walk is barely a stone’s throw away from ‘the poop deck’.)
Especially water. Hampstead’s awash with the stuff. Literally, figuratively, historically. All the waters: the Thames, the ponds (there are eighteen of them on Hampstead Heath), the well, the Fleet River, a fountain and, yes, as we’ve seen, the sea.
Whitestone Pond
Let’s navigate some of those waters. And navigate them in style. Let’s take a turn by Hampstead’s flagship – the Admiral’s House, in Admiral’s Walk off Hampstead Grove.
The Admiral’s House was supposedly the handiwork of an old eighteenth-century seadog, Admiral Matthew Barton. He was what they called a Blackbirder. In other words he bought and sold slaves. He was shipwrecked off the Barbary coast, washed ashore tadpole naked, captured and sold into slavery. Which he richly deserved. His Majesty’s government ransomed him home. When they got him home they court-martialled him for having lost his ship. Enough was enough for Admiral Matthew B. After all those trials and tribulations he decided to retire. It might seem a strange place for an old seadog to retire to – up here on the heights of Hampstead, until you remember what he did to the roof of the house. You can see the railings, flagpole, fo’c’sle and satellite dish. And best of all – he put two cannon up there. Four pounders. Which he’d fire off every morning to salute the dawn, and every evening to salute the dusk. And a double charge on the anniversaries of famous British naval victories.
That’s the yarn – and it’s too good a tale not to tell. But there’s not a shred of truth to it. It was a naval man who quarterdecked the house but the man in question was Lieutenant Fountain North.
If we set our course by the North Star, just up ahead of us is the Whitestone Pond. Up there you feel a little bit like Noah pitching up on Mount Ararat. And rightly so. Because this is the summit, the roof of London. How high are we? How does 435 feet 7 inches above sea level sound, the soles of your shoes 16 feet 7 inches above the top of the cross on the dome of St Paul’s cathedral? It’s all rather bracing – and clarifying. Explains why the old Observatory is just here – the air was that bit clearer, the better for stargazing.
The pond is what’s called a dew-fed pond (as opposed to spring-fed). In other words, it’s a man-made pond. But why put a pond at the top of the highest hill in London? You can understand the reason if you look at either end of the pond. What do you see? Ramps. Now consider Heath Street, which leads up to the pond. It’s side-of-a-mountain steep. In the days when the traffic was horse-drawn it was a terrible slog for the horses hauling the wagons and carriages up this tremendously steep hill. So when they finally reached the top they’d drive the team down the ramp and into and through the pond, so the horses could refresh themselves. Then at the far end it would be up the ramp and out of the pond and on their way. (Charmingly, you still see mounted police horses getting that very reward for having summited.)
But it’s only part of the answer. There’s a far more important reason – a hard-headed, supremely practical reason for putting the pond here. Put yourself up on that wagoner’s seat. On a hot summer day as you make the climb up the hill something’s going to happen to the wagon wheels that’s cause for deep concern. Because of the heat, the wooden part of the wheel will dehydrate a little bit and thus effectively shrink. Because of the heat – and the friction thereby generated – the molecular structure of the iron rims on the wheels will expand. It’s an accident waiting to happen. The dehydrated wooden wheel contracts. The iron rim expands. The rim’s going to come loose on the wheel. Then when you start down the steep hill at the far end and put the brakes on – the brakes will grip the wheel, but the rim’s loose. In short, you don’t have any braking. However, drive your wagon through the pond and the water resaturates the wooden wheels. What’s more, the water temperature is always a little bit cooler than the air temperature. So when the cold water hits the iron rim it contracts. The iron rim once again fits snugly against the wheel. In short, you’ve got braking.
Hampstead Heath
Now as long as we’re up here, how about if we move along just a little bit. Past the Whitestone Pond and almost to Heath House (where the road forks) there’s a footpath (on your right) that takes you on to the Heath – and on to the most sensational ‘viewing platform’ in London. Trust me. Just go along there, plop down on the bench and, well, feast your eyes on the best panoramic in London. You get there – in body or in spirit – and you’ll certainly agree it’s the perfect spot to survey Hampstead’s history.
Up close – Hampstead
The old cannons in Cannon Lane are fun. They’re some of the oldest ones in London. They’re 300-year-old Dutch cannons brought back to this country by Sir John Melville, Secretary of the East India Company. The reason for them? There wasn’t a Paving Act until the second half of the eighteenth century and before that the wheeled traffic could go wherever it wanted to. If an iron-rimmed wooden wagon wheel struck the corner of your house – or the corner of your garden wall – it was going to do some fairly serious damage. So householders used the old cannon to protect their properties, flipping them upside down and putting cannon balls one size too large in the mouths of the cannons, then sinking them deep into the road in ‘strategic’ positions.
As always, we start with the Thames. The Thames, time out of mind, flowing several miles north of here. And then the most important event in London’s history: that glacier – that mile-high ice cube – diverting the river more or less to its present location and over the years the river carving out the Thames river valley. The Thames river valley that’s spread out before you.
And now we narrow the focus to Hampstead and the last ice age. So we’re back thousands of years as opposed to hundreds of thousands. The glacier has pushed down here. It’s even bringing its own grit! It’s just that it’s beneath the ice rather than on top. It’s pushing – and laying down – vast deposits of sand. You can see it here – it’s underfoot.
Now fast-forward again. Over thousands of years the ice melts. The water from the ice goes down through the sand and hits the subsoil – the seriously old London clay. That clay is largely impermeable. The water from the ice hits the clay and percolates back to the surface in a series of springs. A series of springs giving rise to several of the Thames’s tributaries, including the most important of them, the Fleet River.
Forward again, to a mere thousand years ago. If we’re standing here then we’re standing in the middle of a dense forest. The forest of Middlesex – the forest of the Middle Saxons. And it’s now that we catch our first glimpse of Hampstead. As the name tells us, ‘Hampstead’, like many of London’s villages, is Anglo-Saxon in origin. Taking the name apart you get ham meaning home or farm and stead meaning site or place. The late eleventh-century Domesday Book tells us that Hampstead was a pig farm valued at fifty shillings.
Now to Tudor times. Colonies of laundresses wring in this change. They make an important discovery: Hampstead’s waters have good bleaching properties. What’s more, Hampstead is ideally placed. It’s close enough to London and Westminster so they can get some trade from down there. Not only is it close enough, but it’s also far enough – far enough away so that the waters are pure.
Pure waters. There’s the cue of cues. It rafts us across the centuries to the ‘watershed’ year: 1698. Hampstead has, well, struck water again. And it’s a gusher: a solvent that can turn iron into gold.
Well is certainly the mot juste, the well being the Hampstead Well. Its waters proved to be chalybeate, iron-bearing in other words – iron-bearing and thus health-giving. Or so people thought. It was the well that made people well, and Hampstead certainly did well out of it.
Let’s explore some more. First to the Vale of Health. It’s the village on the Heath – Hampstead’s village within a village. It’s just a couple of streets, three dozen houses or so, green-remembered lanes, a lake with two white swans – in a phrase, doll’s-house delightful, in a word, perfection.
There’s more. The Vale of Health is all right in its own right – but what makes it doubly special is the way it counterpoints. Hampstead’s all about summits and hilltops and big views – the Vale of Health is hidden, down inside. And all the more delicious for being so.
Back towards Hampstead Village
As is Mansfield Place, off New End Road. It’s the smallest street, the most hidden street in London. If you absolutely have to, miss Kenwood House. Whatever you do, don’t miss Mansfield Place. Not only is there no other place in Hampstead like Mansfield Place, there’s no other place in London like Mansfield Place. It’s a cul-de-sac. Two little rows of nineteenth-century cottages tucked in the canyon formed by what’s left of the old Victorian New End Hospital. You can see the hospital water tower, the Rotunda, etc. (one of the etceteras being the tall chimney further down the slope – it was for the hospital incinerator). Because it’s so secluded – so protected – it seems to have a microclimate. The cottage gardens are exquisite. As is the bowered footpath running between the two rows of cottages. Figs, grapes, hops, apples, plums, pears, let alone raptures of flowers – it’s a mini Kew Gardens. To find Mansfield Place – to partake of it, however briefly – can be transformative. ‘Through the looking glass’ was how Lewis Carroll put it. Quantum physicists – and not a few science-fiction buffs – speak of luminous propulsion and wormholes that bend the space–time continuum. Well, whatever the terminology, whatever the theory – Mansfield Place gets my vote. You really do feel as though you’ve tumbled down a wormhole and come out in the nineteenth century. Way back in the nineteenth century. The sensation is quite extraordinary. It’s pronounced – it feels real. So much so that you turn it over in your mind. My theory? Something to do with the utter absence of the automobile in Mansfield Place.
We’ve done water, so now let’s see Hampstead in terms of the other elements, in terms of air, earth and fire.
Its air? Think of the Hampstead Observatory (Lower Terrace). Think of Robert Louis Stevenson coming here – the house he lived in is still there, in Mount Vernon – precisely because of Hampstead’s reputation for fine air. Think of the splendid mock-Gothic Victorian sanatorium on Holly Hill. Today it’s Celebrityville, a block of luxury flats, home to, word has it, a couple of Arsenal footballers and a Spice Girl or two. Be that as it may, the point here is: it absolutely stands to reason that a hospital for tuberculosis patients would find its way to Hampstead!
And earth? Well, the Heath obviously. There’s nearly 900 acres of it, 2 per cent of London’s public green. And that’s really saying something, because this is the second greenest major city on the planet. But the key to the Heath is the earth: the sand. The soil is so alkaline that it’s effectively unable to be cultivated. You can’t grow cash crops in a sand pit. The sand – and the alkalinity – is the reason for the gorse and the furze. Wresting a living from sandy soil ain’t easy. Most plants can’t do it. But that good-for-nothing soil is effectively what’s saved Hampstead Heath. You couldn’t farm it. So why buy it? And what you haven’t bought you can’t sell – for ‘development’. London – like every city – is a world of dwellings (mostly brick, in London’s case) and pavement and roads. And right in the middle – well, near enough to – we’ve got this vast oasis of green and water and wildlife and playing fields (not to mention a duelling ground, should you need one).
You also get the sand – so to speak – in Golden Yard. It boasts Hampstead’s oldest small houses. There’s a plaque there that reads: ‘… the area was then largely a disused sand pit, the sand no doubt used in the development of Elizabethan London’. Sand extraction is also what caused the strange landscape at Sandy Heath. Sandscape? Moonscape? Fairyscape? A dunescape in reverse? A touch of a bayou? It’s beyond extraordinary. There’s no other place in London – perhaps in England – like Sandy Heath. It’s pocked with lichen-covered mini-ponds. The secret? It’s been quarried. For its sand. The lush, swamp-like mini-ponds mottling this wild and little-known extension of the Heath were sand pits.
And finally, fire. Well, the fire station of course. But also, the look of Hampstead. The fiery red brick. Fired in Hampstead kilns. Fired from Hampstead earth, Hampstead clay. And the fire – the reds and oranges and russets – of the gorse and furze on the Heath in the autumn. And the fire at night: the million points of light ablaze down in London when you take survey of the place – ‘Gravesend to Westminster Abbey’ – from one of Hampstead’s eyries (or widows’ walks) after night has fallen.
Pull all of the above together – the beauty of the place, its situation, its fine air, its greenery, its interest – and is it any wonder that it’s always attracted – that it’s right for – artists and writers and cinema directors and actors and poets and photographers.2 As well as the rest of us.
1. No. 40 Well Walk (it’s marked with a blue plaque)
2. To name just a few: Constable, of course. But also Ford Madox Brown (The Mount, the scene of his most famous painting, Work, looks today very much as it did in 1852 when he painted it), George Romney, Lucien Freud and Michael Ayrton. Cinema directors Ridley Scott and the late Anthony Minghella. Writers John Keats and Leigh Hunt and Rabindranath Tagore and H G Wells and John Fowles and Wilkie Collins and John Masefield and George du Maurier and Katherine Mansfield and D H Lawrence and Robert Louis Stevenson and John le Carré. The list goes on and on.