Welcome to the second post in our series of 60 posts celebrating 60 years of the London Borough of Camden, and today’s post is by Camden Guide Elena Paolini, and covers some of the fascinating places discovered in her walk “A history walk in Hampstead, the quaintest of urban villages”:
Visitors came to the area around Well Walk to take the waters (Image: Elena Paolini)
With longer, sunnier days ahead, there’s no better time to lace up your walking boots and explore Hampstead. And there is no better way to do that than by joining a walking tour with a knowledgeable local guide.
Camden Guides will bring the area to life, offering fascinating insights into its rich history and one-time residents.
Hampstead has long been a haven for those seeking intellectual stimulation and the restorative power of nature. Its very landscape has played a defining role in its history and character, shaped by wind and clean water.
At one time, two windmills would have dominated the Hampstead skyline.
The Grade II listed pub is named after the laundresses who hung out washing using water from Hampstead Wells on holly bushes to dry (Image: Elena Paolini)
Legend has it that laundresses, hanging their white sheets over the holly bushes on Windmill Hill, created a vision so striking that from the Thames it could be mistaken for a dusting of snow.
Equally vital to Hampstead’s history were its wells and spa. The chalybeate waters, rich in iron, were believed to have medicinal properties, attracting Londoners eager to partake in their reputed benefits.
Hampstead’s spa rivalled those in Tunbridge Wells and Bath, and for a time, the village became a fashionable retreat until unruly revellers tarnished its reputation for good. If you know where to look, there are reminders of this past everywhere.
Robert Louis Stevenson lived in Mount Vernon, Well Walk (Image: Elena Paolini)
Many writers, artists, and radical thinkers seeking inspiration and respite in its fresh air, often hoping to recover from tuberculosis, made Hampstead their home.
The painter John Constable, famed for his idyllic landscapes, captured the beauty of the skies over London from the top floor of his house on Well Walk.
Poets and writers from Keats to George Orwell found inspiration in Hampstead’s leafy lanes.
Meanwhile, radical thinkers and trailblazers, such as Marie Stopes, the controversial advocate for women’s reproductive rights, left their mark on Hampstead’s legacy. Even Florence Nightingale, that stalwart of healthcare reform, considered establishing a hospital in Hampstead, though she ultimately deemed it too damp and cold for convalescents.
Mount Vernon Cottages, Well Walk (Image: Elena Paolini)
Fenton House and Burgh House, the earliest surviving mansions from a time when Hampstead was still a rural retreat from the smoke and bustle of the growing metropolis, offer a glimpse into the lives of the well-to-do.
But Hampstead is not only a place of privilege. While Church Row has long been a desirable address, home to elegant Georgian houses and the wealthy elite, a short detour reveals a very different past.
The Wells and Campden Baths provided drinking water and bathing for homes that had no running water (Image: Elena Paolini)
A few steps away lies a network of narrow alleyways and courts that once housed the servants, farriers, and coach drivers who kept the grand houses running – a reminder of the social layers that have always existed within Hampstead.
And down New End, the striking red and white exterior of a residential block disguises its past as a workhouse and infirmary, which provided shelter and care to the poor of Hampstead well into the 1920s.
St John’s graveyard is one of the oldest surviving in London (Image: Elena Paolini)
Hampstead’s past is woven into its very ground, perhaps nowhere more poignantly than in St John’s graveyard, one of the oldest surviving in London.
Here is the final resting place of clockmaker John Harrison (of Longitude fame), inventor of the marine chronometer, as well as of the tragic Llewellyn-Davies boys, who inspired JM Barrie’s characters of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
St John’s graveyard is the final resting place of some famous people from history (Image: Elena Paolini)
Among the graves also lies a remarkable pair of pioneering women, Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper, who lived together, campaigned for the vote and advocated for a genderless society at the turn of the 20th Century.
For all these stories and more, join Elena Paolini from Camden Guides on a walking tour of Hampstead on Friday, April 25 at 11am, book via: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-walk-in-hampstead-the-quaintest-of-urban-villages-tickets-1123103134709?aff=oddtdtcreator