As part of our Camden at 60 series, we love to explore our remarkable borough. Each week we take a different journey, uncovering the stories, landmarks and hidden corners that make Camden such a unique place to live, work and visit. This week, Camden Guide, Richard Cohen invites us to look up and look out – to leave the bustle of the streets below and discover
The Heights of North London
Fed up of the noise and clatter of city streets? Yearning for wider views, broad horizons and green spaces? Then the Heights of North London Walk is for you. This walk starts at Chalk Farm close to the Roundhouse, a building which has gone from being a turntable shed for servicing locomotives, then a Bonded Warehouse for wines and spirits and finally transformed into one North London’s greatest music venues. The view from the bridge over the world’s first long distance intercity railway line opened in 1838 gives fascinating insight into Camden’s rich railway heritage.
Attribution: Nigel Thompson / CC BY-SA 2.0
Then we scale the 63-metre peak of Primrose Hill with its splendid views over London Zoo, Regent’s Park and the wider city.
©Richard Cohen 2025
The walk takes in several urban villages with their own distinct character and story which have merged into the urban sprawl of North London. First there is Primrose Hill with its attractive independent shops, cafés and restaurants insulated from the city by railway tracks, the Regent’s Canal and the wide open spaces of Primrose Hill itself. Then there is Belsize Village with its massive gleaming white stucco fronted High Victorian mansions built for the servant-employing middle classes and finally the trail takes us into the approaches to Hampstead with its large brick Arts and Crafts townhouses and massive churches which, like the Roundhouse, have been constructively repurposed.
Attribution: ceridwen CC BY-SA 2.0
This gigantic structure is now AIR studios (Associated Independent Recording) one of the world’s leading Recording Studios, founded by Sir George Martin of Beatles Fame. It is large enough to accommodate an entire orchestra. The place was originally built in 1884 as the Lyndhurst Road Congregationalist Chapel by the great Alfred Waterhouse who also gave us those other Camden gems, Holborn Bars (aka the Prudential Building) and the Cruciform Building (formerly University College Hospital on Gower Street).
Soon our route takes us off Rosslyn Hill into one of London’s most beautiful streets, the lovely Downshire Hill with its array of terraces, cottages and townhouses set amongst well kept gardens and shaded by spreading trees. We pass the gleaming white front of St John’s church looking as though it had stepped right out of New England. It opened in 1823 and was the parish church of John Constable who lived nearby in Well Walk.
© Richard Cohen 2025
Just a few yards away we come to the house of the Bright Star who had abandoned his work as an apothecary and was devoting himself to writing some of the most beautiful lines of poetry ever composed in the English language. I am talking about John Keats and it is said that the plum tree growing in the garden of Keats House is the one under which the bard wrote his Ode to a Nightingale. Soon his tubercular disease got so bad that his friends clubbed together to send him to Italy where the poet died after just a few months at the age of just 25 pining for his beloved Fanny Brawne.
Attribution: ceridwen CC BY-SA 2.0
The route then crosses into the expansive spaces of Hampstead Heath. We cross the River Fleetwhich was dammed by the Hampstead Water Company to provide water for the metropolis. The first reservoir ponds were created in the C17th but by the early C19th there were four on this branch of the Fleet and several more on the Highgate branch to supply Londoners’ needs. The ponds now provide a wonderful cool spot for sweaty Londoners to bathe in summer and attract a rich array of wildlife. There is even a designated dogs’ bathing pool.
© Richard Cohen 2025
We then take our final ascent up the sylvan slopes of Parliament Hill enjoying the cool shade of the ancient beech trees. The view that greets the walker from the 98-metre hill gives a wide perspective over London with protected views down to St Paul’s. We are told that on November 1605 the Gunpowder Plotters kept a watch from here for the expected explosion of Parliament and the peak was then given the name of Traitors’ Hill but later it was used as a strategic lookout by Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary troops and so got its name.
© Richard Cohen 2025
After gazing out at the remarkable vista the time has come to wander down a gentle slope to South End Green, past the site of George Orwell’s brief sojourn in Hampstead when he was working at a local bookshop and writing Keep the Aspidistra Flying, his trenchant satire on middle class pretensions. You could even take a drink in the beautifully refurbished Magdala pub outside which Ruth Ellis shot her violent and abusive lover David Blakely. Cafés, overground trains and buses await.
© Richard Cohen 2025
If you want to explore the fabulous London Borough of Camden, we have the guides! Check the Camden Tour Guides Association website.