Hampstead Spirit of Place

Chalybeate Well, Well Walk

On the 20th December 1698 the infant Earl of Gainsborough and his guardian and mother, the Countess of Gainsborough gave six acres of land in the region of the Chalybeate Well, to be used to benefit the poor of Hampstead. The deed that transferred the land refers to “the Wells lately made there for medicinal waters”.Bottled at the Flask Pub, Flask Walk. Rivalled Tunbridge Wells.  https://alondoninheritance.com/under-london/chalybeate-well-hampstead/

 

Robert Louis Stevenson lived here.  But very, very briefly.

Mount Vernon.  Nearby, the more modest abode of  RL Stevenson

 

There was Eric Blair, George Orwell, not Cleese’s Eric The Fish,

The Meaning of Life. Amazing Monty Python, started in 1969

At the Light of Kashmir; Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Jones & Gilliam

Orwell touched down, 1934, in Warwick Mansions, Pond Street

Flew off to Spain, to fight in the civil war, Homage to Catalonia

A 1920’s Indian policeman, in 1948 he wrote to us all, the dystopian 1984 

Warwick Mansions, Pond Street.  Orwell stayed here in 1930s

Next Door to Warwick Mansions

 

Keats, high on laudanum, apothecary, physician, surgeon, Guys Hospital

Instead became a poet at age 21, said, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’

Under a plum tree in, now Keats House, he wrote Ode to a Nightingale

Tubercular, pale, off to Rome with Joseph Severn, died in 1821 at only 25

Here; Sigmund Freud, Anna Freuds’ nursery, Walter Gropius, Marie Stopes,

Fry and Laurie, Liz Taylor, George Michael, Peter Cook and so many more

 

Snowdrops in the plum tree garden of Keats House

 

Keats House (formerly Wentworth Place) and Garden

 

Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, Show Boat, 1928, another plaque 

And in the early 1930s, looking up from his house to Whitestone Pond

John Constable painted Judge’s Walk, the close high Elysium, in the 1820s 

In the 19^th century judges walked here, escaping Londons’ soot & grime

Below and beyond this highest London Pond, the city glittering in the dusk

On down the hill, everywhere, more labyrinthine passageways & squares

 

 Paul Robeson could look up the steep slope to Judges Walk & Whitestone Pond

 

 

Secret passageways

New End Primary School, towering over alleyways

 

Christchurch, clinging to the steep hillside, bells ringing in the darkness

I walk along this path through life; nursery, school, vicarage, prayers, the end

Close by, the stark 1850s New Court, built for the servants to the wealthy

No plaque for the Sex Pistols at No. 39, a squat in the late 70s

No water, no light, cold, damp, ‘Hell on earth,’ said Johnny Rotten.

Sid Vicious, they say, carved his memorial there into the brick

Christchurch

Christchurch Nursery School. Christchurch Vicarage

New Buildings, 1870s, flats for the servants. New Court walkups

Sid Vicious was here at No. 39

York Stone mazes, cobbled streets, high walls, crooked shadows

Alleyways of Hampstead Village, crazed cottage chimneys

Bright, lit-up doors and windows, startling floodlights, watching

Canopies of flowers beckon friends at the Quaker House sanctuary

A wreath from Covid times used to hang on the door of the Hollybush Pub

And a note, ‘good health to you in these strange times.’  Strange days still.

 

Grand doorway to the fringe
Upstairs Pentameters Theatre, Oriel Place

Oriel Place looking up to Heath Street  Pentameters on the right

 

 

Some of the reasons we find so many here:

Lyndhurst Road and Rosslyn Hill. A grand recording studio for many years

This was the Rosslyn Arms, a bohemian & later ‘alternative’ haunt in the 1960s

Next door to the Rosslyn Arms, a church retreat and school

Well Walk Theatre

The Wells and Campden Bath and Wash Houses  Flask Walk, in use from 1888 to 1978.  Now Flats.

 

The New End Hospital was founded as a workhouse infirmary in 1869.  Hospital use until sold in 1986.  

 

Another celebration of refugees who made a home here

The Clock Tower. Corner of High Street and 
Heath Street, opposite Hampstead Heath tube

George Romney, 1734 to 1802. Portrait Artist Muse was
Emma Hamilton Nelson’s mistress. Joshua Reynold said heretic.  
Never accepted into Royal Academy (from 1868).

 

 

Christopher

 

 

 

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