West Hampstead Online

Welcome to West Hampstead. This is a guide to the West Hampstead area.

This is the centre of Hampstead, just off the High Street
©David Hawgood
Built 1823 in classical style as a proprietary chapel for the new fashionable housing in the area.
©David Hawgood
On the junction of Akenside Road
©Ray Stanton
This building in Well Walk, Hampstead, stands on the site of the celebrated chalybeate well that from 1700 became the focus of fashionable Londoners and visitors from further afield. Its popularity declined in the 1800s due to competition with other London spas and the main water source was then lost as a result of drainage work. The spa was demolished in 1882, although a water fountain was left behind. This building was established by a local charity for the benefit of the neighbourhood when ordinary people did not have running water in their homes.
©ceridwen
This alley which runs between Hampstead High Street and Well Walk was the route along which people seeking the clean and cleansing waters of the famous chalybeate well, a short way to the east, would carry their flasks. Once lined with lowly cottages and crowded with washing lines and children playing hopscotch, it is now has bijou shops with highly desirable accommodation above and yet retains a friendly community spirit to which this popular Sunday bric-a-brac stall contributes.
©ceridwen
The tall building is New End Primary School, built in 1906 and still going strong. The building to the right in the foreground was once a pub. Behind it (not visible here)lies the former New End Hospital.
©ceridwen
The present church was built in 1745 to replace a ruinous earlier one. The churchyard retains a truly rural feel with squirrels, songbirds and prowling cats to be seen and heard among the old yew trees. The box tomb in the far corner here belongs to the artist John Constable who was a local resident.
©ceridwen
Although not a Hampstead resident, this is probably the most celebrated grave in the parish churchyard. The inscription in full is as follows. "In Memory Of MR. JOHN HARRISON, late of Red-Lion Square, London. Inventor of the TIME-KEEPER for ascertaining the LONGITUDE at Sea. He was born at Foulby, in the County of York, and was the Son of a Builder at that Place, who brought him up to the same Profession. Before he attained the Age of 21, He without any Instruction, employed himself in cleaning & repairing Clocks & Watches & made a few of the former, chiefly of Wood. At the Age of 25 He employed his Whole Time in Chronometrical Improvements. He was the Inventor of the Gridiron Pendulum and the Method of preventing the Effect of Heat and Cold upon Time keepers by Two Bars of different Metals fixed together. He introduced the Secondary Spring to keep them going while winding up; and was the Inventor of most (or all) of the Improvements in Clocks & Watches during his Time. In the Year 1735, his first Time keeper was sent to Lisbon, and in 1764 his then much Improved fourth Time keeper having been sent to Barbadoes, the Commissioners of Longitude certified that it had determined the Longitude within one Third of Half a Degree of a great Circle, having erred not more than 40 Seconds in Time. After near fifty years close Application to the above Pursuits, he departed this Life on the 24th Day of March 1776, Aged 83." His wife and son (who has an equally long inscription) share the grave.
©ceridwen
This sculpture of Roosevelt and Churchill used to be in Bond Street but can now (2007) be found on the pavement outside a gallery in Heath Street. It's by the American sculptor Lawrence Holofcener and was originally unveiled in 1995.
©ceridwen
Located in one of Hampstead's many narrow backlanes, the Holly Bush began life in the mid C17, as the stable block of a nearby house. In 1796, the painter George Romney bought the house and stables, but within a few years sold them to Hampstead Assembly Rooms, who leased the stables to a victualler who turned them into a tavern in the early 1800's.
©ceridwen
A plaque states: In the 1830's the newly formed Hampstead Police Force set out on its patrol and nightly watch from this house.
©ceridwen
Silverlink train 313109, east bound to Stratford, calls at Finchley Road and Frognal station on the North London Line.
©Martin Addison
The early morning hush of a Sunday in Hampstead is broken by the clatter of hooves as a troop of police horses trot up the High Street on their exercise route.
©ceridwen
In New End. One can never tell whether cats behind glass are wistful or complacent - or just watching.
©ceridwen
She is poised, very provocatively, up above the modern shopfront of Carphone Warehouse with no clue as to her original provenance or purpose. I'd love to know.
©ceridwen

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Places Nearby

Fortune Green • West Hampstead • Child's Hill • Hampstead • Brondesbury • North End • South Hampstead • Vale of Health • Cricklewood • Kilburn Park • Kensal Rise • Kilburn • Brent Cross • Brondesbury Park • Primrose Hill • Dudden Hill • Gospel Oak • Maida Hill • Maida Vale • Westbourne Green • Dartmouth Park • Dollis Hill • Golders Green • Hampstead Garden Suburb • Kensal Town • Maitland Park • St. John's Wood • West Kilburn • Willesden • Willesden Green •



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