Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fenton House
Hampstead Grove • March-Oct Wed-Sun 11am-5pm • NT • House £6.50; garden only £2 •
T
020 7435 3471,
W
nationaltrust.org.uk •
!
Hampstead
All three floors of
Fenton House
are decorated in the eighteenth-century taste and
currently house a collection of
European and Oriental ceramics
bequeathed by the
house's last private owner, Lady Binning. The house also contains a smattering of
British twentieth-century paintings by the likes of Walter Sickert, Duncan Grant and
Spencer Gore, plus a superb collection of
early musical instruments
- all displayed on
the top floor, from which you can see right across London. Among the many spinets,
virginals and clavichords is an early Broadwood grand piano and an Unverdorben lute
from 1580 (one of only three in the world). Experienced keyboard players are
occasionally let loose on some of the instruments during the day;
concerts
also take
place (book in advance); alternatively, look out for one of the regular
demonstration
tours
. Tickets for the house also allow you to take a stroll in the beautiful terraced
garden
, with an orchard, a kitchen garden and a formal garden, featuring some
top-class topiary and herbaceous borders.
Admiral's House
Up Hampstead Grove, beyond Fenton House, is Admiral's Walk, so-called after its
most famous building,
Admiral's House
, a whitewashed Georgian mansion with
nautical excrescences. Once painted by Constable, it was later lived in by Victorian
architect George Gilbert Scott, of Albert Memorial fame. Until his death in 1933 John
Galsworthy lived in the adjacent cottage,
Grove Lodge
- “[it] wasn't cheap, I can tell
you”, he wrote to a friend on arrival - where he completed
he Forsyte Saga
and
received the 1932 Nobel Prize, which was presented to him here since he was too ill to
travel abroad. Opposite is
The Mount
, a gently sloping street descending to Heath
Street, which has changed little since it was depicted in
Work
by Pre-Raphaelite artist
(and local resident) Ford Madox Brown.
20
St John-at-Hampstead
Church Row • Daily 9am-5pm • Free •
T
020 7794 5808,
W
hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk •
!
Hampstead
The Georgian terraces of tree-centred
Church Row
, at the south end of Heath Street,
are where City gents would stay for the week when Hampstead was a thriving spa.
The street forms a grand approach to
St John-at-Hampstead
, which has an attractive
period-piece Georgian interior and a romantically overgrown cemetery. The
chest-tomb of the clockmaker John Harrison lies in the churchyard;
John Constable
is buried in the southeastern corner; Hugh Gaitskill, Labour Party leader from 1955
to 1963, lies in the Churchyard Extension to the northeast. If you continue up
Holly Walk, you'll come to
St Mary's Church
, whose Italianate facade is squeezed
into the middle of a row of three-storey cottages. This was one of the first Catholic
churches built in London after the Reformation, and the original facade from 1816
was much less conspicuous.
Hampstead Cemetery
Fortune Green Rd • Mon-Fri 7.30am-dusk, Sat 9am-dusk, Sun 10am-dusk • Free •
!
Hampstead or Finchley Road & Frognal Overground
A good selection of Hampstead luminaries are buried in the neatly maintained
Hampstead Cemetery
, half a mile west of central Hampstead, on the west side of
Finchley Road, and founded in 1876 when St John's Churchyard Extension was full.
The pioneer of antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister, music-hall star Marie Lloyd and
children's book illustrator Kate Greenaway are among those buried here. The full-size
stone organ monument to the obscure Charles Barritt is the most unusual piece of
funerary art, while the most unlikely occupant is Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovitch,
uncle to the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II.
