London Uncovered

Hampstead, NW3

Hampstead Village

Painters and poets on the hill, ending at the Heath.

8 stops about 2.3 km about 28 min walking

Hampstead was a village outside London when Keats and Constable lived here, and the street plan still is one — narrow, steep and walkable. This walk links eight plaques in a loop around the old village, from the house where Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale to Well Walk, where Constable lived and painted the Heath. It is the shortest of these walks and the hilliest, and the Heath is at the end of it.

Start at Hampstead Heath station; finish on Well Walk, a few minutes from the Heath itself.

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The route

  1. John Keats

    'Keats' House' (Wentworth Place), Keats Grove

    Keats lived here from 1818 to 1820 and wrote Ode to a Nightingale in the garden. The house is open as Keats House.

  2. about 180 m from the last stop

    Lee Miller

    1907–1977 · 23 Downshire Hill

    The Vogue photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller lived here with the surrealist Roland Penrose; Downshire Hill was a centre of British surrealism in the 1930s.

  3. about 271 m from the last stop

    Ben Nicholson

    1894–1982 · 2B Pilgrims Lane, Camden, NW3

    Nicholson, the most rigorous of the British abstract painters, lived and died in Pilgrims Lane.

  4. about 322 m from the last stop

    Edith Sitwell

    1887–1964 · Greenhill, Hampstead High Street, Camden, NW3

    Sitwell lived in a flat in Greenhill on Hampstead High Street — the poet whose Façade was set to music by William Walton.

  5. about 540 m from the last stop

    George Romney

    1734–1802 · 5 Holly Bush Hill, Camden, NW3

    Romney, the most fashionable portrait painter in England, built himself a studio on Holly Bush Hill in 1796 and retired to it.

  6. about 191 m from the last stop

    George Du Maurier

    New Grove House, 28 Hampstead Grove, Camden

    Du Maurier drew for Punch and wrote Trilby, which gave English the word Svengali. His granddaughter Daphne wrote Rebecca.

  7. about 450 m from the last stop

    Katherine Mansfield

    1888–1923 · 17 East Heath Road, Camden, NW3

    Mansfield lived here with the critic John Middleton Murry while writing the stories that changed the English short story. She died at thirty-four.

  8. about 321 m from the last stop

    John Constable

    1776–1837 · 40 Well Walk, NW3 1BX

    Constable took the house at 40 Well Walk in 1827 for the view: 'the dome of St Pauls in the air'. He painted the Heath and its skies from here.

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