An artist's path V
Today's route through Hampstead Heath is one of my favourites. Along the way we will be reminded of the many artists who lived here, as well as interesting old stories. From Hampstead tube station we walk down Heath St, and turn right down Church Row.
Church Row.
Church Row, with its early 18th century Georgian houses, is one of the most interesting streets in London. Look at the fanlights, the canopies and the extraordinary ironwork. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful street in Hampstead, with the parish church at the far end. There is a lack of uniformity in the height, width and design of the houses, which corresponds to the different wealth of their original owners. Number 9 housed a reformatory for girls in the 1860s, and writer H.G. Wells, author of The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, lived at number 17. Until the late 19th century the northern part of Church Row was privately owned, and access to Frognal was controlled by a tollgate.
St. John's parish church in Hampstead was consecrated in 1747. It was built by an architect named John Sanderson. It seems that no one recorded what St. John's was devoted to, so the church's west window shows both the Evangelist and the Baptist, and the two patronal days are celebrated. In its picturesque cemetery is the tomb of one of the most important artists in the world, the painter John Constable, who lived with his family in Hampstead for many years. I discovered his grave by chance, on one of my strolls around the area, just as I had discovered Hogarth's grave in Chiswick earlier. The fact that such illustrious British artists are buried in small local parishes is something that makes these walks even more endearing and special.
We leave the church and head north along Holly Walk. As we walk through picturesque Hampstead we are reminded of the countless artists who lived and worked in this village. Many came here in the 18th century, such as Hogarth, Gainsborough and George Romney, who built a studio house on Holly Bush Hill nearby. The Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent part of his honeymoon on Downshire Hill. Ford Madox Brown painted two major pictures in Hampstead, Work (1852) and An English Autumn Afternoon. The setting of Work was inspired by the sight of Hampstead. In the late 19th century several artists' colonies were established in Hampstead. C. R. W. Nevinson lived for many years at Steele's Studios. The sculptor Henry Moore lived in Parkhill Road in the 1930s. Other notable artists who lived in Hampstead were Barbara Hepworth, one of whose sculptures now adorns Kenwood, and Ben Nicholson. John Constable lived in Well Walk, very close to Hampstead Ponds. It was mainly for the health of his wife and children that Constable first came here. The whole family was so delighted with the scenery and the country air that they found a holiday home in Hampstead every summer until 1827. He visited Hampstead over a period of fifteen years and painted the Heath, the houses, the trees and the clouds. Some of his sketches can be seen today in the V&A Museum, which houses the largest collection of Constable's work. In 1827 Constable rented a house in Well Walk, which he kept until 1834. His wife Maria died there tragically young, and was the first of the family to be buried in the parish churchyard. Constable joined her there in 1837. Nearby, on Downshire Hill, the artist Hilda Carline lived with her family. Sir Stanley Spencer visited her frequently in Hampstead, before marrying her.
George Romney's House.
We continue along Hampstead Grove to Fenton House and Gardens. Fenton House was built in 1693 for a wealthy City merchant. The house is named after one of its owners, Philip Fenton, who occupied the house from 1793. Fenton was a merchant from Riga. The house is now open to the public. It houses the Benton Fletcher collection of musical playing instruments, including a harpsichord from 1612, once used by Handel. The house remains the oldest surviving mansion in Hampstead.
Fenton House.
A little further north we find Admiral's House, in Admiral's Walk. Admiral's House was one of Constable's first studies of Hampstead houses. It was built in 1700. A tenant who had been a naval lieutenant wanted his roof to look like a ship's quarterdeck. He also brought several cannons and fired them on royal birthdays. Admiral's House was the inspiration for Disney's film Mary Poppins. In the film, the roof of Admiral Boom's house also simulates a ship, and like Lieutenant Fountain North, the Bangs' neighbour also fired cannons from the deck. The architect Sir George Gilbert Scott lived in Admiral's House from 1856 to 1864.
Admiral's House.
We move northwards along Spaniards Road. Along this old road you will find some of Hampstead's most picturesque and historic pubs. First Jack Straw's Castle, and further north The Spaniards Inn. Washington Irving wrote about Jack Straw in his Tales of a Traveller in 1824. Among its customers were Charles Dickens, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Jack Straw's Castle was bombed during World War II, and rebuilt in 1962. As we walk past this tavern, we are immediately reminded of old legends of highwaymen. Lured by the wealthy visitors to the Hampstead spa, many highwaymen and their informers used these inns as a base from which to choose their victims. It is said that Francis Jackson, a notorious robber and murderer, was caught in North End, a mint here, and sentenced in 1673. His body is said to have been hung in chains here, his bones remaining for some 18 years after his death, to remind passers-by that crime is punishable by death.
Jack Straw's Castle.
Up the road we find The Spaniards Inn, a tavern linked to another highwayman legend, that of Harrison Ainsworth's fictional romance Dick Turpin (1705-39). In a time when travel was by horse-drawn carriage, it seems that Dick Turpin robbed and terrorised many of the travellers who used this route to get to or from London. The Spaniards Inn was built in 1585 right on the boundary between the parishes of Hampstead and Finchley, at the entrance to what was then the Bishop of London's estate. The tavern's name may have originated from a Spanish ambassador to the court of James I who lived here. In 1710 the toll house we see opposite the tavern was built, which has survived to the present day despite complaints from motorists. There are also literary references to The Spaniards Inn. Bram Stoker mentions the tavern in his Dracula, and Charles Dickens set Mrs Bardell's arrest here in The Pickwick Papers.
The Spaniards Inn and Toll Gate House.
We now head towards Kenwood House, located to the north of the park. It is undoubtedly one of the most privileged places in London for walking. The house also holds some interesting stories.
Kenwood House.
On the edge of London’s Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House was probably first built in the early 17th century. Between 1764 and 1779 Robert Adam transformed it into a neoclassical villa for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and the interiors include some of Adam’s finest surviving schemes.
The first thing that catches our eye in the house is a large-scale reproduction of a portrait of two young ladies (the original, at Scone Palace), one of whom is black. It is a very unusual portrait for the time of its creation, around 1776, as it does not show the black woman as a slave or servant, but as the equal of her white companion. Dido is depicted wearing an elegant silk dress and a pearl necklace, although her exotic origin is represented by her skin colour, the basket of tropical fruits she carries and the feathered turban that crowns her head.
This portrait of Dido Belle with her cousin Lady Elizabeth was commissioned by Lord Mansfield, and was the inspiration for the creators of the film Belle (2013). In fact, it is the only known portrait of Dido Belle, who appears with her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray in Kenwood. Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was the illegitimate half-caste daughter of Sir John Lindsay (1737-88), an officer in the Royal Navy, and an African slave named Maria Bell. Lindsay entrusted Dido's care to her paternal uncle, William Murray, Lord Chief Justice of England, and later 1st Earl of Mansfield, owner of the Kenwood estate in Hampstead. Mansfield and his wife had no children. Evidence suggests that Dido was brought up as part of a British aristocratic family, rather than as a servant, which was quite unusual for the time. Dido was baptised in 1766 at St George's Church in Bloomsbury, and appears to have been brought up as a lady alongside her cousin Elizabeth Murray, learning to read and play music. She received an annual allowance. At Kenwood, she supervised the dairy and farmyard, a common pastime for ladies of the time. Dido remained in the Murray household for some 30 years.
Belle film (2013).
Between 1532 and 1832 some 12 million Africans were enslaved and taken to the Americas. British slavers arranged trade voyages in three stages, known as The Triangular Trade. They departed from the ports of Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol loaded with brandy and arms, bound for West Africa. There they traded these goods for African slaves, who were then taken across the Atlantic to be sold in North America and the West Indies. There they acquired rum, sugar and other raw materials which they brought back to England for trade. Conditions on the ships were appalling. The Museum of London holds an old document with a chart showing how the African slaves were distributed along the ship, in order to cross the Atlantic carrying as many as possible.
Source: Museum of London.
Mansfield presided over several court cases examining the legality of the slave trade, including the high-profile cases of James Somerset (1772) and Zong (1786). The latter followed a tragic event on a vessel of the same name, owned by a Liverpool slaver. Over 440 slaves were crammed into the Zong, and the owner had taken out £8,000 worth of ship and cargo insurance. During the voyage, with no drinking water and with many of the crew and African slaves ill, it was decided to throw over 130 slaves overboard alive. The shipowner then filed a claim with the insurance company for the value of the missing Africans, as the insurance covered the cargo lost on the voyage, but not the cargo that died en route.
On appeal by the insurance company, the case went to the highest court in England, and Mansfield presided over the trial, ruling in favour of the insurance company. Neither the slaver's defence nor the attorney general's office considered the slaves thrown on the high seas as human persons, but as goods and property. The attorney general went so far as to liken the loss of the Africans to timber thrown overboard, never to murder. Lord Mansfield's decision in the Court of King's Bench in England in 1786 helped bring about the Slave Trade Abolition Act of 1807. The Zong case also contributed to the rise of the abolitionist movement in the UK, but it did not stop the killing of slaves. As the slave trade was outlawed, royal navy ships pursued slave-carrying vessels, with crews often choosing to throw slaves overboard before being intercepted. Eventually, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 ended the practice of slave trading throughout the British Empire. Much earlier, Lord Mansfield confirmed his adopted daughter's freedom in his will, bequeathing her a substantial allowance, which Dido received after the Earl's death. Dido then married John Davinier, living in Pimlico, London, until his death in 1804.
After Mansfield's death the house did not regain its splendour until Edward Guinness, Earl of Iveagh and beer magnate, bought it in 1925. Guinness donated Kenwood House and its garden to the country, and it is to him that we can now visit the fabulous Kenwood Collection of Old Master and British paintings, with paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Turner, Reynolds and Romney among many others. Rembrandt's Portrait of the Artist and Vermeer's Man Playing a Guitar are probably the best known paintings in the collection, but I will dwell on another painting entitled The Spinstress, by George Romney.
The Spinstress, by George Romney.
It is one of Romney's many portraits of a model named Amy Lyon, who later changed her name to Emma Hart. In 1782 Charles Greville, a friend of the artist's, had brought his 17-year-old mistress Emma Hart to Romney's studio. Emma posed for Romney on more than a hundred occasions, and appears in more than 30 of the artist's portraits, including paintings and drawings. It seems that the artist was fascinated by the beauty of his new model. In 1786 Emma left for Naples, becoming the mistress of Sir William Hamilton, whom she married in 1791, becoming Lady Hamilton.
Sir William Hamilton was stationed in Naples as British Ambassador. It was there that Emma met Lord Nelson (1793), beginning an affair that would last until the Admiral's death in 1805. As they were both married, their relationship scandalised British high society at the time, and was ridiculed in caricatures by James Gillray. When the Hamiltons, along with Nelson, returned to England, Emma was pregnant by the famous Admiral. They named their daughter Horatia. Nelson left his wife, continuing his passionate relationship with Emma, and she, Nelson and Sir William lived together in Merton Place, Surrey, until Hamilton's death in 1803.
A Cognocenti, by James Gillray. British Museum.
Emma Hamilton ('Dido, in despair!'), by James Gillray. NPG London
Emma was devastated by Nelson's death at Trafalgar, increasing her addiction to drink, and also her debts. Shortly before his death, she traveled to Calais to escape her creditors.
We leave Kenwood House and the old stories hidden within its walls but not before enjoying the fascinating panoramic views of London by taking a path to the east.
Then, we can depart from Kenwood and head towards Highgate, or descend through the rolling hills, lush forests, wide meadows and pleasant ponds walking south from Kenwood House. If you choose the first option, you must exit the park to the north, and take the bus or walk. In Highgate you can visit the Cemetery, where numerous personalities are buried. There, one of the most visited tombs is that of Karl Marx, who died in 1883. The Terrace Catacombs are said to have inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula.
We chose to continue our route along Hampstead Heath, descending towards the ornamental lake in front of the south terrace of Kenwood House.
Parliament Hill.
We then go up to Parliament Hill, to enjoy the breathtaking views of London. From the hill we can continue to Hampstead Ponds, and descend to Keats Grove, where we find the regency style house where poet John Keats lived. Keats came here in 1818. He wrote Ode to a Nightingale sitting under a plum tree in his garden. Consumed with tuberculosis, he was forced to leave Hampstead and seek a cure in Italy. He died in Rome in 1821. A hundred years later his house here was threatened by demolition and rescued only by public subscription, mostly from America.
St John's Church.
Nearby, St John's Church was consecrated in 1823. It is now the last privately-owned church in London. The builder-architect was William Woods of Kennington. It is here that our visit to Hampstead ends.
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