Site Content

The information below is intended to provide further context to the caricatures and some of the features in the Large Illustration, size A1. They are listed (generally speaking), from top to bottom as featured on the illustration itself. 

Caricatures of well-known people that lived and worked locally or were otherwise inspired by Hampstead:

• Painter, John Constable lived and painted in Hampstead, initially residing in Lower Terrace before moving permanently to a house on Well Walk.
• Actor and social activist, Paul Robeson, lived on West Heath Drive.
• Richard Turpin, highway man.
• Percy Shelley and Leigh Hunt, central figures of the romantic era. Leigh Hunt (accompanied by Percy Shelley who often visited), lived in the Vale of Health.
• Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Laureate.
• Admirals’ House. Lieutenant North (1775 to 1811) adapted the top of the house to resemble the quarter deck of a ship and hoisted a naval cannon onto the “deck” from where he would fire it to mark notable events. Another resident of Admirals’ House was George Gilbert Scott, architect of St. Pancras Station Hotel.
• Charles Dickens, author.
• Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing.
• French General Charles de Gaulle, led the Free France forces from a house on Frognal.
• John Gerard, Tudor herbalist.
• James MacDonald, first Labour Party Prime Minister, lived on Frognal.
• Long John Silver - character from Treasure Island written by Robert Louis Stevenson who lived on Holly Walk.
• Bill Sikes, character from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist
• Napoleon!? Some of the bollards in Hampstead, particularly around Canon Hall, are original naval cannons that were upcycled. Their origin is somewhat contested but many locals will firmly attest to the fact that they are captured loot retrieved from Napoleon’s fleet.
• Daphne du Maurier, author. 
• Boudica, according to local legend buried in the tumulus in the centre of the heath.  
• Mina Westerna, character from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula stalked Hampstead and the Heath from St John’s graveyard.
• Inspector, character from J. B. Priestley’s novel Inspector Calls.
• Fawn, character from C. S. Lewis’ novel The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. 
• Architect, Richard Norman Shaw lived in a house he designed on Ellerdale Road.
• Karl Marx, economist and socialist revolutionary.
• Kate Greenaway, author and illustrator.
• Sir Henry Vane, politician and statesman, beheaded by King Charles II, lived in a house on Vane Close.
• Photographer and photojournalist, Elizabeth "Lee" Miller lived on Downshire Hill.
• Richard Burton, actor, lived on Lyndhurst Road.
• John Keats house and Keats museum, leading romantic poet.
• Sigmund Freud and museum, founder of psychoanalysis.
• Ruth Ellis, last women to be hanged in the UK for murdering her partner outside the Magdala Tavern.
• Baron Pitt of Hampstead, Labour Party politician and political activist by the Old Town Hall.
• Spies at the Isokon building, reference to both the cold war spies that operated there and Agatha Christie who lived and worked from there during the second world war. There is also a small museum.

Other features of interest:

• Martian War Machine from H. G. Well’s novel War of the Worlds. 
• The two airplanes, Hawker Harrier and Supermarine Spitfire, defended London during the Blitz.
• German World War I Zeppelin. 
• German bomber with V1 Cruise Missile and V2 Rocket.
• Tudor warning beacon once stood by Whitestone Pond was lit when the Spanish Armada threatened to invade Britain.
• Sculptures by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
• Old Duelling Ground by Kenwood House.
• Phoenix is a reference to writer D. H. Lawrence.
• The tree with a turret recalls the earliest known record of lessons being provided to children in Hampstead taking place in a giant elm tree.
• Artillery Battery of the Hampstead Heavies who trained on the heath before being posted to France during World War I.
• Hayricks set on fire by Suffragettes.
• The Horse Drawn Omnibus on Rosslyn Hill used to link Hampstead to London.
• The Hampstead Creperie on Hampstead High Street.
• Butcher and Fishmonger from the Hampstead Community Market.
• Watch/Chronometer a nod to John Harrison (1693-1776), buried in St John’s Church graveyard. Harrison was the inventor of the marine chronometer which allowed ships to measure longitude.