Living in Hampstead

Hampstead is a hilltop village that London grew around rather than over. Its centre is a knot of steep lanes, alleys and courtyards — Flask Walk, Church Row, Holly Walk — lined with Georgian houses, old pubs, small shops and cafés, and it keeps a village's sense of itself even as it has become one of the most expensive places to live in the city.

Hampstead Heath is the reason for almost everything. The Heath is vast and deliberately wild in places, with woodland, meadows, the bathing ponds where swimmers go in all year, Kenwood House and its grounds at the northern end, and Parliament Hill's view over the city to the south-east. Living here means having a large piece of countryside at the end of the road.

Hampstead station on the Northern line has the deepest platforms on the Underground, reached by lifts, and trains take around twenty minutes to the West End or the City. Hampstead Heath station at South End Green, on the Overground, gives a second route east and west. The hills are real: many streets are steep enough to make walking home with shopping a commitment.

The rental market is dominated by flats in period houses and red-brick mansion blocks, plus some large family houses, with very little built for sharing. Evenings are quiet: there are pubs, a cinema and restaurants, but nightlife in any energetic sense means going elsewhere. The area is popular with families, older professionals and long-term residents, and the literary and artistic history — Keats House, Burgh House, Fenton House — is part of daily scenery rather than a museum trip. Hampstead suits people for whom space, beauty and the Heath outweigh value for money.