I went for a walk in Hampstead Garden Suburb. I was going to say “somebody has to” but I’m not sure that anybody really does.
Hampstead Garden Suburb was the product of Henrietta Barnett. She’s generally described as a social reformer, originally in Whitechapel where her husband was vicar of St Jude’s, and where there was a lot to be reformed. She was the author of Practicable Socialism (1889) and Toward Social Reform (1909). By the time that second book was published she’d founded the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust and would have been well aware of Ebenezer Howard, and developments in Letchworth Garden City. Building work started in 1907.
She employed Howard’s planners and architects, plus Sir Edwin Lutyens, who brought a lot of star power with him. Walking around the Suburb these days, I couldn’t swear which houses were real Lutyens and which were merely “in the style” of Lutyens. No doubt others can.
My friend Joanna Moriarty who grew up in the Suburb, told me the word on the street was that if you bought a Lutyens house you bought yourself a whole load of trouble. His sweeping tile roofs were considered to be a serious liability.
Joanna also had a story that somebody from the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, came knocking on the family’s front door one weekend afternoon and said to her father, “Your neighbor is laying crazy paving. What are you going to do about it?” Crazy paving, I assume, was a horror to the sensibilities of the Hampstead Garden Suburb crowd. Joanna’s dad, being a civil servant of the old school said, “I’m going to continue to mind my own business.”
That, of course, is what most people in the suburbs say they want – to be left in peace - but of course neighbours can get out of hand, and so various local rules are imposed to keep them in line.
The Suburb was built with no pubs, no shops no cafes, no cinemas – a situation that endures - though the supermarket in Finchley Road has a sign on the front that reads, “Welcome to Hampstead Garden Suburb’s Co-op.” You will note the very shiny car coming in from the left.
The whole area felt moneyed, posh, controlled, and there were some very fancy cars in the driveways. I found it fascinating and by no means objectionable or oppressive, but it didn’t feel at all like London: which may have been the whole point for the people who live there.
And as I walked around I noted that, unlike in Letchworth Garden City, the inhabitants here were determined to live up to the “garden” part of the name. A lot of energy had gone into the landscaping and planting, and some of the front gardens were wonderful and extraordinary.
No doubt some professional help had been employed here and there, as evidences by this van belonging to Urb’s Gardens – I couldn’t tell how many layers of irony Urb had in mind.
No doubt some professional help had been employed here and there, as evidences by this van belonging to Urb’s Gardens – I couldn’t tell how many layers of irony Urb had in mind.
And at some point it struck me, and it took me longer than it probably should have, that there were no garden walls here between the houses, or between there houses and the roads. There were no bricks, no concrete, only hedges, and some people had really gone to town turning them into arches, finishing them off with bits of topiary, although one or two did look a bit the worse for wear.
However, and it’s a biggish however, the south eastern boundary of the Suburb abuts the Hampstead Heath extension and between them is a structure know as the Great Wall, which some sources will tell you is reminiscent of a medieval town. You can no doubt pick quite a few metaphors out of that, but the one that struck me was that sometimes a hedge just isn’t enough of a barrier between you and the rest of the world.
