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Nearest underground: Golders Green

The 19^th century London slums were not a nice place to live, extreme poverty caused them to become a nest of vice, drinking, gambling, ill-health and degradation.  Many philanthropists fought for social reforms.

Temple Fortune Hill

Among there were Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta, who, while labouring in Whitechapel in London’s East End, bought a cottage in Hampstead to get away from the slums for the weekend. When the extension of tube threatened the urbanisation of the area, Henrietta organised  a vigorous campaign to make Hampstead and surrounding areas a better place to live.

As well as buying 80 acres of land to be added to the Hampstead Heath, she lead the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust to acquire 655 acres of land north of Golders Green, which at the time was a lonely crossroads with a farm-house surrounded by fields.

Golders Green 2000

The Barnett’s idea was to build a “garden suburb”, where each family would live in a spacious house surrounded by a plot of land for them to develop, and thus protect them from the temptations of drinking and gambling.

Erskine Road

Originally planned to be a sort of a housing estate for the industrial classes, Hampstead Garden Suburb turned out such a nice place to live that representatives of all classes of society came there.

The Trust sought the assistance of the most distinguished architects and planners of the time,  and even now Hampstead Garden Suburb, with its clever management of residential blocks and street crossings, its pathways and open spaces, and, above all, the abundance of greenery all the year round, remains  a brilliant example of town planning architecture.

The construction of St. Jude’s (named after Canon Barnett’s Whitechapel church) began in 1910. It forms an ensemble with the Free Church across the Central Square.

In Loving Memory
of Dame Henrietta Barnett,
founder of Hampstead
Garden Suburb

Willifield Green

Hampstead
Hampstead Heath