The Morning Stars Sang Together
The Story of Hampstead, A One Penny anonymous booklet by The Priory Press, 1909, sets out how Hampstead has never lost its village roots: “Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Hampstead is indifferently styled a town and a village. It was in reality both: a village in its surroundings, a town in respect of its urban population. Hampstead grew because of the growth of London: for two centuries, down to the time of Henry VIII, the population of London and Hampstead had remained nearly stationary.”
Contemporary Hampstead still shines through: “At the end of the 18th century a change came over Hampstead, and it became the residence of literary men, artists, philanthropists and others whose names are still remembered. Hampstead was still a small town of about 4,000 souls in the early years of the 19th century, although increasing rapidly at the rate of over 100 a year. It extended along the High Street in a broken line of old fashioned red tiled houses. Many of the houses had large gardens behind them. There were public houses with their painted signposts standing in the open ground before them, and low ceilinged shops crammed with goods. Outside the gardens and orchards of the town were solitary red bricked mansions surrounded by umbrageous trees, and shady lanes winding through lofty, moss stained walls.”
The booklet ends on a mixed note, “But if Hampstead, with its population of over 80,000, has lost its individuality, its beautiful Heath still remains, with something of its healthful air and its former beauty.” Four decades after The Priory Press’s publication, The Story of Hampstead by John Preston paints a rosier picture: “If you go to Clapham or Streatham you will feel the past only when you see an old house or two, which seem ill at ease, and waiting to be swept off their feet by the tide of modern works and doubtful improvements. But walk in Hampstead where you will, and realise that the world of long ago will never die. You will see houses, grand and imposing, where bewigged Georgian aristocrats lived and diced and gambled, and you will see little cottages set amid bright gardens, where you could gather as goodly a posy as in any cottage garden in England.”
John explains the growth and increasing popularity of Hampstead, “At the beginning of the 19th century an exodus from the City of London had started. City merchants, bankers, and many of the middle classes who had been previously content to live in town, found places like Hampstead residentially desirable. Later on in the century, with the enormous growth of transport facilities, the ‘dormitory’ plan came into being in good earnest. Plots of land, previously parts of estates, began to be sold for building development.”
He writes, “When Hampstead became a borough – no longer a Middlesex parish, but a part of the metropolis – it neither ceased, in effect, to be a separate township or lost its individuality. The municipality and the people, conscious of the beauty and antiquity of their home, resisted almost all assaults of the battering army of jerry builders and ‘improvers’ which have, often with dire results, attacked and conquered the citadels of the beautiful townlets around large cities.” His stance that the area hasn’t lost its individuality rings truer than The Priory Press’s pessimism.
There’s a conspicuously Modernist building in Hampstead that has certainly never had bewigged occupants. Walk down Rosslyn Hill, past Ottolenghi Restaurant (more anon), keep walking, walk a little bit further, turn left through a 1990s development, descend steps in a pocket of urban woodland, and there is the Grade I Listed Isokon Building in all its white cubist beauty. Designed by Wells Coates and completed in 1934, this four storey block of apartments was one of the first residential buildings in England to be built of reinforced concrete (covered in white painted render). Illustrious former residents include the crime writer Agatha Christie and Bauhaus émigrés Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy. Cruise ship style decks provide access to the lateral apartments.
Lunch awaits. Yotam Ottolenghi was born in Jerusalem in 1968. He moved to London to train as a pastry chef. In 2002 Yotam opened his first food destination (deli, bakery and restaurant) with Palestinian British chef Sami Tamimi in Camden. The three year old Ottolenghi Deli and Restaurant Hampstead is his sixth London opening. “Our commitment to the championing of vegetables as well as unusual ingredients has let to what some call the Ottolenghi Effect. This is shorthand for the creation of a meal full of colour, flavour, bounty and joy.”
Take shiso: “It’s one of those herbs that feels completely overlooked in Britain – baffling, because it’s so distinctive and grows happily in our climate. We’ve been growing it at our kitchen garden, using it pickled, in salads or fried in tempura. Herbs make me happy and hungry in equal measure – the crowing jewels and the body of so many of my favourite dishes.” Alfresco lunch is full of colour, flavour, bounty, joy – and herbs.” Chargrilled broccoli with chilli and garlic as well as roasted aubergine with feta cream, za’atar tomatoes and carob molasses are the perfect side dishes to chargrilled Loch Duart salmon with puttanesca. Cool food on a hot day.
High above a shop on Highgate Road, walking far south from Hampstead, The Paisley Daze are belting out their singles Tell ‘Em Where To Go, Temptation, Til’ Tomorrow, The Town … British Punjabi brothers Kish and Peps Daze know how to pull together an impromptu party. They call their sound Third Culture Funk or New Age Rock ‘n’ Roll. Kish says, “Everything we make we do ourselves. From writing the music to producing the music to putting on our own shows with our collective Hong Kong Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Cool music on a hot night. The stars are out across north London.
