About Us
Your independent guide
to Hampstead Village
Hampstead Village London is a small, independent editorial team writing about Hampstead and the wider NW3 area — its places, its history, its walks, and the small details that make it persistently itself. Everything you read here is written by people who actually live in north London.
1,500+
Curated places across NW3
70
Original articles published
4
In-depth walking routes
6
Editorial categories covered
Why we started
London has plenty of broad city guides — most of them written from a desk in Shoreditch or recycled by an AI scraping older articles. None of them really capture what an individual neighbourhood feels like to live in. We started Hampstead Village London because we wanted a guide that treats one place properly rather than 33 boroughs superficially.
Our remit is small but deep: Hampstead, the Heath, and the lanes immediately around it (Belsize Park, Primrose Hill, Highgate edges, West Hampstead, Golders Green). Within that geography we try to publish the most accurate, useful and well-written guide on the internet — and we update it as the neighbourhood changes.
We are not journalists chasing breaking news. We are slow-writers — favouring 1,000-word pieces with proper context over 200-word listicles. The articles you find under our blog have been visited, fact-checked, edited and (where relevant) photographed by a member of our team.
If you live here, we hope you find one or two things you didn't know. If you are visiting, we hope you walk away with more than the obvious. Either way: thank you for reading.
About Hampstead
Perched on one of the highest points in London (134 metres above sea level at Whitestone Pond), Hampstead has been a retreat from the city for centuries. Its ancient Heath — 320 acres of meadows, woodland and ponds — stretches across north London and offers some of the finest views in the capital, including a Grade II protected sightline of St Paul's from Parliament Hill.
The village itself is a tangle of Georgian and Victorian streets, where independent bookshops sit beside centuries-old pubs, and art galleries share pavements with artisan bakeries. It has been home to John Keats, John Constable, Sigmund Freud, John le Carré and Zadie Smith.
Hampstead has never quite surrendered to the homogenising forces that have changed so many London neighbourhoods. Flask Walk, Church Row and the Heath Extension still feel like a world apart from the city below — even on the busiest summer Saturday.
Our guide is an attempt to capture that feeling — and to help both visitors and long-time locals discover what makes this corner of London so persistently, stubbornly itself.
Our values
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Locally Written
Every review, guide and walk is written by people who actually live in or around Hampstead — never auto-generated content or content farms. Our writers walk the routes and visit the venues themselves.
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Curated, Not Crowdsourced
We hand-pick every place on our platform. We currently cover 1,500+ venues across NW3 — each entered manually after a real visit or a verified local recommendation.
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Editorial Independence
We do not accept payment for editorial coverage, ranking, placement, or removal. Display advertising (Google AdSense) keeps the lights on but never influences what we write about.
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Community First
We champion independent businesses, local events, and the things that make Hampstead distinct from the rest of London.
Editorial standards
These are the principles every contributor agrees to before they write for us. They are the quickest way to understand how we work.
- 1
First-hand reporting
We visit places in person before we write about them. If we have not been recently, we say so.
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Source-backed history
Historical claims are checked against the British Newspaper Archive, the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, English Heritage records, and the relevant primary sources. We provide context, not folklore.
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No surprise sponsorship
Anything paid for is clearly labelled. We have no sponsored editorial.
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Corrections
We correct mistakes openly. If you spot one, email [email protected] — corrections are typically published within 48 hours.
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Privacy
We collect the minimum data necessary to operate. Read our full Privacy Policy for the full breakdown.
Meet the writers
A small team — three regular contributors, plus occasional freelance pieces from local historians and photographers. Each of our writers has a beat they own.
Oliver Hartwell
Editor & Urban Explorer
📍 Tufnell Park, London
Oliver studied English Literature at UCL and spent a decade writing for Time Out London. He has a soft spot for Georgian architecture, real ales, and neighbourhoods most Londoners have never truly explored. He covers the History & Heritage and Local Life beats.
Beatrice "Bea" Thornton
Food & Lifestyle Writer
📍 Camden, London
Bea grew up in Tunbridge Wells, moved to London for her MA in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, and never left. She writes about cafes, independent bookshops, and what makes a neighbourhood feel like home. She personally visits every food and drink venue she covers.
James "Jim" Calloway
Historian & Travel Writer
📍 Highgate, London
Jim is a former BBC documentary researcher who turned freelance after his series on London's hidden history. He has written for The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveller, and several travel anthologies. He fact-checks every historical claim against primary sources.
How we are funded
Hampstead Village London is funded by display advertising served via Google AdSense. Ads are clearly marked and never appear inside the body of an article in a way that could be confused with editorial content.
We do not run sponsored content, paid placements, paid reviews, or affiliate marketing. A business cannot pay to be added, ranked higher, or removed from our directory. The only way onto our platform is to be good enough that one of our writers (or a trusted local source) recommends you.
If you would like to support the site directly without going through our advertisers, the most useful thing you can do is tell a friend in the neighbourhood, share an article, or send us a tip about something we have missed.
Get in touch
Have a tip about a hidden gem? Spotted an error? Want to write for us? We'd love to hear from you.
Editorial enquiries: [email protected]