Hampstead in Winter: Why the Cold Season is the Best

The conventional wisdom is that Hampstead is at its best in summer, when the Heath is green and the ponds are full of swimmers and the beer gardens are open. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Hampstead in winter is something entirely different, and in several important respects something better.

The Heath in Frost

On a clear frost morning in January or February, with the grass white and the branches bare and the city laid out below Parliament Hill in absolute stillness, the Heath is as beautiful as anywhere in England. The light at this time of year is extraordinary — low, horizontal, catching every surface at an angle that makes the familiar look strange and the familiar strange look clarified. Constable was painting here in January, in conditions like this, and the cloud studies he produced are his best work.

The Ponds

The year-round swimmers are at their most dedicated in winter, and watching them enter the ponds on a February morning — the intake of breath, the brief and total commitment, the emergence flushed and alert — is one of Hampstead's better spectacles. You do not have to join in, though the experienced swimmers will tell you, with complete sincerity, that you should.

The Pubs

The pubs are at their best in cold weather. The Holly Bush with its low ceiling and candlelight; the Spaniards Inn with its fire; the Flask on Flask Walk with the particular warmth of a pub that has been warming people for three centuries. In summer these are fine places. In winter, arriving cold from the Heath, they are something more.