The deepest tube station, a buried river, an abandoned Underground station under the Heath and more. Fifteen genuinely strange facts about Hampstead, with the truth behind each.
15 Strange Facts About Hampstead Most Locals Don't Know
Hampstead looks like a polite Georgian village and mostly behaves like one. Underneath, it is far odder than it lets on. Here are fifteen genuinely strange facts about the place, the kind that even people who have lived here for years often get wrong or have never heard.
1. It has London's deepest tube station
Hampstead station sits 58.5 metres below ground, the deepest on the Underground. It is deep not by design but because the village sits on top of one of London's highest hills.
2. There is an abandoned station under the Heath
A station called North End, nicknamed Bull and Bush, was built deep beneath the Heath but never opened to passengers. It is one of the network's true ghost stations.
3. A river is born here
The River Fleet rises from the ponds on Hampstead Heath, then runs buried under London all the way to the Thames at Blackfriars. You can stand at its source and not realise it.
4. It was a spa town
In the eighteenth century people came to Hampstead to drink the healing chalybeate spring water. Names like Well Walk and Flask Walk are left over from that trade.
5. The longest staircase on the Underground is here
Because the station is so deep, it has the longest emergency spiral staircase on the network, around 320 steps. The signs beg you to take the lift.
6. Constable is buried in the village
The painter John Constable lived in Hampstead and painted the Heath obsessively. He is buried in the churchyard at St John-at-Hampstead.
7. Keats wrote one of his most famous poems here
John Keats lived in what is now the Keats House museum, and tradition holds he wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" in the garden under a plum tree.
8. A house inspired Mary Poppins
Admiral's House, with its ship-style roof, is widely thought to have inspired Admiral Boom's cannon-firing house in P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins.
9. The Vale of Health was a swamp
The oddly named Vale of Health, a hidden hamlet on the Heath, was once a malarial bog before it was drained and built on. The cheerful name came later.
10. Freud spent his last year here
Sigmund Freud fled Vienna in 1938 and lived his final year in a house in Hampstead, now the Freud Museum, with his famous couch still inside.
11. The Heath has a protected view of St Paul's
The view from Parliament Hill toward St Paul's Cathedral is legally protected, which limits how tall buildings in the way can be.
12. The bathing ponds are open all year
The Hampstead and Highgate bathing ponds stay open through winter, and a hardy crowd swims in them even when there is ice at the edges.
13. It has a working Victorian observatory
The Hampstead Scientific Society runs an observatory on Lower Terrace with a Victorian telescope, open to the public on clear winter evenings.
14. Highgate had a vampire panic
In 1970, a televised vampire hunt sent crowds climbing into nearby Highgate Cemetery at night. There was no vampire, but there was a genuine moral panic.
15. The whole village is built on shortcuts
Hampstead is laced with public stepped alleys and passages, survivors of the old field paths from before cars, which still offer the quickest way up and down the hill.
Frequently asked questions
What is Hampstead best known for?
Hampstead Heath, its Georgian village and literary history, the bathing ponds, Kenwood House, and being home over the years to Keats, Constable, Freud and many others. It also holds the record for London's deepest tube station.
Is the River Fleet really under Hampstead?
Yes. The Fleet rises from springs and ponds on Hampstead Heath and runs underground through London to the Thames. The Heath ponds are its visible source.
Why is Hampstead tube station so deep?
The village sits on one of London's highest hills, and the tunnels run at the usual depth below ground, so the surface above the platforms is unusually high, making it the deepest station on the network.
Was there really a vampire at Highgate?
No. The 1970 Highgate Vampire was a media-driven panic around a derelict Victorian cemetery, not a real creature, though the crowds and the trespass it caused were real enough.
