Hampstead is one of those rare London neighbourhoods where the question is never what to do, but which of the many things to do first. The Heath alone could fill a week. Add the village's museums, restaurants, bookshops, pubs, markets and street life, and you have one of the richest two-mile squares in England. This guide covers everything — from the essential to the overlooked.
Swim on Hampstead Heath
The Hampstead Heath bathing ponds are the single most distinctive thing you can do in NW3. Three open-air ponds — Ladies', Men's and Mixed — fed by natural springs and open every day of the year, including Christmas Day. Water temperature in midsummer reaches 20°C; in February it drops to 3°C. The experience of stepping into cold open water at dawn, on a working day, is genuinely unlike anything else London offers. Entry is £4 per adult. No booking required. No facilities beyond basic changing rooms and lifeguards. Arrive early on summer weekends to avoid queues at the Mixed Pond.
For those who prefer lanes and a heated option, the Parliament Hill Lido — a 60-metre outdoor pool — sits a short walk away. It is unheated but considerably more structured than the ponds.
Walk the Heath
Hampstead Heath covers 320 acres of ancient woodland, grassland, ponds and meadows, and sits 134 metres above sea level at its highest point on Parliament Hill. The view from Parliament Hill on a clear day takes in the entire London skyline from Canary Wharf to the Shard, with the City dome of St Paul's dead centre. It is one of the best views in England and it costs nothing.
The Heath has no single "correct" walk — it rewards wandering. But a reliable circuit for first-timers: enter from the south at Gospel Oak, walk north past the swimming ponds to Kenwood House, loop back via the Viaduct Pond to Parliament Hill, then descend to South End Green. Allow two hours at a comfortable pace.
Visit Kenwood House
Kenwood House sits on the northern edge of the Heath and contains one of the greatest small art collections in Britain — a Rembrandt self-portrait, a Vermeer, works by Turner, Gainsborough and Reynolds. Entry is free. The house itself is Robert Adam's masterpiece: the library, remodelled in 1769, is one of the most beautiful rooms in London. The grounds include a formal garden, a walled kitchen garden, and a sweeping lawn used for open-air concerts in summer. The Brew House café in the converted outbuildings serves excellent coffee.
Flask Walk and the Village
Flask Walk is the pedestrianised lane that runs south from Heath Street and contains the essence of what makes Hampstead different. The Flask pub at the north end, the independent shops along the lane, the sudden quiet after the noise of Heath Street — it is a condensed version of everything the village does well. Walk it slowly. Look at the buildings. Go into the shops.
From Flask Walk, explore the surrounding streets: Heath Street for independent restaurants and the Everyman cinema; Holly Hill for Georgian architecture; Church Row — London's finest Georgian terrace, ending at St John-at-Hampstead where Constable is buried.
The Hampstead Farmers' Market
Every Saturday morning from 10:00am to 2:00pm on Inverness Street, the Hampstead Farmers' Market brings together around 30 producers. It is not the largest market in London but it is one of the most curated — the stallholders are largely the same week to week, and the quality is consistently high. Go for the bread (Cinnamon Square), the cheese (from at least three specialist cheesemongers), the fresh pasta, and the smoked fish. Saturday morning at the market followed by coffee at Ginger & White is the definitive Hampstead morning.
Keats House
The house at Keats Grove where John Keats lived from 1818 to 1820 is one of the most moving literary museums in the world. The rooms are preserved as they were during his time here — the sitting room where he received visitors, the garden where he heard the nightingale, the bedroom where he coughed blood into his handkerchief and told his friend Charles Brown that the stain was "arterial." He left for Rome in 1820 and died there the following February, aged 25. Entry is £8.50 for adults. Allow at least an hour.
The Freud Museum
Sigmund Freud arrived in Hampstead in 1938, at 82, having fled Vienna after the Anschluss. He brought everything with him: his library, his antiquities collection, and his famous couch. He died at 20 Maresfield Gardens in September 1939. The house is now a museum and is exactly as he left it — the couch still draped in Persian rugs, the desk still arranged with his figurines, the bookshelves still dense with volumes he spent a lifetime collecting. Entry is £15 for adults. One of the most intimate and unusual museums in London.
Drink at the Historic Pubs
Hampstead's pubs are among the finest in London. The essential three:
- The Spaniards Inn on Spaniards Road — a pub since 1585, with a garden large enough to get lost in. Dick Turpin stabled his horse here. Keats and Dickens drank here. The beer is good and the kitchen is better than it needs to be.
- The Holly Bush on Holly Mount — the best atmospheric pub in Hampstead, tucked up a cobbled alley off Heath Street. Low ceilings, real fires, proper ale. No music. Conversation is the entertainment.
- The Flask on Flask Walk — the neighbourhood local, reliable, busy on weekends, quieter midweek. Good food. An excellent base for exploring the village.
The Everyman Cinema
The Everyman Hampstead on Holly Bush Vale invented the luxury cinema experience — armchairs and sofas instead of standard seats, wine and food brought to your seat, a programme that balances new releases with repertory screenings. It is the original Everyman, opened in 1933, and remains the best of the chain. Check the listings before you visit — the repertory programme regularly includes classic and art-house films alongside mainstream releases.
Independent Shopping
Hampstead has resisted the chain-store invasion better than almost anywhere in London. On Heath Street, Flask Walk and the surrounding lanes you will find: a proper independent bookshop (Waterstones, admittedly, but also second-hand bookshops on the approach to the tube); wine merchants who know their suppliers; a cheese shop that has occupied the same premises for decades; florists, galleries, and the kind of homeware shops that exist to serve people who care deeply about their kitchen. Browse without a list.
Burgh House and Hampstead Museum
Burgh House on New End Square is a Queen Anne mansion from 1704 that now houses the Hampstead Museum — a collection devoted to the history of the neighbourhood, from the spa years of the eighteenth century to the artistic community of the twentieth. The temporary exhibition programme is consistently interesting. The Buttery café in the basement is one of the best café-lunches in Hampstead. Entry to the museum is free.
Vale of Health
The Vale of Health is the strangest corner of Hampstead Heath — a small hamlet of private houses hidden within the Heath itself, invisible from the surrounding streets until you are standing in it. D.H. Lawrence lived here briefly in 1915. Leigh Hunt, who introduced Keats to Shelley, lived here too. Rabindranath Tagore walked here while writing the Gitanjali poems. Today it is a residential enclave whose inhabitants have the most unusual address in London. Walk through it quietly — it is private property — and back out via the path to the Mixed Pond.
Practical Information
Getting here: Hampstead tube station on the Northern line (Edgware branch) is the closest station. It is one of the deepest in London at 58.5 metres — the lifts are slow. Alternatively, Overground to Gospel Oak or Hampstead Heath for the south end of the Heath.
When to go: Hampstead is at its best in early autumn (September–October) and late spring (May–June) — the Heath is beautiful, the pubs are not overcrowded, and the farmers' market is at its most varied. Avoid summer bank holiday weekends unless you enjoy queuing.
How long to allow: A full day covers the main sites at pace. A weekend does them justice. Some people have been coming back for fifty years and still find new things.