History

Introduction

• A brief history
• Historical development of the Suburb
• A Concise History
• Growth and Change
• Henrietta Barnett's planning vision
• Unwin's town planning
• Small scale planning
• Town Planning Act
• Central Square Architecture
• St. Jude's and the Free Church
• The Institute

A Concise History

In 1900 Henrietta Barnett, philanthropist and the wife of an inner London curate, started petitioning for investments in a new, radical social housing scheme in Hampstead. She had been appalled by the slum living conditions of workers in London, and, inspired by the Garden City movement, decided to create a community where people from all classes and backgrounds could “live together under wholesome conditions.”

Near to her house in the country the newly opened Golders Green tube line threatened beautiful farmland with over development. Keen to avoid “rows of ugly villas” Barnett decided to buy the land from Eton College and design a community for a better style of living.

She funded her plan by encouraging the richer residents to subsidise the rents of the poorer, while also paying for community facilities such as the churches and the educational institute.

Raymond Unwin was chosen as the master planner, as he had just completed Letchworth Garden City, a new community based on similar principles. He decided that the main focus of the design should be to create a village atmosphere, to avoid an “inharmonious jumble” and to create “interest and variety while maintaining a general sense of unity.” Barnett was keen that he created an area of “picturesque appearance,” through the “variety of the dwellings.”

So unusual were Unwin and Barnett’s plans that the Garden Suburb Act of 1906 was needed to realise their vision, the first town planning legislation in Britain.

Unwin rejected standard street layouts and influenced by German hill towns followed the contours of the land and the existing trees. He created a sense of unity through his use of materials and communal spaces, all bounded by leafy hedges. He created variety by varying the building line, breaking the roof line with dormers and employing different architects to design different areas, giving the suburb variety while adhering to Unwin’s detailed vista plans.

Edwin Lutyens was asked to design the buildings in Central Square, and Henrietta wanted the highest point in the Suburb to be the place for “houses of worship” of both religion and knowledge, with the spire of St. Jude’s as a beacon on the horizon. She had her own house next to St. Jude’s so that she could easily check church attendance.

Building began in 1907, and the development quickly grew; by 1935 it stretched from Golders Green in the South to East Finchley in the North.

In 1967 the Leasehold Reform Act gave owners the right to buy their freehold, which under normal circumstances gave them the right to alter their houses, and residents of the Suburb became concerned for their picturesque village. In 1968 the New Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust was set up to “do all things possible in order to maintain and preserve the present character” of the Suburb by controlling changes to its appearance and landscape, as well as give advice to residents on their homes.

The Suburb was designated a conservation area in 1969 and today survives relatively intact.

In the words of the architectural critic Nicolaus Pevsner it is a “nearly perfect example of the English invention and speciality, the Garden Suburb”. It remains a very attractive place to live, a milestone in the history of English architecture and Town Planning, a reflection of Henrietta Barnett and Raymond Unwin’s original vision, vigorously protected by residents and the Trust for the future.