Track 03 · Village · 2:33
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Stop two. Church Row, and the parish church at the end of it.
Walk down the middle of the road and look at both sides at once. This is the oldest complete street in Hampstead, laid out around seventeen twenty, and it is usually called the finest Georgian row in London that is not in a square. What makes it work is the discipline. Same brick, same eaves line, same railings, and no two doorcases quite alike.
At the end is Saint John-at-Hampstead. Look at it before you go in, because the tower is at the east end, where the altar is supposed to be. Nobody has ever fully explained why. When the church needed more room in eighteen seventy eight the architect gave up arguing with the tower and turned the inside round instead, which is why you will walk in and find the altar at the wrong end of the building.
In the churchyard, in the south-east corner, is John Constable, in a chest tomb of Portland stone with his wife Maria. He lived at forty Well Walk, ten minutes from here, and he is buried within sight of the sky he spent the last years of his life painting over and over again. You will end this walk outside his front door.
The extension across the road holds Hugh Gaitskell, who nearly became Prime Minister, the actor Anton Walbrook, and the ashes of Peter Cook.
It also holds the Llewelyn Davies family. Arthur and Sylvia had five sons, and after both parents died young the boys were taken in by a family friend who had been writing stories for them for years. The friend was J M Barrie and the stories became Peter Pan. Being the boy who Peter Pan was based on turned out to be a life sentence rather than a gift, and more than one of them said so. Peter, who got the name, spent his adult life calling the book that terrible masterpiece, and in nineteen sixty he stepped in front of a train at Sloane Square.
Free, and open most days.
Out through the top of the churchyard into Holly Walk, the narrow lane climbing north between the walls. Ninety seconds. On your right, set into the terrace and looking like a house that happens to have a bell, is stop three. You will walk past it if you are not counting doors.
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