Wyldes Farm
Wyldes Farm is a Grade II* listed former farmhouse in North End, Hampstead
Credit: Helen Allingham
Wyldes Farm - where Dickens stayed and Hampstead Garden Suburb was realised.

Wyldes Farm is a little east of Golders Hill on the slopes of Hampstead Heath, is a small weatherboarded building with a large weatherboarded barn and outbuildings attached. The house, known in the 19th century as Collins's Farm or Heath Farm, was occupied by the painter John Linnell (1792-1882), who is said to have entertained William Blake there and added a room in 1826, by Charles Dickens as a young man. Under new ownership, Sir Raymond Unwin, co-planner of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, lived there from 1906 until his death in 1940.

Eton College took possession of the Hendon estate in 1449, which was called 'the Wylde' by 1480-1.

In the 18th century it was leased to the Earle family of Hendon House, the freehold owners in 1754 of Decoy Farm, which consisted of 99 acres north and west of Temple Fortune.

In 1828 the Wyldes estate was leased to Thomas Clark, who also owned Decoy Farm. The college lands, which stretched northward from the Hampstead border to Mutton brook, were divided in 1903 into three farms, called Temple Fortune, Tooley's (or Wildwood), and Home (or Heath) farms.

It retained the Wyldes estate until 1907, when it was sold to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, which had acquired some property from the college in 1906, and to the trustees of the Hampstead Heath Extension.

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