Broadhurst Gardens may not be a household name, but back in the day it was the home of Decca Recording Studios which rivalled EMI’s Abbey Road Studios as the country’s leading recording facility. Many popular songs and albums were recorded at Decca Studios (for example, John Mayall’s 1968 Blues from Laurel Canyon and five albums …
Before the builders arrived en masse in the late nineteenth century, West Hampstead was a rural area of large houses, farms and estates, centred around West End Green. Beckfords Estate, belonging to the family of the same name, consisted of 15 acres north of Mill Lane and west of Fortune Green Lane. By the turn …
The hills of Hampstead Heath provide the source of three lost rivers of London – the Westbourne, Tyburn and Fleet. These rivers were long buried underground and the modern streetscape contains few hints at these former watercourses. Old maps show the routes that these rivers took. The Westbourne rises in two main places in Hampstead …