Church Row, Hampstead

51°33′20″N 0°10′46″W / 51.55554°N 0.17944°W / 51.55554; -0.17944

Church Row is a residential street in Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. Many of the properties are listed on the National Heritage List for England. The street runs from Frognal in the west to Heath Street in the east. St John-at-Hampstead and its additional burial ground is at the west end of the street.

Mavis Norris in her Book of Hampstead describes the street as "the show piece of Hampstead" and it "is almost completely preserved in its early eighteenth-century elegance".^[1] The 1998 London: North edition of the Pevsner Architectural Guides, described Church Row as "the best street in Hampstead" thought it was "better still" before the construction of Gardnor Mansions at the Heath Street end.^[2]

Ian Nairn, in his 1966 book Nairn's London describes the design of the street as "complete freedom which results from submission to a common style. A rough gentlemen's agreement about heights and size...and you can do what you want". Nairn was critical of the number of parked cars and felt that the trees that run down in the middle of Church Row broke up the space of the street. Nairn felt that the south side of Church Row was more "austere and formal" than the north side which was "much more ribald".^[3]

Anne Thackeray described the street as 'an avenue of Dutch ed-faced houses leading demurely to the old church tower that stands guarding its graves in the flowery churchyard'.^[4]

A line of trees runs down the middle of the street. The trees have been present since at least the development of the south side of the street in the 1720s. Six lime trees were planted in the mid 19th century, of which only one still stands, at the furthest end from the church. The present trees were planted in the 1970s, and are maintained by the London Borough of Camden.^[5]