Downshire Hill is a street in Hampstead, London, in the London Borough of Camden. The street has always been a preferred residential address, in which the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the actress Peggy Ashcroft as well as the scientist J. D. Bernal and Peter Medawar resided.
The road runs between the A 502 (Rosslyn Hill) in the southwest and East Heath Road / South End Road in the northeast. The only branches are Keats Grove and Willow Road. While the road ends in the northeast on the edge of the Hampstead Heath nature park, it is "continued" in a south-westerly direction by Thurlow Road.
On the grounds between Downshire Hill and Keats Grove is the St John's Downshire Hill.
The road was laid out at the beginning of the 19th century and is probably named after the first Marquess of Downshire, Wills Hill (1718–1793).
The Gothic Revival architect Temple Moore and later, during the First World War, the literary figures Constance, Edward and David Garnett lived in house number 6.
In the 1930s the Scottish writer Edwin Muir and then the two-time Wimbledon finalist Bunny Austin lived under number 7.
At the turn of the century, the actor Edward Gordon Craig and the composer Martin Shaw shared house number 8.
The author Sylvia Dryhurst was born in house number 11. After their marriage to the writer Robert Lynd the couple moved into the neighboring building number 14 and lived there until 1918.
The artist Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller lived in building number 21 and the biologist Peter Medawar number 25.
The painter John Constable had stayed in the same house for a short time in the previous century. At number 35 the physicist J. D. Bernal lived in the late 1930s and in the neighboring house number 37 the actress Flora Robson at about the same time.
The Regency House at number 47 was owned by the family of Richard Carline from 1914 onwards. In September 1938 it was acquired by the Stuttgart-born lawyer Fred Uhlman and his wealthy wife Diana Croft. [1]
Together with other people immigrated from Germany, they soon founded the Artists ’Refugee Committee (ARC), which had its official seat under number 47. The ARC sheltered persecuted artists. One of them was the German Dadaist John Heartfield. It was originally intended to be recorded for two weeks, but he ended up spending five years there.
Soon after, the writer Elizabeth Jenkins moved to the Regency House and named her 2004 memoir (The View from Downshire Hill) after the street. [2]
The puppeteer, film director and creator of The Muppets, Jim Henson lived at 50 Downshire Hill. [3]
It was only in 1896 that the Hampstead Hill Mansions made it possible to move into a single apartment in the area. The most famous resident of this residential complex was Peggy Ashcroft, who had moved in there temporarily in 1946. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived with his wife Elizabeth Siddal for a short time in the neighboring Spring Cottage.
The Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason grew up in Downshire Hill after his family moved here from Birmingham in 1946. [4]
Ford Madox Brown was a British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work (1852–1865). Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the twelve works known as The Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall.
James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and as the director of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986).
Hampstead is an area in London, England, which lies 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Charing Cross, forming the northwest part of the London Borough of Camden, a borough in Inner London. It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsize Park to the south and is surrounded from the northeast by Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.
William Allingham was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem "The Faeries" was much anthologised. But he is better known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known watercolourist and illustrator.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.
William Bell Scott (1811–1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and occasionally printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites; he was especially close to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. After growing up in Edinburgh, he moved to London, and from 1843 to 1864 was principal of the government School of Art in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he added industrial subjects to his repertoire of landscapes and history painting. He was one of the first British artists to extensively depict the processes of the Industrial Revolution. He returned to London, working for the Science and Art Department until 1885.
Keats House is a writer's house museum in what was once the home of the Romantic poet John Keats. It is in Keats Grove, Hampstead, toward the edge of inner north London. Maps before about 1915 show the road with one of its earlier names, John Street; the road has also been known as Albion Grove. The building was originally a pair of semi-detached houses known as "Wentworth Place". John Keats lodged in one of them with his friend Charles Brown from December 1818 to May 1820, and then in the other half of the house with the Brawne family from August to September 1820. These were perhaps Keats's most productive years. According to Brown, "Ode to a Nightingale" was written under a plum tree in the garden.
Wendy Froud is an American doll-artist, sculptor, puppet-maker, and writer. She is best known for her work fabricating Yoda for the 1980 film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she has been called "the mother of Yoda", and creatures for the Jim Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Phoebe Anna Traquair was an Irish-born artist, who achieved international recognition for her role in the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland, as an illustrator, painter and embroiderer. Her works included large-scale murals, embroidery, enamel jewellery and book illuminations. In 1920, she was elected as an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Annie Miller (1835–1925) was an English artists' model who, among others, sat for the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Her on-off relationship with Holman Hunt has been dramatised several times.
Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins was an English novelist and biographer of Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb, Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I. Elizabeth Bowen said Jenkins was "among the most distinguished living English novelists."
Muppets: The Green Album is a cover album of twelve songs originally from the Muppets, covered by alternative rock and pop artists. The album was released by Walt Disney Records on August 23, 2011, on a digipak CD and as a digital download. A music video was also produced for the album's sole single; "Muppet Show Theme Song", featuring OK Go attempting to produce their own music video until they are interrupted by the Muppets' antics.
The Land of Gorch was a recurring adult puppetry skit that appeared in the first season of the American comedy television program Saturday Night Live, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets. His characters appeared regularly on the late-night comedy television program. After Sesame Street, Henson feared he would become typecast into working on children's television series. His talent agent Bernie Brillstein, who represented Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Lorne Michaels helped him transition to Saturday Night Live.
St John's Downshire Hill, Hampstead, is a proprietary chapel of the Church of England, located in Downshire Hill, Hampstead, London, in the Parish of St Stephen with All Hallows. Referred to as St John's Church, the building is formally a chapel. The church should not be confused with St John-at-Hampstead, which is located in Church Row, Hampstead, being the parish church of what is now the neighbouring parish.
Seymour Stocker Kirkup (1788–1880) was an English painter and antiquarian, resident in Italy from 1816.
South End Road is located in Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. It takes its name from the old "South End" of Hampstead. It runs southwards from the junction with East Heath Road and Downshire Hill alongside the southern edge of Hampstead Heath until reaching South End Green where it meets Pond Street and two roads running off east towards Gospel Oak. South Hill Park street runs north towards Hampstead Ponds. Keats Grove runs off the road and forms a triangle with Downshire Hill noted for its surviving Regency architecture.