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).
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]
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. [3]
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.
Hampstead is an area in London, which lies four miles northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from the A5 road to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the London Borough of Camden, a borough in Inner London which for the purposes of the London Plan is designated as part of Central London.
Highgate is a suburban area of north London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, 4+1⁄2 miles north-northwest of Charing Cross.
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" modelled in part 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.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, poet, and artists' model. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean. Siddal was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and especially by her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
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.
West Hampstead is an area in the London Borough of Camden in north-west London. Mainly defined by the railway stations of the same name, it is situated between Childs Hill to the north, Frognal and Hampstead to the north-east, Swiss Cottage to the east, South Hampstead to the south-east, Kilburn to the west and south-west, and Cricklewood to the north-west. The area is mainly residential with several small shops, restaurants, cafes, bakeries concentrated on the northern section of West End Lane and around West End Green. It is served by three stations: West Hampstead on the Jubilee line, West Hampstead Overground station and West Hampstead Thameslink station. It is part of the Kilburn postal district (NW6).
Belsize Park is an affluent residential area of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden, England.
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 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.
Walter Howell Deverell (1827–1854) was a United States-born British artist, closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
South Hill Park is a street in the Hampstead district of London. It is within the London Borough of Camden, and some of its houses overlook Hampstead Heath.
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.
The London Borough of Camden is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies 1.4 mi (2.3 km) north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St Pancras—which together, prior to that date, had comprised part of the historic County of London.
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."
Hilda Anne Carline (1889–1950) was a British painter, daughter of the artist George Francis Carline, and first wife of the artist Stanley Spencer. She studied art under the Post-Impressionist Percyval Tudor-Hart, with her brothers Sydney and Richard, and then at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks. She had a promising early start with her works being shown at the London Group, Royal Academy and New English Art Club.
The Upper Flask was a tavern near the top of Hampstead hill in the 18th century which sold flasks of water from the Hampstead spa. It was the summer meeting place of the great literary and political figures of the Kit-Kat Club such as Walpole. The tavern business ceased in the 1750s and the grand house subsequently became the private residence of ladies and gentlemen such as Lady Charlotte Rich, George Steevens and Thomas Sheppard.
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.