Judge’s Walk. A tree-lined avenue-path just above Heath Mount and Branch Hill, overlooking West Heath, where Judge Jeffries spent the Plague Year sitting in a makeshift Court, sentencing over 200 inhabitants to be hung for such petty offenses as rabbit-poaching. A very dark haunt indeed.
The Lion House. On East Heath Road. A Gothic Folly facing East Heath, once called The Logs. Now converted into four apartments, in one of which Boy George lives. Wonderfully atmospheric.
Parliament Hill. High Point on East Heath, overlooking London. So named because the ancient Druids were believed to hold an open air Parliament there. Guy Fawkes and all his fellow-conspirators were planning to watch the Houses of Parliament burn down from that spot. Modern Druids used to put their Crosses there on Equinox days, but the Council stopped them some years ago.
7, Pilgrim’s Lane. Four storey, listed Georgian house in Pilgrim’s Lane where I grew up. My room was at the back, looking onto the 17th. Century Unitarian Church. I often wanted to burn it down with my family in it in my late teens, but luckily got side-tracked by pure philosophical abstractions! The wife of a famous psychoanalyst went mad there, and my mother was convinced she saw her ghost.
The Lion House. On East Heath Road. A Gothic Folly facing East Heath, once called The Logs. Now converted into four apartments, in one of which Boy George lives. Wonderfully atmospheric.
Parliament Hill. High Point on East Heath, overlooking London. So named because the ancient Druids were believed to hold an open air Parliament there. Guy Fawkes and all his fellow-conspirators were planning to watch the Houses of Parliament burn down from that spot. Modern Druids used to put their Crosses there on Equinox days, but the Council stopped them some years ago.
7, Pilgrim’s Lane. Four storey, listed Georgian house in Pilgrim’s Lane where I grew up. My room was at the back, looking onto the 17th. Century Unitarian Church. I often wanted to burn it down with my family in it in my late teens, but luckily got side-tracked by pure philosophical abstractions! The wife of a famous psychoanalyst went mad there, and my mother was convinced she saw her ghost.
OakTree House. At the end of The Avenue, off Redington Road in Frognal. Once a squat where David Peters lived, and a very strange Guyanan magician called Fazil Bacchus, who spent a long time there avoiding all daylight practising Subud. Now a renovated mansion in woodland, it’s said to have been haunted. Very creepy indeed. The present owners, whoever they are, will soon have nightmares.
Mount Vernon Apartments. Formerly a main Hospital on the Mount, leading on towards Branch Hill. A magnificent Victorian Gothic edifice, that one can see like a gigantic brick-bird on the hill from the Metropolitan Line Tub, as it travels between Kilburn and West Hampstead. A palatial eyrie.
Mount Vernon Apartments. Formerly a main Hospital on the Mount, leading on towards Branch Hill. A magnificent Victorian Gothic edifice, that one can see like a gigantic brick-bird on the hill from the Metropolitan Line Tub, as it travels between Kilburn and West Hampstead. A palatial eyrie.
1, Bishop’s Avenue. Red brick late Victorian Mansion on the corner of Hampstead Lane opposite Kenwood, where I and others once squatted. Said to have been haunted like Oak Tree House. And I once spent the night there on my own - and was woken up by footsteps downstairs! The following morning there was nobody. Carlos the Jackal paid a visit to the house once to settle a score. A woman ran into the street screaming once after her husband had been murdered. Renovated now, but with a very dark history that threatens to re-erupt at any time. Joshua spent a lot of time there naked and chanting, and a very weird troop of French actors in robes rehearsed a drama which they never performed, and then mysteriously disappeared. Somebody threatened me with a knife once, when they thought I was a nark, which I certainly wasn’t. David Peters warded off another attacker with a sudden display of Shamanic force. Lord Marcus Sieff, owner of Marks and Spencer, and I think Selfridge’s, owned the house where we squatted. We were all evicted by Securicor, under orders from Citibank, which acted on Sieff’s behalf. WE made alternative history!
The Tower. Mighty Victorian Gothic edifice at 55, Fitzjohn's Avenue, where M.P. Shiel's Arthur Jepson in The Purple Cloud rests awhile before donning Emperor's robes and driving a chariot across a post-Apocalyptic landscape.