Primrose Hill takes its name from the mound which was once part of a wolf-infested forest and Henry VIII’s hunting grounds – where wildflowers bloomed in the spring.
The name has been in use since the 15th Century, although for a time the hill went by the nickname Greenberry Hill after the notorious murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
In 1678 the aristocrat was found strangled and impaled in a ditch there, and amid anti-Catholic sentiment, three innocent men were hanged at the summit for the crime.
Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill were posthumously pardoned and nobody was ever charged with the murder – but the nickname lives on in the area’s popular Greenberry Cafe.
Primrose Hill was a place where duels and bare knuckle bouts were fought, but in the 1860s land owned by Eton College and Charles Fitzroy, the third Baron Southampton, was sold, drained and developed into villas and terraces.
In 1864 part of the land was opened as a public park for the poor people of north London – and the burgeoning suburb took its name from the park.
There is also an unusual tradition of ancient druidic rites enacted on the hill.
At the summer solstice of 1792 the first meeting of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isles of Britain was organised by Welsh poet Iolo Morganwg. Today The Druid Order mark the winter and summer solstice and autumn and spring Equinoxes with ceremonies on the hill.
At 63 metres above sea level the summit has one of the six protected viewpoints in London and features a stone with a William Blake inscription: “I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.”
An oak known as “Shakespeare’s Tree” stands on the slope, planted in 1864 to mark the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and replaced in 1964.
There are other literary connections in the enclave. HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds locates the Martian’s biggest camp on Primrose Hill and ends the book on top of the hill gazing down over London.
The author lived from 1888 to 1891 with his aunt, Mary Wells at 12 Fitzroy Road, and later at No. 46.
Other past residents have included Ted Hughes and American poet Sylvia Plath, who took her own life in a flat on Fitzroy Road in 1963, Jamie and Jools Oliver, Friedrich Engels, Gwen Stefani and Jude Law.
In the late 1990s it became famous for the ‘Primrose Hill set’ of chummy celebrities who used to party together, including Sadie Frost, Noel Gallagher and then wife Meg Matthews, and the model Kate Moss.
Current locals include Alan Bennett, Mary Portas, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz and actor Brian Cox of Succession fame.
With its pretty pastel-hued terraced houses and iconic hilltop, it’s inevitably been the setting for numerous films from Bridget Jones, to Jackass the Movie, 101 Dalmatians and One Day. In the Paddington movies Chalcot Crescent stands in for Windsor Gardens.
Today it has a thriving community association who run the library, art trails, summer fairs, and dog shows – making it one of the most desirable and community spirited of London’s villages.
