diamond geezer

LONDON A-Z
V is for Vale of Health

We're now at the tough end of the alphabet for unsung suburbs. There's Victoria and Vauxhall but they're way too well known. There's Kingston Vale, Putney Vale and Streatham Vale, but that's stretching alphabetical licence too far. The only other V in the Ordnance Survey's 681-strong list is a small residential hollow at the top of Hampstead Heath, essentially just one street, but in the absence of anything better it'll have to do. Thankfully it's fascinating with links to DH Lawrence, fairgrounds and the Daily Mail, also extremely aspirational so well done if you live there.

The Vale of Health was once an insalubrious dip amid open heathland above Hampstead, so has undergone a sly nominal transformation over the years. As one of the sources of the River Fleet it's long been a bit damp, and was described by one Georgian gentlewoman as 'a stagnate bottom, a pit in the heath'. Its first inhabitant arrived in the 1710s, a harness maker called Samuel Hatch with a shop on the highway up by Jack Straw's Castle. He wanted a workshop to store his hides and was granted a small patch in the wasteland below where he added a cottage and cowshed, the area thus becoming known as Hatchett's Bottom. In 1777 the Hampstead Water Company enlarged the pond and drained the marshy ground, making it a tad less unappealing, but the area was still mostly used for tanning, then a varnish factory, later laundering clothes. As you can see the lakeside's changed a lot since then.

A few poorhouses were added in 1779, then a chimneysweep's cottage, then a builder spotted that a sheltered secluded spot might be the ideal spot for a handful of more middle classes houses. The name 'Vale of Health' was first recorded in 1801, presumably to attract sales, despite no evidence that living in a boggy bottom was truly good for you. Within decades the Vale became a hideaway for the well-to-do and the artistic set, also day trippers who enjoyed tea gardens, boats and a fairground (summer months only). Most of the 60-or-so houses we see today were tucked in during the 19th century, plus a hotel called the Vale of Health Tavern which was soon turned into flats. It's now a tightknit community of quaint and occasionally invisible villas, essentially one long curling cul-de-sac with a dead end coming off it, which unless you find the right way in goes happily unnoticed by the rest of the world.

The right way in, at least if you're driving, is a turn off from East Heath Road beside a sign (correctly) warning that the road is unsuitable for HGVs. One of the streetsigns here has been damaged so claims this is the

Vale of Healt, but that's about the only misstep present. The road descends through a tunnel of foliage and is completely lined by parked cars, this because most residents live in close-packed houses built before the need for off-road space so vehicles need to be left here. You can also walk in across the heath, one particular woody track lit by facsimile oil lamps as you descend, quite sharply, into the secret world of Hatchett's Bottom.

The first row of houses is splendid in a very Hampstead way, all tall thin villas with Gothic gables and steps up to the front door, perhaps several. Everyone on the left has the benefit of a lake view, hence the third house is indeed called Lakeview, its neighbours including Heathhurst, Silverdale and (my favourite) Upfleet. At least two currently have the builders in, because if you can afford a pile here you can certainly stretch to extra shower rooms, bespoke stone worktops and micro-cement-style finishes. All the necessary services have been provided, by which I mean a red pillarbox and a noticeboard. Alongside is a beautiful street map seemingly created by some local graphic artist in the 1990s, ideally situated should your Ocado delivery need to stop off to work out where Blossom Villa or Lavender Cottage are.

One of the three blue plaques in the Vale is above the door of number 3 Villas on the Heath, this for the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore who stayed here briefly in 1912. The recipient of the second plaque did better by living here for six months, just round the corner at 1 Byron Villas. This was DH Lawrence, this his first London residence in 1915 before he and his wife moved down to Cornwall. Byron did indeed have connections here, he and Shelley often dropping in on the recipient of the third blue plaque, the poet James Leigh Hunt (whose speakeasy can be found halfway along a narrow alleyway).

Plaque number 4 is black and appears on the front of Rose Cottage where Alfred Harmsworth spent three years of his childhood. He grew up to become Lord Northcliffe, Fleet Street's greatest populist newspaper magnate who (amongst many other self-interested interventions) helped turn the Daily Mail into the outspoken organ it is today. I love that the letter box at Rose Cottage now has a sign outside saying

No Junk Mail, probably not as a reference to newspaper deliveries but it'd be hilarious if it was.

One arm of the cul-de-sac bends round past chocolate box cottages, quirky bungalows and heathfront villas, also houses so secluded that I'd have seen nothing had the gate in the thick hedge not been open. Signs repeatedly warn that Neighbourhood Watch is keeping a close eye, but I think the bloke bemused by my presence was just a jobbing gardener. Gaps in the treeline provide access straight onto the upper Heath, seemingly a key exercising spot for dogs, so you could be up at the Jack Straw's Castle bus stop in a couple of minutes if you don't mind a climb. 20 years ago there was a near perfect view across the Vale from up top but alas encroaching woodland has all but put paid to that.

The other dead end slopes downwards past more of Heath Villas, pastel painted, its uncurtained windows revealing bookshelves, ceramics and other cultural furnishings. The property magic ends abruptly at the end of the terrace with Spencer House, the modern block of flats built on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. If it looks dull from the road that's because the building's fully focused on the lake beyond, an inspirational view that repeatedly lured painter Stanley Spencer to use a studio here.

But the really quirky thing hereabouts is the corral of caravans and trailers across the road, officially titled The Fairground Site. It's not for your entertainment, it's a base for a travelling community living their best caravan life, also somewhere to store a Friendly Falafels booth between events when its not being used. Here people sit on garden chairs and cook using gas canisters, while across the road a Sunday magazine's photographer could drop in at any moment, such are the contrasts of the Vale of Health.

It's easy to slip out here onto the Heath proper, perhaps to the Ice House, a conical-roofed building half-concealed in the trees which was originally built as an estatekeeper's hut. Alternatively head down to the pond for a look back at the rear of the buildings fortunate enough to be water-facing, also their fancy extensions and back gardens. I suspect the true joy of living here is having the whole of Hampstead Heath at your disposal just a few metres from your front door, such are the benefits of being some of the only housing ever to have been permitted on this huge urban open space. The Vale of Health may have been named in deceit but it's a lot easier to see the health benefits of living here today, should you have a couple of million to spare that is.