Hampstead and Highgate are neighbouring, leafy, north London areas filled with old pubs, excellent walking routes and great places to eat.
They’re lovely areas to visit to take London at a slower pace, stroll around old streets, discover lesser-known galleries and museums, bookshops and of course plenty of places to stop off for food and drink.
Whether you’re only spending a day in the area, or want a leisurely weekend itinerary — here’s our hidden London guide to exploring Hampstead and Highgate.
Getting to Hampstead and Highgate
There’s no shortage of transport links with Hampstead Heath on the Mildmay Line branch of the Overground, and there’s also Highgate on the Underground (Northern Line, High Barnet branch), or Hampstead on the Underground (Northern Line, Edgeware Branch).
Explore Hampstead Heath
Hardly a hidden gem, but Hampstead Heath (or simply, The Heath to north Londoners) is at the heart of this part of London and you can branch off in almost any direction and explore interesting places and hidden nooks.
A visit to the Heath can take several hours if you want to explore it properly, it’s a sprawling 791 acre green space comprising woodland trails, swimming ponds, fields and meadows.
Parliament Hill offers some of the best city views in London, but can get incredibly busy, especially at weekends. But, there are great places to explore away from crowds of families, dogwalkers and joggers.
Hampstead West Heath offers a bit of escapism, and in the warmer months, you could almost kid yourself that you’re in Tuscany, as the Hampstead Pergola becomes light-dappled and filled with the scent of flowers.
It’s open to the public all year round, although it’s also a very popular place for weddings and photoshoots, and it’s not hard to see why.
And if you’ve brought your swimming gear and a sense of adventure, you can take a dip in either the Ladies’ ponds, Mens’ ponds or mixed ponds. It’s important to book ahead, sadly the days of just showing up and leaving a couple of quid as a donation are gone. It’s a favourite spot among London’s open-water swimmers, all year round.
Take a tour of Highgate Cemetery (East and West)
Highgate Cemetery is one of London’s Magnificent Seven, a retrofitted name given in the 1980s to London’s ornate Victorian cemeteries. These cemeteries (some of which are decommissioned and have become overgrown, atmospheric parks), are all iconic burial grounds, filled with beautiful tributes and some really quite opulent head stones.
Arguably the most famous of the seven, Highgate Cemetery is so large it’s in two parts the East and West.
Both are worth a visit, you can do a self-guided tour to the East where you’ll find the graves of many famous people including Karl Marx, whose head is rendered in stone on a massive scale.
To visit the West side, book a guided tour to access areas including Egyptian Avenue and The Catacombs. Tours last around 75 minutes and cost around £18.00.
See where Freud lived and worked
Hampstead and Highgate have been home to some of the world’s most famous authors, scientists and academics, among them psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Freud House Museum is Freud’s former home, where he lived as an older man until his death in 1939. Freud and his family came to London after fleeing the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938.
It’s a small, but fascinating place to visit. You can snoop around his old study, take in his extensive library and see the famous psychoanalytic couch. The audio guides offer a pretty decent exploration of the house and Freud’s work.
And there’s also space dedicated to the life and work of his daughter, Anna Freud who became a leading psychoanalyst in her own right, particularly in the field of child psychology.
Take the Hampstead circular walk
If you’re short on time, a nice way to explore Hampstead’s old streets is by taking the 2.5 mile circular walk which starts and ends at Hampstead tube.
It’s an interesting way to explore the area even if you’re going at a more leisurely pace, offering stop offs at Hampstead Heath, Whitestone Garden (a small garden with a bench shaped like hands), Hampstead Observatory, and Fenton House.
The route also takes in Keats Grove, Burgh House, Flask Walk, Lime Avenue and Willow Road.
Visit 2 Willow Road, Erno Goldfinger’s Modernist home
The penultimate stop on the circular walk, and one of the most famous addresses in Hampstead, 2 Willow Road bucks the Hampstead trend for Georgian elegance. The iconic, Modernist home was designed by Ernö Goldfinger in 1939 for himself and his family.
Although the house is now run by the National Trust and revered by architects, it upset Hampstead’s residents at the time. One notable resident went as far as naming the villain in his latest spy novel after the architect as an act of revenge.
These days, it’s open for visitors on Thursdays and Saturdays, from March to October, for pre-booked guided or self-guided tours.
Have a cosy pub lunch at The Holly Bush, Hampstead or The Flask, Highgate
There’s no shortage of old, atmospheric pubs in Hampstead and Highgate. Two favourite spots among locals and visitors alike are The Holly Bush and The Flask.
Nestled down a side street, The Holly Bush is a Grade II-listed building that was originally a home in the 1790s. Now a Fullers pub, it’s the ideal place for a post-Heath walk lunch by a roaring fire.
Now, there are two pubs in the area called The Flask, one in Hampstead and the other in Highgate, but as we’ve already mentioned The Holly Bush, our recommendation is for The Flask, Highgate. And no, they’re not related.
The Flask, Highgate is another old pub now run by Fullers with a beautiful garden, right by Hampstead Heath. Food wise, it’s a fairly standard gastropub mix of small plates, and mains including Fish & Chips plus veggie and vegan options.
Wander through pretty alleyways, village squares and old streets
Both Hampstead and Highgate are old villages that have been overtaken by London’s outward expansion over the centuries. Hampstead is the bigger of the two high streets, but if you peel off the main drag to explore the festoon-light covered Flask Walk, you’ll pass cute eateries and find fancy old houses. This is also home to more small museums like Burgh House, which is free to visit and often has free events on.
In Highgate, if you venture off the High Street, you’ll hit Pond Square, which was once home to the artist Francis Bacon.
It’s a lovely spot to stop off and watch the world pass by from a bench. As well as the Georgian townhouses, Pond Square is also home to Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute which hosts regular events including film screenings, lectures, debates, talks and concerts.
