45 Squared 5) CENTRAL SQUARE, NW11
Borough of Barnet, 180m×100m
One of London's finest suburban squares can be found in Hampstead Garden Suburb, one of London's finest suburbs, which isn't actually in Hampstead. Head north to Golders Green and a tad north more, stopping just before you hit the A1. Here are 250 acres of much coveted Arts and Crafts housing, and at the toppermost point an extensive garden square flanked by the Suburb's finest municipal buildings. Locals call it the Suburb these days, believing they have no competition, and if you've ever walked round they may have a point.
Hampstead Garden Suburb was the brainchild of Henrietta Barnett, an East End philanthropist who with her husband Samuel also founded Toynbee Hall. In 1889 the couple bought a weekend home on the edge of Hampstead Heath near The Spaniards Inn, and when the Underground was extended to Golders Green became concerned that much of the surrounding land would be engulfed by development. Henrietta swiftly established a Trust which purchased Wyldes Farm outright, preserving one strip as the Hampstead Heath extension, then proceeded to build her personal vision of proper housing across the remainder of the fields. She demanded no more than eight homes per acre, broader streets than normal, hedges rather than walls and a suspension of the usual traffic by-laws along short cul-de-sacs. This contravened local planning regulations so required an Act of Parliament, which was duly passed in 1906 after which development began.
Henrietta asked Edwin Lutyens to design Central Square, this one of his first public commissions, and the result was a large grassed space overlooked by a school and flanked by two large places of worship. Being Henrietta the school was for girls only because she thought they got a raw educational deal, and being Lutyens the two churches are magnificent and both now Grade I listed.
St Jude's is the C of E option, a spire atop a brick tower atop a curvaceous barrelled nave. It didn't used to be unlocked very often but since the Reverend Em turned up a couple of years ago they've adopted more of an open door policy and the interior doesn't disappoint. It feels vast, nearer a cathedral than a parish church, a dark arched space supported on brick pillars. Many of the surfaces are richly decorated with frescoes by Walter Starmer, including a full set of golden Stations of the Cross, a panel depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and several more contemporary takes on devotion and remembrance. Look up and the ceiling sings, though I suspect it looks finer when the lights are on.
Henrietta's footprint can also be felt here, for example her choice for the roof of the Lady Chapel was a mural depicting virtuous women including St Bridget, Christina Rosetti and Grace Darling. But all is not well with the fabric of the building - the church has damp issues, some walls are cracked and a few of the frescoes are suffering from salt damage - hence it's been on the Heritage at Risk register for a few years. In 2015 Storm Barney brought down the weathervane and the copper cockerel had to be expensivelyreplaced, revealing further structural cracking in the spire. A tentative art restoration project is due to begin later this year, starting with a test panel. The open door policy isn't necessarily helping however, with a sign on the door urging visitors to make sure the door's kept shut to keep out pigeons. I carefully obliged only to find a single bird already flapping around merrily and with no obvious way to let it out.
The Free Church opposite is on an almost-similar scale and domed rather than spired. Theinterior's more brightly painted but far less decorated, like one of Wren's, although sadly I didn't get inside to check. They unlock for a church cafe every Saturday morning when the weather's too poor to hold it outside, and also of course open up for services and monthly lunchtime concerts. I couldn't tell you for sure which of the entrances is the actual front door otherwise I might have given it a tentative push. A third religious presence is a Quaker Meeting House, another nod to Henrietta's egalitarian inclusive views, which is tucked into a greener corner of the Square.
The central axis of Central Square is a paved path across the lawn flanked closely by an avenue of trees, with one monumental church to either side. The grass is a bit muddy at the moment but on the plus side the lack of leaves means you can actually see the surrounding buildings. At one end of the path is a Portland stonememorial to Henrietta Barnett, or Dame Henrietta Barnett as she was known when she passed away in 1936. Above it on a four-legged bronze canopy a lantern blazes away, I thought permanently until I came back out of the church and it had switched off. Henrietta Barnett School lines up perfectly at one end of the axis, this the original building called The Institute, since expanded to become one of the country's top girls' grammars. The other end is far less imposing, merely two tennis courts, which I suspect weren't in Lutyens original plans.
And around the rim of Central Square, quite distant, is a quadrangle of neo-Georgian houses. Technically it only has three sides, the tennis court flank letting the side down again, but these are prestige homes and I think generally unsubdivided. This outer perimeter is divided into two halves called North Square and South Square, with Henrietta herself choosing to live at number 1 South Square at the very heart of her creation. In the opposite corner a snatch of woodland nudges in, that's Big Wood, a feature preserved from the original rural landscape. Here I came across a young fox at the top of a long driveway, surprised to have company and even more affronted when I repeatedly failed to retreat.
The remainder of the estate is less formal and easily reached if you step away, perhaps along a smart holly-hedged passage. But it's still all very desirable real estate, the kinds of streets where Jonathan Ross or Peter Mandelson might now reside, indeed Harold Wilson lived on Southway just before he moved to Downing Street for the first time. The Suburb is, if you've never been, a fascinating place to visit and wander round because it's so atypical to everything that surrounds it. The easiest way is to hop aboard the H2 minibus which departs Golders Green regularly on a lengthy circuit of the backavenues, eventually reaching Central Square after about 15 minutes... and if St Jude's is unlocked all the better.
