Online magazine on Britain
Primrose Hill is a nice name, and the place lives up to it.
It is a posh area of London, central yet relatively undiscovered by tourists, with a park on a hill from which you can have one of the best views of London. The top of the hill is in fact one of the six protected viewpoints of London.
Primrose Hill is situated between Regent's Park and Camden Town.
In its wide avenues and cosy streets, built during the early Victorian age of railway expansion, there are imposing but shabby mid-19th century houses that fetch prices with 6 zeros. The area is sought after and exclusive, you see, and that's what counts most. Location, location, location... so the story goes.
But then Primrose Hill is full of contradictions, because around the corner from the million pound properties you find bars, bistros and cafes where you can eat for a few quid.
The Hill is a close-knit neighbourhood village, but then many London areas are. Tourists may find it odd, but this metropolis is both one of the world's big cities and an archipelago of little boroughs which still retain the air of the villages they were not long ago, before being devoured by the ever-expanding Greater London megalopolis.
Primrose Hill is a surprisingly steep green mound overlooking London, lined with broad trees and crisscrossed with ribbons of paths, surrounded by houses many of which have pastel-coloured facades and beautiful architectural styles.
Along its wishbone-shaped high streets you can buy anything, but they are remarkably free of chain stores. The chains that did try did not last very long.
Revolution lies deep in the veins of the 'island' north of Regent's Park, focacciaed between railway line and park. In the 18th century, on the hill itself, it was duelling at dawn and prize fighting, in the 19th it was championing the rights of vagrant boys, fallouts from the Industrial Revolution, by establishing a boys' home on the corner of Regent's Park and King Henry's Roads. In the 20th century, women, children and Bentleys successfully barricaded roads to keep out the road warrior juggernauts in the Seventies, estate agents teamed up with barristers to fight Camden Council's parking plans in the Nineties, and a high-profile Save Our Library campaign was launched, with national celebrities living locally involved, to prevent Chalk Farm Library closure.
The pubs of Primrose Hill are more relaxed and laid back. Here used to be one of my favourite pubs, a place where you could stay until midnight and later without anyone shouting 'Time, please, ladies and gents!'. Perhaps it's no wonder that it's now closed.
The genteel, holidaying-in-the-Mediterranean atmosphere of the place hides a burning sense of local identity, celebrated in literature and film.
The top of Primrose Hill itself is where Pongo and Perdita resort to the twilight bark in search of their 15 missing puppies in the Disney classic 101 Dalmatians, and where the Martians finally expire through disease in the last pages of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds.
It is the focus of Kingsley Amis's novel The Folk Who Live on the Hill and of journalistic parodies by Alan Bennett and Mark Boxer.
Many writers, poets and artists have lived in Primrose Hill, including Martin Amis, Isabel Fonseca, Ian McEwan, and before them WB Yeats, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide here.
Famous rock groups and singers have recorded albums here: the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and Sting in Utopia Village, Blur in Mayfair Studio.
A disproportionate number of celebrities live in Primrose Hill, eat in its restaurants, frequent its shops, meet in its bars.
The media people have also taken up residence here en mass, in studios and converted warehouses.
For people who can't afford space in Soho it's ideal. It's just a walk from there, through Regent's Park, anyway.
It is the kind of place a mile from Oxford Street where you can hear a neighbour shout for help, and put your groceries on account.
It's where residents pin To Let notices and missing pets leaflets on trees in Chalcot Square, and hold business meetings at the local pub.
Local Underground Stations: Chalk Farm is the nearest, otherwise Camden Town if you fancy walking along the canal from Camden Lock to Primrose Hill.
