Looking towards New End Primary School, Hampstead

Image: © Marathon Taken: 13 Sep 2017

Ian Nairn says of Hampstead in Nairn's London 1966: "Hampstead is a bit of a joke, though many of its inhabitants are deadly serious about it. As soon as a picturesque street or alley gets well started and you can begin to live the refined life, along comes a great hospital or board school or block of tenements. Clatter and thump, you pick up the pieces and start again. It is not an amusing or exciting contrast, either, just head-on conflict which ends in stalemate. But socially, it has undoubtedly saved Hampstead from becoming intolerably precious. ... The whole place is a china shop with a good many wild bulls in it." New End Primary School would probably be one of the buildings he had in mind. A date of 1906 is prominent at the top of the wall on the right. Although many of the old Board Schools are impressive, ones like this are not right in the tiny streets and alleys which surround it. See for example http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2303426

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