Place Name
Directional, linking Hampstead with Hampstead Garden Suburb up until it was developed in the first decades of the 20thCentury, it was agricultural land. The very name of Hampstead Garden Suburb was no doubt chosen to trade off the cache of Hampstead village with the middle classes. As for the name Hampstead itself was documented even before the Norman Conquest. In the 10thCentury it was mentioned as Hemstede in AD959 and Hamstede in AD978, when King Ethelred confirmed that the manor was being given to Westminster Abbey. The name comes from the Anglo Saxon word hām-stede meaning the homestead. The spelling mutated to Hamestede by the time of the Domesday Book, and in 1258 the “intrusive” p was added to become Hampstede. It wasn’t until the late 17thCentury that the modern spelling was used when the village became a fashionable spa resort.
