Place Name
Descriptive. Described in 1725 as having been, 60 years previously, a “high hill and a sandpit so that there could not be any way through”. 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.
