Henrietta Barnett formed a board of trustees to build this urban utopia following strict social principles: all classes accommodated, places of education provided, places for the handicapped and elderly, gardens with hedges, not walls, noise limited, shops etc. kept to the boundary and sales of alcohol prohibited. She chose Raymond Unwin to plan the estate and Edwin Lutyens as consulting architect.
On the picture source website the map is interactive, but visit for everything you need about the suburb. It is here we learn that "Lutyens' sketch for the landscaping was, as Dame Henrietta recalls, dashed off in a letter from Marseilles when he was en route for Delhi. At the western end of the Avenue is Lutyens' memorial to the Dame herself, a kind of classical wellhead." It is rumoured that Lutyens found Dame Henrietta a difficult client, and that he saw the Delhi commission as an escape from HGS. But perhaps he enjoyed designing her memorial.
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Hampstead Garden Suburb
Commemorated ati
First house tree
October 2nd 1907. This tree was planted by Mrs Barnett on the occasion of th...
First two houses on HGS
On 2 May 1907 Henrietta Barnett cut the first sod here. The ceremony involved...
Hampstead Garden Suburb Jubilee
This stone was unveiled by Her Royal Highness, the Princess Margaret on 2nd J...
Henrietta Barnett plaque
Prior to the death of her husband in 1913, Dame Henrietta Barnett had been li...
Other Subjects
Sir John Summerson
Museum curator and architectural historian. Born John Newenham Summerson at Barnstead, Coniscliffe Road, Darlington. He taught at Edinburgh College of Art, and had professorships at Oxford and Camb...
Jan F. Groll
From Colonial Spectacles “John (or Jan) F. Groll was an architect and engineer. After completing his studies in Delft, he worked for the department of public works in British India….” We can't fi...
G. Topham Forrest
Architect active in 1937. We have found his name associated with the design / laying out of: the Becontree estate in 1920 and the Downham Estate in Lewisham in 1923. Our colleague, Andrew Behan, h...
Guy Nicholls
Architect active in 1950. Possibly the borough surveyor for St Marylebone but we cannot confirm that.
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