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Hampstead Heath: Nature, Art and Artifice
London’s
famous Tube isn’t always synonymous with Underground. To get to Hampstead Heath
I take the Overground line. The view is revealing. A seemingly endless repetition of rooftops
and apartment complexes, punctuated with the occasional church spire and vacant
lot. Graffiti along the tops of buildings like friezes on the Parthenon. Said
friezes, of course, are housed, controversially, in the British Museum here in
London.
I alight at the Hampstead Heath station. Delicate plantlike
forms are baked onto the ceramic tile wall of the platform. What is the nature
of nature? I head out to find the reality suggested by this abstraction.
A friendly fruit and vegetable vendor on the street corner
directs me towards the Heath. I walk uphill along the gently curving,
tree-lined sidewalk. On one side is an unpainted wooden fence, green with age
and mold. On the other is a street lined with tidy brick buildings, with ground
floor shops. The narrow path doesn’t prepare me for the expanse of parkland I
soon reach.
It seems traditional enough for an urban park. Though the
landscape opens up the path remains narrow, runs between a parking lot and a
duck pond named simply Hampstead No. 1 Pond. South Hill Mansions, a wall of
private residences, faces towards the park across the pond. The sky is overcast
and the temperature hasn’t risen significantly. Nevertheless, there are plenty
of people out in the park. Joggers pass me by in both directions. I pass
mothers pushing strollers. A young boy in a rain slicker and backpack feeds two
swans. A crowd of familiar mallards and unfamiliar tufted ducks quickly
assembles around the swans.
I’ve come on the recommendation of several people who’ve
been here and know my predilection for urban wilderness. My guidebook is also
enticing. Hampstead Heath: “One of the few places in the big city that feels
properly wild; it’s a fantastic place to lose yourself on a rambling wander.”
Game on, I think. Then I wonder which way to go and what Frommer means by
“properly wild.”
I strike out along Pryors Field towards the East Heath,
which the map shows to be a large woodland. Before long it is clear that this
park is indeed wilder than Greenwich Park or any other I’ve yet encountered
here in London.
I am attracted to a wide slough, wet from yesterday’s rain.
A large tree stands in the middle of an opening in the wood. Enormous boughs
extend outward in all directions like an excited terrestrial octopus. I almost
expect it to move it seems so animated.
Two professional dog walkers head across the slough. They
are dressed for the unseasonable weather and swampy conditions. Colorful hoodies
stick out of parkas; waterproof pants; knee length rubber boots. Ten dogs of
all sizes and a variety of breeds fan out around them. Eight are straining at
leashes. Two range freely back and forth around the entourage. Several sport
doggie sweaters. Two dark, elegant Mini Pinschers look particularly regal in
royal red felt coats. The unruly pack is moving at a steady clip and I soon
trail behind.
A multigenerational family is gathered underneath one of the
giant trees. They are peering down at something at the base of it on the side
facing away from the trail. After they move on I investigate and find two small
holes leading underground and into the tree. Before that, as I approach, I
overhear one, who appears to be the Grandmother, exclaim to the two children,
“Oh, look! Just like Alice in Wonderland.” Then after a moment of reflection,
perhaps anticipating a similar discovery in some unknown future without adult
supervision, she adds, “If ever you do find a hole that’s big enough, don’t go
down it!” Reading Lewis Carroll’s famous fantasy is all well and good, but I
guess life is not supposed to imitate art in quite so precise a fashion.
The family moves on to another tree nearby. This one is even
larger in girth and the six of them ring it, stretching their arms to reach all
the way around. They make it—barely—and I am reminded of some of the ancient
trees in Greenwich Park that would have been too large.
The park is thoroughly interwoven with trails. The more
“properly wild” parts—briar patches and dense thickets of understory—are not
exempt. Even on a day that is both dreary and (still) unseasonably cold, there
are many people out and about. This week is a school holiday, too, which means
there are more families and children in the park.
Two mothers stand by watching as three boys and two girls
use a fallen tree as a jungle gym. The youngest, a girl of about 7, follows an
older sister a bit too far up a limb and calls out to be rescued by the mom.
My rambling wander takes me through woodlands broken here
and there with small meadows. Paths crisscross in every direction. In most
places the woodlands are quite open, with little in the way of understory. I
come upon a “fort” of large dead branches leaning like a teepee against the
twisted trunk of a tree quite out in the open. Kids will be kids. It’s
reassuring to see that English kids take the same delight in this simple
pleasure that I see in my own local park.
Suddenly, in the middle of it all, I am surprised to be
confronted with an iron fence and can proceed no further until I have followed
it around a corner. There I discover a gate and a map. The map reveals my
location at the Hampstead Gate entrance to Kenwood Estate, a park within a
park.
Walking through the gate feels like entering a separate
realm. There is an eerie stillness in the landscape, which also feels close,
confined. At first I can’t quite put my finger on why, for it hasn’t been windy
before this. Then I realize that there are no people about. The sensation is
odd, as I have gotten used to seeing multitudes nearly everywhere in London.
Even the joggers who pass at frequent intervals elsewhere in the heath are
absent. It is almost as if I’ve stepped through the back of the wardrobe into
Narnia. There is a dark pall in this new forest. It isn’t my imagination. The
trees here are in full leaf, unlike the rest of the park where the late spring
has yet to bring even buds.
I am in the South Wood, one of two ancient forests of
Kenwood. For all the luxuriance of foliage and solitude the forest has a
curiously ambiguous relationship with the wild. It is not crisscrossed with
innumerable paths, as elsewhere in the park. The reason is simple. Unpainted
wooden fences with narrow pickets define the official trails to enforce
preservation of the relative wilds on either side. The fences reduce the
semblance of wilderness to the quality of a museum diorama or a modern zoo
enclosure minus its wildlife.
Added to this already surreal combination are numerous green
tubes, like mortar barrels from an abandoned military campaign, which stand in
irregular ranks throughout the forest. The seedlings they protect will
eventually outgrow them, of course. Meanwhile, the science and utilitarian
exigencies of forestry are not without aesthetic implications. Once more,
nature and art are not so easily distinguished.
On the other hand, the North and South Woods at Kenwood are
identified as “ancient woods at least 400 years old
and may represent a continuous woodland cover, present since prehistoric
times.” I marvel at the idea that I am rambling amongst such
venerable trees.
The map points me in the direction of Kenwood House, a
neo-Classical country estate designed by Robert Adam in the 18th
Century. The guidebook tells me it now houses, along with period furniture, a
remarkable collection of paintings, including—yes! Turner—and “Frans Hals,
Gainsborough, Reynolds, and more.” I learn later that there is an important
Rembrandt self-portrait here, too. Curious omission, Frommer!
I am thrilled by the prospect of thus discovering art
amongst nature. But long before I get close to the house I can see that I am to
be disappointed. From far off it is clear that the house is entirely enclosed,
as if in a shroud. No part of the façade is exposed. Life inadvertently
imitates art, for this shrouded monument echoes, at least for me, Christo’s
wrapped Reichstag in Berlin. An exoskeleton of scaffolding doesn’t destroy the
impression.
The interior is being renovated along with the exterior and
so I am denied the pleasure of seeing the paintings as well as the
architecture. I must satisfy myself with a solitary Henry Moore bronze. This
“Two Piece Reclining Figure, No. 5” is solitary in more than one way. The only
outdoor sculpture in the vicinity, “she” overlooks a vast open field identified
as the “Pasture Ground.” Moore varied his treatment of the figure, of course.
This figure is not recognizably female, though one can assume it based on other
more representational versions. Indeed, “she” is scarcely recognizable as
human, Moore accomplishing in bronze what the magician only suggests when
slicing an assistant in two. The two bulky forms appear more similar to rocky outcroppings
than human anatomy. The figure is objectified to the point where is to more
akin to some “natural” feature of the landscape than to a human being, let
alone an individual person. Kirk Varnedoe asserts, in his treatise Pictures of Nothing, “Abstract art
absorbs projection and generates meaning ahead of naming.” An intriguing
explanation of the power of abstraction. If true, however, then by naming it
Moore forces an interpretation of his sculpture that may not match one’s first
impression of it, especially when one encounters it out here in the landscape.
Similarly, where a construction contractor has erected
utilitarian scaffolding, I see abstraction imposed onto the named structure of
Kenwood House, which sits in uneasy alliance with its pastoral landscape.
Art and artifice derive from the same Latin root. Their
meanings continue to overlap. Turning away from the shrouded, temporarily
abstracted Kenwood House, I spy across the curiously named “Thousand Pound
Pond” what appears to be a bridge. Two short spans flank a wider central one
and the whole thing is topped with a balustrade. It is painted stark, Classical
white that seems almost to glow on this gloomy day. Unaware that it is called
“Sham Bridge” and for good reason, I make my way around a thicket behind it in
order to take advantage of the view from the bridge. Except there is no bridge.
It is a conceit, a visual folly, designed to be
viewed from the terrace or lawn, creating the illusion that the pond extends
farther into the wood. Artifice and abstraction.
My rambling wander has absorbed several hours and I still
haven’t seen the view of downtown London touted by my guidebook. But as I exit
the forest of Kenwood there it is in front of me. The sky is low overhead but
it is clear enough to make out the towers through the haze. The only one I can
identify is Renzo Piano’s tapering skyscraper. Commonly known as the Shard, it
is the tallest building not only in the UK but also in the EU. From here on
Parliament Hill, however, the trees in the hedgerow under which I stand dwarf
it and all of downtown.
Having nearly completed a circuit that brings me back to the
mansions of South Hill Park. A stout brick wall ensures privacy. My attention
is immediately drawn, however, to the brightly painted door set into the wall. How
wonderful it must be to live in London and to have all of Hampstead Heath for a
backyard. And for the third time in one afternoon I am transported by my
experience of urban nature into the world of literature, for this doorway that
leads out of someone’s private dwelling turns this magnificent heath into an
immense secret garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s lines from her famous story
ring true to me here:
“The Secret Garden
was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and
she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in
no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in
some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story
books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes
people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be
rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was
becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.”
Although it is far from secret, I, like Mary, find myself
refreshed and alert after wandering my way through Hampstead Heath.
Additional photos of Hampstead Heath and London are posted on my flickr page.
To read other posts from London, click here.
To read other posts from London, click here.
