I have spent the largest part of my life living in Hampstead, at 9 Nassington Road, NW3 2TX. It has been a very happy time, where we brought up our family, edited the magazine, but now we are about to leave it to downsize, I should perhaps add a few words and a few pictures of Nassington Road before I forget it.
When I first came to London, I lived for several months at with my friend David Fairbairn at the Belsize Square Residential Club, at 31-34 Belsize Square. But then I found a one-room flat at 130 Haverstock Hill. It was a very small single room on the 2nd floor, just a bed and wash basin and a small cooker that it was here that I studied accountancy, wooed and eventually married Wendy, and indeed we spent nearly the first year of our married life there while looking for a suitable house to buy.
We eventually found a house at 128 Barnsbury Road. This was a Georgian terrace house, but it looked west over what was originally a bomb damaged area which had been bulldozed, and was being made into a park. This had a beneficial result on prices, for we bought it in 1967 for £6,000 and sold it 3 years later for £12,000. When I went back recently to photograph it, I found that a tree had been planted in front of it and had grown into a big tree which must seriously damage the wonderful view that we had from the first floor room that was my office, where there were wonderful sunsets to be seen.
We bought it from an Australian who had bought it several years previously intending to rented out to young lodgers as one-room flats, but he then ran into the problems of the British rental system and she gave it up disillusioned and sold it to us. It came complete with the little furniture that it contained so we began off with a number of very ropey beds, most of which we disposed of fairly quickly. But we still have a chair and a wooden ladder from Barnsbury Road. But we never got round to doing it up and it always remained with the bathroom in a shed outside the back door, and the only loo being beyond the bathroom so you had to go out into the garden round the bathroom and into the loo, even if you wanted to go in the middle of the night!
But my parents, particularly my mother urged us to find something better in Hampstead and they very generously downsized themselves and with the money enabled us to go looking a rather larger house in Hampstead.
PS.
At this point my narrative breaks off, but we lived 47 very happy years at 9, Nassington Road NW3 2TX. until it eventually we decided to downsize and we moved to Kew to 16 Clarence road, TW9 3NL, where we are living now.
When we moved, I wrote a website to celebrate Nassington road with lots of pictures. It can be found at www.Hampsteadtokew.org.uk or more simply www.htok.org.uk
Sometime I must write more about our life in Hamstead and indeed our current life in Kew.