Du Maurier – a notorious womaniser, with a string of mistresses – was the son
of George du Maurier, the Punch cartoonist, and the brother of Sylvia
Llewelyn Davies, whose five boys inspired J M Barrie’s Peter Pan. (Gerald du
Maurier played Captain Hook in the original production.)
One way and another, the famous family were at the very heart of literary and
theatrical London. The hall’s guest-book at the time must have read like a
Who’s Who of the British theatre.
Daphne du Maurier and her sisters – Angela, a fellow writer, and Jeanne, who
became a painter – spent part of their childhoods here. Echoes of the great
house can be found in Du Maurier classics such as Rebecca, if you know where
to look. The main model for Manderley, the vast country house that dominates
Rebecca, is generally supposed to have been Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire.
But the very opening lines of the novel, some of the most famous in English
literature, are also strongly evocative of Cannon Hall.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood at the
iron gate leading to the drive…” Just such an iron gate, more than 10ft
tall, still separates Cannon Hall from the street. Passers-by can peer
through it, marvelling at the great proerty beyond.
Inside the house, the architectural feature that most obviously screams
“Rebecca!” is the grand entrance hall. Its exquisite wooden staircase,
carved with twisted balusters, leads up to the gallery landing. All it lacks
is a beautiful Hollywood actress in a ball-gown sweeping down the stairs.
The Olivier connection with Cannon Hall dates from 1965, when he starred in
the Otto Preminger thriller Bunny Lake is Missing, much of which was shot at
the hall, which became Frogmore End in the movie.
If Olivier and the Du Mauriers give the hall the glitter of a
celebrity-studded past, its earlier history is just as intriguing. Cannon
Hall takes its name from the pieces of old cannons dotted around the
grounds. They are believed to have been placed there by Sir James Cosmo
Melvill, a former secretary of the East India Company, who lived here.
Bunny Lake is Missing, starring Laurence Olivier, was shot here
Another early resident was Sir Noah Thomas, physician to George III. One can
have fun imagining him returning home to his wife, muttering, “He’s mad!
He’s mad!” and pouring himself a stiff whisky.
In the early 19th century, the hall was home to a number of judges, including
Henry Clark, chairman of the Hampstead magistrates. Before the formation of
the police force in 1832, the house doubled as a court. It was right next to
the Hampstead Lock-Up, presided over by the parish constable, in Cannon
Lane. The old courtroom is now a billiards room.
Grand houses with fascinating histories are certainly not unknown in
Hampstead, even if, as in other parts of London, they have tended to be
broken up, rather than remain in single occupation.
One of the last of the truly great Hampstead houses to come on the market – it
was sold for just over £9 million in 2005 – was Sarum Chase. This
magnificent neo-Tudor mansion on West Heath Road was built for the portrait
artist Frank O Salisbury. Upper Terrace House, once home to Kenneth Clark,
the presenter of the BBC’s Civilisation, is another Hampstead landmark,
still privately owned. Cannon Hall belongs in the same
distinguished company.
“Properties of this calibre in Hampstead only come on the market every 10
years or so, mainly because their owners are so loth to sell them,” says
Frank Townsend of Savills, the joint agents for Cannon Hall. The present
British owners of the property have lived there since 1996. That’s not a
long “innings” in a well-heeled enclave to which residents feel a fierce
tribal loyalty.
The Hampstead demographic has changed subtly over the years. Once home to
poets and painters – Keats, Constable, Wilkie Collins – it later became the
place to live if you were interested in psychiatry. In the Sixties and
Seventies, more middle-class neurotics were lying on couches, sharing
bedroom secrets with their analysts, than in any other borough in England.
There is a statue of Sigmund Freud on Fitzjohns Avenue, and Freud’s former
home in Maresfield Gardens is now a museum.
“The area hasn’t forgotten its bohemian roots,” adds Townsend. “Current
residents include Nick Mason of Pink Floyd. There are plenty of other
musicians and actors attracted to the area. But the dominant groups,
professionally, are probably lawyers and hedge fund managers.”
Sir Noah Thomas, physician to George III, also lived at the house
And Hampstead house prices – 10 to 15 per cent higher than in neighbouring
Highgate, which is equally prestigious – reflect that. The famous Bishops
Avenue, which links Hampstead to East Finchley, used to be known as
Millionaires’ Row. It has now been upgraded to Billionaires’ Row.
But, socially, Hampstead is far less conservative than, say, Knightbridge or
Belgravia. Townsend likens the area to Richmond, in south-west London. In
both places, some superb period properties come on the market. There is a
lot of money swilling around but also a slightly unconventional edge.
“It is a very eclectic area,” says Trevor Abramson of Glentree, the other
joint agents. “Architecturally, it is all higgledy-piggledy. There is hardly
a house in Hampstead which is perfectly straight. But there is a real
cultural mix in the village, which in the summer has an almost Mediterranean
feel.”
For Abramson, what makes Hampstead so special is the fact that it has retained
some of the charm of a much older Hampstead. It was a medieval village, like
neighbouring Highgate, separated by green fields from central London.
“Hampstead used to be a staging-post on the road to Oxford,” explains
Abramson. “In the 18th century, at around about the time Cannon Hall was
built, the highwayman Dick Turpin was active in Hampstead. Then, people
thought of the area, with its wide open spaces, as far better for their
health than inner London. They started to move here for that reason.”
The open spaces may have shrunk since then, although there are still two golf
courses in Hampstead, as well as the famous heath, with its open-air
swimming-ponds (and pool). But the charm of an urban enclave that has not
completely severed its rural roots still tugs at the heartstrings of
Hampstead residents. They feel a passionate attachment to their surroundings
that you do not encounter among people living next to, say, Hyde Park.
“The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air and the sharp green
colour of the land,” wrote Daphne du Maurier in The House on the Strand. She
might have been sitting in the garden at Cannon Hall, with the sun shining,
the birds singing and the lush heath beyond.
What kind of a buyer – apart from an extremely rich one – will be attracted to
the property? When central London properties in this price bracket come on
the market, Russian oligarchs or buyers from the Middle East are often
heading the stampede. But Townsend believes that, Hampstead being Hampstead,
the bastion of a certain kind of old-fashioned Britishness, the answer will
lie closer to home.
“We have seen a lot of wealthy French buyers in Hampstead in recent years, and
a property like this might well appeal to someone from Scandinavia or
another northern European country. But I would not be at all surprised if
the property went to an archetypal Hampstead Brit, who is already living
half a mile away.”
He or she, if wishing to conform to Hampstead stereotypes, will not just be
exceptionally rich, but slightly eccentric, bohemian and in need of
psychoanalysis. Straight out of a Daphne du Maurier novel.
HAMPSTED IN A NUTSHELL
£Hampstead Village contains more millionaires, by some yardsticks, than any
other area in England. The current average price of a property is £1.3
million, according to Foxtons. You can pick up a one-bed flat for £400,000.
Current celebrity residents include Melvyn Bragg, Emma Thompson, Jonathan
Miller, Kathy Lette, Ricky Gervais and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.
The best-known property in Hampstead is Kenwood House, open to the public and
run by English Heritage. The house contains some notable works of art. It
played a bit part role in the movie Notting Hill, and used to host pop
concerts, although these have dwindled in frequency after protests by
residents.
John Keats lived in Hampstead in a property which is now a museum, Keats
House. He is supposed to have written “Ode to a Nightingale” under a plum
tree in the garden.
The Freud Museum on Maresfield Gardens is where the great Viennese
psychiatrist Sigmund Freud spent the final years of his life. He moved to
London after the Nazi annexation of Austria.
Another great Hampstead institution is the Royal Free Hospital, established in
the 19th century to offer free medical treatment to the poor people of the
borough. It is now one of London’s leading teaching hospitals.
Year-round swimming is possible at Hampstead Heath’s three ponds – one male,
one female, one mixed. All are absolutely Arctic in the winter.
There are National Heritage blue plaques dotted all over Hampstead,
reflecting its colourful history. Those honoured include D H Lawrence,
Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Moore, Paul Robeson and the social reformers
Beatrice and Sidney Webb.
Hampstead has featured in a number of well-known movies, including The Killing
of Sister George (1968), An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Scenes of
a Sexual Nature (2006) were both partly filmed on Hampstead Heath.
Hampstead’s first branch of McDonald’s did not open until 1992. Its opening
was fought tooth and nail by local residents, appalled at the prospect, and
it closed, to loud sighs of relief, in 2013.
Conservation-conscious residents won another victory in 2013 when they
successfully fought an application by Ricky Gervais to add an extra floor
above his office in Hampstead village.
The local newspaper, The Hampstead and Highgate Express, is universally known
as the Ham High.
Cannon Hall in Hampstead is being jointly listed by Savills
(020 7472 5000) and Glentree
( 020 8458 7311) for £32m.