The first UK Prime Minister from a working-class background, Mr MacDonald lived in the house before the phrase ‘Hampstead Socialism’ became a brush to tar north London’s left-wing intellectuals with. 

The house’s socialist links continued into the 20th century when American screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart – best known for the 1940 hit The Philadelphia Story – moved in in 1953. 

The impressive dwelling features a large reception room, which the current owners appear to have turned into a library 

Marcus Parfitt, who has the property listed for sale on his eponymous website, said: ‘You’d never know the house was there because it’s set back from the road. It’s very private, very quiet and it has the most idyllic garden’

Ramsay MacDonald was the Labour party’s first UK Prime Minister

Oscar winner Mr Stewart, a refugee of McCarthyism, was visited at the house by high-profile celebrities including Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, Ingrid Bergman and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. 

Mr Stewart was a member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and declared that he was a member of the Communist Party USA at one of its meetings.

Set back from the road behind a private driveway, the Grade II-listed house is on the market for £7.95 million through London-based agent Marcus Parfitt.

It has a reception hall with an accompanying coats cupboard, a large reception room, dining room, kitchen and utility area. 

The master bedroom boasts an en-suite bathroom while the second bedroom has a walk-in wardrobe. 

There are five further bedrooms. 

The property also has two shower rooms, a workshop and a south west facing rear garden.

‘It’s got quite a literary past,’ Mr Parfitt told the Ham High newspaper. 

‘You’d never know the house was there because it’s set back from the road. 

‘It’s very private, very quiet and it has the most idyllic garden.’ 

He added: ‘It has a real country feel, yet I walked from Church Row to the house in three minutes, so it’s right in the centre of Hampstead Village.

‘It’s my ideal home, I’m playing the lottery this weekend!’ 

The main house was built in 1745, with later additions around 1850, 1900 and 1990.

According to Austen Morgan’s biography of Mr MacDonald, who served as PM in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1935, the politician sold his house in nearby Belsize Park for £1,200 before moving to the Hampstead property.

He was also left money by a ‘businessman-turned-friend’, which ‘would allow him to move into a house more fitting for a former Prime Minister.’

Mr Morgan wrote: ‘For £6,000, MacDonald bought Upper Frognal Lodge at the top of Hampstead, though he had to sell some possessions to purchase it outright.

‘Upper Frognal was an impressive twenty-room Georgian house which MacDonald filled with books. This was the house of a gentleman.’

The biography describes Mr MacDonald going for daily walks to neighbouring Hampstead Heath.

MacDonald entered parliament in 1906 and held positions including Leader of the Opposition and Foreign Secretary during his career.

The house has a reception hall with an accompanying coats cupboard, a large reception room, dining room, kitchen and utility area. The master bedroom boasts an en-suite bathroom while the second bedroom has a walk-in wardrobe

The house’s ‘country’ feel is emphasised by the colour scheme, which includes a palette of greens, creams and blues, as well as wooden flooring throughout

WHO WAS LABOUR’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER? HOW RAMSAY MACDONALD WENT ROM FARMER’S SON TO LEADING POLITICAL FIGURE

James Ramsay MacDonald was born on 12 October 1866 in Lossiemouth, Scotland, the illegitimate son of John MacDonald, a farm labourer, and Anne Ramsay, a housemaid. 

Following in the footsteps of his father, he tried his hand at agricultural work before being appointed pupil teacher at a local parish school. He later moved to London where he became a clerk.

Mr MacDonald joined the Independent Labour Party in 1893. He stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate in 1895, while working as a journalist. But, with the encouragement of his new wife Margaret Gladstone, he rose through the party ranks.

Elected for Leicester in 1906, he established a reputation as a distinguished thinker. Mr MacDonald became leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in 1911.  

Mr MacDonald sought to give the new party a distinct ideology, and wrote on the relationship between socialism and parliamentary democracy, and between labourism and the Liberal tradition.

In 1914, he resigned as party leader because of his opposition to Britain’s participation in World War One and was mercilessly attacked by the press. He officially became leader again in 1922. 

George V asked Mr MacDonald to form a government in 1924 when Stanley Baldwin’s small Conservative majority proved ungovernable.

In 1927 he had a mysterious throat infection and almost died on a visit to the United States. He spent a month recovering at a hospital in Philadelphia 

In his second minority government in 1929, Mr MacDonald returned to power, but his government was soon faced with a worldwide economic recession, for which it was not prepared. Around this time he appointed Margaret Bondfield as the first female minister. 

Economic crises persuaded him to include the opposition leaders in a cross-party national government. However, this step lost him the support of his own party and he resigned in 1935.

The cabinet split, and he formed a National Government with Conservative, and some Liberal, support. 

The subsequent general election decimated the Labour Party but left Mr MacDonald and his tiny handful of ‘National Labour’ members of parliament in power – although as little more than a front for a Conservative-dominated administration.

Mr MacDonald soldiered on as prime minister until 1935.  

He was on a ship on his way to America, in an attempt to restore his health, when he died on 9 November 1937.

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