Fenton House in Hampstead
Fenton House from the garden
At the top of Windmill Hill, just beyond the bustle of Hampstead High Street, sits Fenton House. From the outside, it is quiet and modest. Behind its tall garden walls is a beautiful red brick house, built in the late seventeenth century, with a neat front court, a sunken orchard, and some of the most peaceful views in north London.
It’s easy to forget, standing in the calm of its garden, that Hampstead was once a modest village on the edge of London. But in the late seventeenth century, as the city suffered both the Great Plague and the Great Fire in quick succession, people began to look for healthier, safer places to live. Hampstead’s elevated position, fresh air and relatively undeveloped surroundings made it an appealing retreat for wealthy merchants and professionals escaping the grime below.
By the early eighteenth century, its reputation had grown further with the discovery of mineral-rich springs, and for a time Hampstead became a fashionable spa town. Villas and generous houses were built up the hill, often by those who planned to spend only their summers there but ended up staying longer.
Unlike the more famous Kenwood House or Burgh House nearby, Fenton House can feel like a well kept secret. It was a private home, built by a City merchant when Hampstead was emerging as a fashionable escape from London’s grime. It still feels like a retreat today.
Fenton House is Grade I listed, placing it among the most historically and architecturally significant buildings in the country. Fewer than three percent of listed buildings are given this designation, reserved for those considered of exceptional interest. The listing reflects not only the building’s early date and remarkably intact condition, but also its architectural refinement and the rarity of such a complete domestic survival in urban London.
A quiet sort of grandeur
Front elevation and entrance court. Image from Historic England
Margaret Fenton lived in the house in about 1805
Fenton House was built around 1686, and it blends late Stuart elegance with the emerging refinement of Georgian design. Fenton House, built around 1686, is one of the earliest of these. It was originally known as Clock House, taking its name from a clock that was once mounted prominently on the front of the building, visible to the village below. The clock has long since vanished.
The original owner was a wealthy City merchant, thought to have made his fortune through overseas trade. The house was designed in the spirit of a country villa, intended as a retreat from the grime and bustle of central London, with generous south-facing rooms, high ceilings, and fine brickwork. The name “Fenton” came much later. In the nineteenth century, the house was owned by Philip Fenton, a solicitor, who left a more lasting mark on the property. One of his daughters, Margaret Fenton, is still remembered in the house today. A small locket painting is on display of her in the house. It is one of those thoughtful touches that gives the house its personality, less about grand historic figures, more about real people who once lived here.
Architecturally, the house sits at an interesting moment of transition. Its layout is traditional, with rooms arranged symmetrically around a central staircase, and the proportions are calm and classical. But the detailing is restrained. The façade is built in soft red brick, laid in Flemish bond, with rubbed brick lintels and a hipped roof with the lightly projecting cornice line beneath the roof. The sash windows are tall and finely set, and there is little ornament beyond what is necessary. It is a house of clarity and confidence, built to endure.
Staircase and landing with portrait wall: The generous main staircase was always part of the house’s quiet grandeur
A buttercup yellow drawing room on the first floor
Inside, the rooms are gracious but comfortable. They are not grand in the formal sense, but beautifully proportioned, with a calm and quiet rhythm that reflects the ethos of the house itself. Wide oak floorboards, polished by centuries of footsteps, run through the main rooms, while timber panelling in soft, chalky tones wraps the walls with a sense of depth and enclosure. The fireplaces are modest, some in carved stone and others in simple painted timber, always scaled to suit the room rather than impress. There is no unnecessary ornament—just carefully made joinery, thoughtful proportions and a sense of quiet permanence. The main staircase curves gently through the centre of the plan, its handrail smooth with age, and is lit by tall windows on each landing that catch the sun at different points in the day. The effect is soft and natural, as if the light is part of the design.
Original panelling and later Georgian additions sit side by side
One of the most rewarding things for an architect or design lover is how intact the house feels. It has not been overly restored or polished into a period fantasy. Instead, its long history is visible in every corner, with imperfections that speak of real use and gentle evolution. Later additions have been absorbed rather than corrected. Georgian mouldings quietly sit alongside earlier timber panelling, and Victorian details appear here and there, never dominant, but part of the story. You can trace layers of change through cornice profiles, joinery, skirting lines and fireplace surrounds. No attempt has been made to create a single era of reference.
A curiously dismembered fireplace with a detached mantlepiece
Hampstead’s oldest private home
Fenton House is thought to be the oldest surviving residential property in Hampstead. When it was built, the area was just beginning to attract wealthy Londoners who wanted cleaner air and more space but still needed to be within reach of the City. In those early years, Hampstead was a curious mix of farmland, brickfields and speculative villas. Fenton House would have been surrounded by open land, its rear orchard dropping gently into fields. Fields that are now the grid of Heath Street and Flask Walk.
Over the centuries, the house passed through several hands, including artists, collectors and merchants. But it remained relatively unchanged in plan. It was never expanded in the heavy handed way that many Georgian and Victorian houses were. Instead, it aged gracefully, absorbing each owner’s influence without losing its essence.
A house for collectors
The first floor principal bedroom: Baroque music still fills these rooms thanks to a rescued collection from Norfolk
The last private owner, Lady Katherine Binning, inherited Fenton House in the 1930s and made it her own. She had travelled widely and filled the house with her personal collection of paintings, furniture, and Chinese porcelain. Dutch still lifes, Qing ceramics, and seventeenth century oak furniture all sit comfortably side by side. It is a house of quiet richness, where nothing feels imposed or out of place.
A rare collection of early keyboard instruments finds new life at Fenton
One of the most unusual and atmospheric aspects of the house today is its collection of early keyboard instruments. These spinets, virginals and harpsichords were not part of Lady Binning’s furnishings. In 1937, Benton Fletcher donated his collection, along with several properties, to the National Trust. Initially housed at Old Devonshire House in Holborn, the collection was relocated to Fenton House in Hampstead after the original venue was destroyed during the Blitz in 1941. Benton Fletcher's stipulation that the instruments be regularly played continues to be honored today, with the National Trust maintaining them in playing condition and hosting performances by both professional and student musicians.
When we visited in March, a musician was playing. She moved quietly from room to room, pausing at each instrument to play a short piece. There were no announcements, no staging, just the sound of early music drifting into the space it was written for. It added a subtle but distinctive presence to the house. The instruments now feel like part of its fabric, not as static objects but as living elements in occasional use.
A garden with a layered past
Garden overview from the upper terrace: The garden was reimagined by the National Trust after 1952
The garden is perhaps the greatest surprise. Many visitors assume it has always been as it is today, a series of gentle terraces, formal paths and clipped hedging, with an orchard and borders brimming with old fashioned planting. But the garden’s current form is relatively recent. It was reshaped in stages, with significant changes made after the National Trust took ownership in the 1950s.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the grounds were more practical than picturesque. There was a vegetable garden, a vinery, and even a tennis court on the front lawn by the 1930s. The orchard had long existed, but the more decorative planting came later. The Trust reimagined the garden as a sequence of formal and informal spaces. Straight gravel paths, hedged compartments, a sunken rose garden, and broad borders were introduced to enhance the visitor experience and complement the house.
The orchard contains over thirty varieties of historic apples and pears (photo taken in early March when the crocuses had just bloomed)
Yet the garden still feels timeless. It is now home to around thirty heritage apple and pear varieties, some of them over three hundred years old. Lavender and sage edge the paths. Topiary cones frame views. Nothing is over designed. It feels like a garden that has grown into itself.
A lesson in restraint
Fenton House is a lesson in proportion, simplicity, and restraint.The brick detailing is soft. The windows are deeply set. The scale is large but gentle. It is a house that feels generous and comfortable in its own identity.
It is also a rare example of how a building can evolve without losing itself. The layers of time are all still there. You can read them in the floorboards and the plaster, in the change of skirting height. It is not perfect, but it is whole.
And perhaps more than anything, it shows how personality lives in space. In the taste of a collector. In the rhythm of a garden. In the echo of music down a staircase. Fenton House is not just about history. It is about how people live, and how a house can be silent retelling of the lives that pass through it.