Hampstead Heath

This guide to Hampstead Heath traces Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson's forty-year campaign, starting in 1821, to develop his inherited land here, including seven doomed bids to Parliament and a half-built Victorian estate abandoned in the 1840s. It follows the local campaigners and copyhold tenants who blocked him at every turn. Look for the stone viaduct he built, still standing in the trees as a folly to that ambition.