Hampstead Heath & Hill Garden Pergola

Hampstead Heath is 320 hectares of ancient heathland, swimming ponds, and meadows in north London — a rough, half-wild landscape that has survived every attempt to develop it since the 17th century. Unlike London's royal parks, which were deliberately designed, the Heath just happened, which is why it feels more like countryside than city. The views from Parliament Hill across the London skyline are protected by law.

Hidden in the northwest corner of the Heath is the Hill Garden and Pergola, one of London's most extraordinary secret spaces. Lord Leverhulme — the soap magnate who founded Lever Brothers in 1885 — bought "The Hill," a large house on the Heath's edge, in 1904 and hired Thomas Mawson, the era's most celebrated landscape architect, to build an Edwardian garden of outrageous ambition. Construction on the raised pergola began in 1905.

The engineering challenge was immense: how do you build a raised walkway on a hillside without enough earth to support it? The answer came from the nearby extension of the Northern Line underground — a deal was struck to divert the spoil from the tunnel excavation to The Hill, solving two problems at once. The resulting pergola is an Italianate colonnade of columns, beams, and climbing plants that runs for hundreds of metres along the hill's edge, with views over the Heath on one side and secret walled gardens on the other.

The pergola is Grade II* listed, a designation given to just 5.8% of listed buildings in England. Lord Leverhulme used it for lavish Edwardian garden parties, but today it's a place of extraordinary quietness. Most Londoners have no idea it exists, and even finding the entrance — through an inconspicuous gate in a residential street — is part of the adventure.