Hampstead Garden Suburb was founded in 1907 by Dame Henrietta Barnett as a model community where all social classes would live together in beautifully designed homes surrounded by nature. She commissioned the greatest architects of the age — Edwin Lutyens designed the Central Square and its two churches, while Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker laid out the winding tree-lined streets, generous gardens, and hedged boundaries that define the Suburb to this day.
The architecture is remarkably cohesive and distinctive. Red-brick and roughcast-rendered facades, steeply pitched clay-tile roofs, tall decorative chimneys, leaded-light casement windows, and carefully proportioned doorways create a visual harmony unlike any other London neighbourhood. Hedges — not fences or walls — form the standard boundary treatment, maintaining the open, garden-city character that Unwin envisioned. The masterplan even specifies that no two adjacent houses should be designed in the same style.
For homeowners in NW11, renovating is uniquely complex. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust operates a Scheme of Management — a legally binding framework under the Leasehold Reform Act — that controls virtually every aspect of a property's external appearance. You cannot change a window, alter a roof, replace a front door, remove a chimney, or even repaint your facade without Trust consent. This is separate from and additional to Barnet Council planning permission. Our architects navigate both consent processes daily and understand exactly what the Trust will — and won't — approve.
That negotiation is what we do. Our design studio is on Finchley Road. Our architects have worked with Camden's planning team on hundreds of applications. We understand the constraints because we live within them.
