New Elizabethans with Andrew Marr

Wednesday 20 January, 7pm – online via Zoom Andrew Marr will be talking about his fascinating latest book, New Elizabethans. Telling the story of the changes to UK society in the last 70 years through individuals who made an impact.…

Categories: Feature, History

Thoughts for Remembrance Day

By William Gulliford.Vicar of St Mark’s, Regent’s Park. In the spare bedroom of my great aunt’s house, when I was young, was a photograph of a pretty young girl in a straw hat with her feet in a rock pool…

Categories: History

Treasure in the Drains

Garnet Ampong remembers Primrose Hill in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I lived with my family at flat 3, 46 Fitzroy Road, we were there between 1988-1995. I know I was really young at the time but I still…

Categories: History, My Primrose Hill

Home Front Film – Childhood Memories of VE Day

The generation who were children during the Second World War remember VE Day 1945, on the seventy-fifth anniversary Residents of the London boroughs of Camden, Ealing, Croydon, Hounslow, Kingston and Merton shared their memories of VE Day for a short…

Categories: History

Before Darwin Court

By Martin Sheppard. Until 1970 the houses bordering the railway at the entrance to Primrose Hill from Gloucester Gate, 4–24 Gloucester Avenue, were a distinguished group of high-quality Victorian villas. They had been built by the architect Henry Bassett in…

Categories: History

The Colourful Life and Death of José Rizal

By Maggie Chambers. José Rizal, former resident of 37 Chalcot Crescent, was a doctor, writer and national hero of the Philippines. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected to him in 1983, and there has long been a statue of…

Categories: Feature, History

Where Have All the Primroses Gone?

By Martin Sheppard. There are many Primrose Hills in England, but by far the most famous of them is our own local one. A park since 1842, and before that a well-known landmark, its name is first recorded in the…

Categories: History

Primrose Hill in the 1940s‒1950s

by David Edwards. I remember the 1940s in Regent’s Park Road when all the shops had big blinds fitted. Most were sign-written with the name of the shop, and their purpose was to keep the shop cool in summer. If…

Categories: Feature, History, Past

W. B. Yeats: Our Primrose Hill Poet

By Maggie Chambers One hundred and two years ago this Easter, Yeats wrote one of the world’s most famous poems, Easter 1916 after the uprising in Ireland. William Butler (WB) Yeats lived at 23 Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill from…

Categories: History