Primrose Hill, London

Primrose Hill is a public park gathered around a distinctive grassy summit, with Regent’s Park immediately beyond it. The park opened to the public in 1842 and has Grade II listed status. Its name comes from the hill itself, which rises to 64 metres and is among the highest points in Camden.

The summit gives you an unusually broad London panorama, reaching across central London and towards Hampstead and Belsize Park. William Blake’s words are engraved there, adding a piece of poetry to the outlook. The park is managed by The Royal Parks, and its southern side includes the Hill Trim Trail, a children’s playground and toilets near Primrose Hill bridge, the link towards London Zoo and Regent’s Park.

There is darker history beneath this open landscape. In October 1678, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was murdered here. Three Catholic labourers were convicted and hanged at the hill’s summit in 1679, then later cleared after death; for a period, the hill was called Greenberry Hill.

In 1792, the Welsh poet and antiquarian Iolo Morganwg held the inaugural gathering of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isles of Britain here, during a summer-solstice ceremony intended to echo ancient Druidic rites. The same slope now combines a sweeping view with a remarkably charged past.