When watching TV from the other side of the world I am constantly on the lookout for English landmarks as and when they crop up. The one place that appears more than most is my beloved Primrose Hill (Spooks couldn’t exist without it), which stands a barely breathless 256 feet walk on the north side of Regent's Park in London. The hill has a clear view of central London to the south-east, as well as Belsize Park and Hampstead to the north. It is an ideal vantage point from which to watch capital days blossom, chug along and fade.
Like Regent's Park, Primrose Hill was once part of a great chase appropriated by Henry VIII (which he had called Marylebone Park), having previously been a part of Middlesex Forest. Later, in 1841, it became Crown property, and, in 1842, an Act of Parliament secured the land as public open space.
It has always been a beacon for poets, writers & musicians not least the following:
Poems and Prophecies by William Blake
'The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
Her Little-ones ran on the fields,
The Lamb of God among them seen...
The Jew's-harp-house & the Green Man,
The Ponds where Boys to bathe delight,
The fields of Cows by Willan's farm,
Shine in Jerusalem's pleasant sight.'
Apparently The Jew's Harp inn was a popular rendezvous in Marylebone Park. It stood next to Willan's Farm, where Leigh Hunt remembered having eaten 'creams and other country messes' in the days before 'the dear old fields' were redeveloped as Regent's Park.
Blake's most famous verse, 'And did those feet in ancient time', will not be found in this poem, whose subject is the fallen condition of Man and the forces that will redeem him. London is imagined as the historical Jerusalem.
According to John Black ,Henry Crabb Robinson, in his Diaries, Reminiscences and Correspondence recalls Blake telling him, 'I have conversed with the spiritual Sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill. He said, "Do you take me for the Greek Apollo? – "No", I said, "that (pointing to the sky) is the Greek Apollo. He is Satan"'
However, it waasn’t just English visionaries that recognized the beauty of Primrose Hill.
Guru from Selected Poems 1947-1995 by Allen Ginsberg
'It is the moon who disappears
It is the stars that hide not I
It's the City that vanishes, I stay
with my forgotten shoes,
my invisible stocking
It is the call of a bell
Primrose Hill, May 1965'
In the summer of 1965 the author had made a trip to England with several other Beat writers, and had given a reading at the Albert Hall. In a note to the poem he says that it was 'occasioned by a nap at dusk on the site of Druid mysteries, the grassy crest of London's Primrose Hill, overlooking London's towery skyline'
For Tomorrow - BLUR
'...Then Susan comes into the room,
She's a naughty girl with a lovely smile,
Says let's take a drive to Primrose Hill,
It's windy there and the view's so nice,
London ice can freeze your toes
Like anyone I suppose
I'm
Holding on for tomorrow.
On this point, check out the lovely film on the Blur website about the graffiti on Primrose Hill “and the view's so nice’.
Upfield - BRAGG, BILLY
'I'm going upfield, way up on the hillside
I'm going higher than I've ever been before
That's where you'll find me, over the horizon
Wading in the river, reaching for that other shore
I dreamed I saw a tree full of angels, up on Primrose Hill
And I flew with them over the Great Wen till I had seen my fill
Of such poverty and misery sure to tear my soul apart
I've got a socialism of the heart, I've got a socialism of the heart...'
In an article in The Observer, 22nd October 2000, the singer/songwriter said, 'My song Upfield was inspired partly by [William] Blake; I borrowed events from his life for the song's narrator, such as putting him on Primrose Hill seeing angels. It's about moving from an ideological argument for a better society to a more humanitarian vision; a socialism of the heart, the kind of compassion I find in Blake'. The story of Blake as a child seeing 'a tree full of angels' on Peckham Rye common is well known, however apparently his only mystical experience on Primrose Hill was a vision of the 'spiritual Sun'.
Primrose Hill - MADNESS
'A man opened his window and stared up Primrose Hill
Out there enjoying themselves I've seen them from this sill
Green splashed with white and red going brown
Children baiting animals running up and down
I stare out of this window
See the world go past...
Deliveries every day newspapers and food
Never had to venture out the phone has been removed
Open up the window and stare up Primrose Hill
Sitting here it's dark outside and everything is still...'
Recorded in the 1980's when North London's finest were at its first creative peak, the album had a photo of Primrose Hill on the cover. In an interview in Q Magazine, April 2001, singer and frontman and all round geezer Suggs said, 'Primrose Hill was somewhere that had featured in most of the band's lives. We all came from the surrounding area so we'd always had good memories of the place. Primrose Hill was somewhere you could play football or, in the winter, go tobogganing, so it'd always been a place of fun and frolics.'
Camden Town from the album The Lone Ranger - SUGGS
'...Tramps stare in the window
Of the local butcher's shop
Like a pack of wild dogs
They'd run off with the lot
In Primrose Hill an angry man
His hair standing on end
Shouts and rants in the ear
Of his imaginary friend...'
Primrose Hill - John and Beverley Martyn
'We went to see the sun go down on Primrose Hill
The Sunday evening sun go down on Primrose Hill
Never could be anything else
Never should be anything else
'Cos I like that kind of life
I like that kind of life
Never thinking too far ahead
Hanging high I fall to bed
That's the only kind of life I've led...'
And on that note, I think it is high time to head back to London and head up the footsteps to heaven to the bench on top of Primrose Hill! Bring a bottle and bring a friend.
With thanks and acknowledgment to the late John Black whose excellent website that delves deeper into Primrose Hill & Regents Park can be found here: http://www.regentsparklit.org.uk/index.htm
