Elms House - HAMPSTEAD HEATH - 2013

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Elms House

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The Elms and The Heath Section

Off the Spaniards Road, near Jack Straw's Castle.

The Elms stands on the site of Mother Huff's Tea Garden, which flourished for 50 years from 1678 and was mentioned in a play printed in 1706.

It had different licensees in 1723 and 1730, although, by 1728, Mother Huff herself had moved to the "Hoop and Bunch of Grapes" at North End.

The Elms was occupied in 1811 by Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), later Lord Chancellor.

He left it in 1819 and by 1834 his house was occupied by Sir Nicholas Conyngham Tindal (1776- 1846), chief justice of the Common Pleas.

(Click on a slide to show enlarged image)

The Radio Mast, by The Elms near top of Hockey Field.

From 1894 to 1908 the Elms was the home of Sir Joseph Joel Duveen (1843-1908), the art dealer. The house to the north was demolished between 1891 and 1913.

(261 acres of the estate was added to the Heath by an amendment to the Act of Parliament in 1888.)

In 1953, The Elms was put on the market and became St. Columba's hospital, but 3 more acres of ground became part of The Heath.

The Elms housed St. Columba's hospital from 1957 and was then owned, but rarely inhabited, by Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress.

In 1981 it was sold for a large sum to the president of the United Arab Emirates but it remained unoccupied and in 1987 was sold to developers, the Holly Corporation.