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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Richard Brooks

John Constable’s favourite Hampstead pond to be restored after two centuries

Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead (1828), one of many view of the area by John Constable.
Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead (1828), one of many view of the area by John Constable. Photograph: CMA/BOT/Alamy

It was a view that John Constable sketched and painted dozens of times. From the top of Hampstead Heath, London’s highest point at 134 metres (440ft), the artist would look west and north towards today’s suburbs of Willesden, Edgware and Harrow. About 100 metres away, down below, was a beautiful natural pond.

But in the 1880s, Branch Hill pond dried up. Now, nearly two centuries after Constable immortalised on canvas his favourite landscape in the capital, the pond has been recreated.

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