If you haven't seen this before it's a fascinating bit of open space and history.We're in Hampstead on Rosslyn Hill nest to the Royal Free Hopsital and it's called the Heath Strange Garden. And sure enough quite literally it's a small garden that was the site of the Old Hampstead General Hopsital and is named after the man who founded that hospital in 1902 - Dr Heath Strange!
Dr Strange lived at 2 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead, and is buried in Highgate Cemetary (I haven't been to track the grave down yet). Heath was married and he and his wife had four children none of whom themselves had children.
Dr Strange's great-nephew has a website here http://www.yourtotalevent.com/index.htm
An obituary can be found here
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=2357680&pageindex=1
Further however, is the fact that the garden is so completely hidden and really quite charming. It feels as though it is above the car park and is slightly tucked away - I think overlooked by Bartram's Convent in Rowland Hill Street (the brown building in the background in the picture below right).
Also there however are the former plaques that were on the old hospital buildings"AD HAMPSTEAD GENERAL HOSPITAL 1902"
and then
"THIS STONE WAS LAID BY
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS
PRINCESS CHRISTIAN
SCHLEWIG-HOLSTEIN
OCTOBER 21ST 1902
BEAR YE ANOTHERS' BURDENS"
Princess Christian was quite a coup as the person to open the hospital and if you read here biog she's quite a noise in the world of nursing at the turn of the previous century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Helena_of_the_United_Kingdom
Here is the location of the garden on google maps
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?utm_campaign=en_GB&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en_GB-ha-emea-gb-bk-gm&utm_term=road
if you zoom in it's the garden shaped like a figure 8 and you can see the large white plaque that I assume previously was atop the old hospital building entrance.
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