Described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "the most nearly perfect example of that English invention and speciality, the garden suburb", the group of houses, community buildings and squares that border Hampstead Heath are of significant note in British architectural history.

Hampstead Garden suburb was founded by Henrietta Barnett in 1906, to coincide with the extension of the Underground system to Golders Green. As the wife of Cannon Samuel Barnett, vicar of St Jude’s Whitechapel, her architectural and social experiment was inspired by personal experiences of poverty and poor living conditions in her husband’s inner city parish. Barnett was concerned that the extension of the underground would bring swathes of identical middle-class houses to the area, that had neither design nor community in mind.

After acquiring 243 acres from Eton College, she commissioned a masterplan from Sir Raymond Unwin (later overseen by Sir Edwin Lutyens) to include communal squares, wide streets lined with flowering trees, parks and facilities. Unwin aimed to avoid monotony and uniformity by making use of existing contours, gently curving roads, intimate closes and grand vistas. Barnett envisioned houses, flats, and mansions that would provide for all needs, with the richer subsidising the poor. Individual plots are still surrounded by gardens and mature oak trees, and bounded by hedges for privacy. Each building is architecturally distinct, although the majority are arts and crafts in style, as each was overseen by a different architect.

Barnett and Unwin drew upon previous planned towns, such as New Earswick near York which was built by the Rowntree factory for its workers. However the scale and ethos of Hampstead Garden Suburb – and its very intention as a garden suburb – marked a significant moment in planned housing in Britain and foresaw many of the intentions of later modernist developments.