Primrose Hill

Where it sits. Primrose Hill is a Grade II listed public park immediately north of Regent's Park, separated from it by the Outer Circle and the Regent's Canal, and managed by The Royal Parks. The hill itself rises to 64 metres — one of the highest points in the London Borough of Camden — and the park takes its name from it. From the summit the ground falls away south in a single clean sweep, which is why the view works: nothing intervenes between the top and the central London skyline. To the north you look over Hampstead and Belsize Park. The nearest stations are Chalk Farm to the north-east and Swiss Cottage to the north-west; the park's south side connects across Primrose Hill bridge to London Zoo and Regent's Park.

The story behind it. The name has been in use since the 15th century, which disposes of the later claim that the hill was named after Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery. Like Regent's Park, the land was part of a great chase appropriated by Henry VIII. In October 1678 the hill became a national scandal when Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the magistrate who had taken Titus Oates's depositions about the supposed Popish Plot, was found murdered here. Three Catholic labourers — Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill — were convicted and hanged at the top of the hill in 1679, and later posthumously exonerated; for some years afterwards the place was known as Greenberry Hill, an anagram of their surnames. In 1792 the Welsh poet and antiquarian Iolo Morganwg convened the first Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isles of Britain here on the summer solstice, a ceremony invented to replicate what he believed were Druidic rites; a plaque was unveiled in 2009 to mark it. The Regent's Canal was completed in 1816, the first railway tunnel in London was driven under the hill in 1838, and in 1840 Lord Southampton sold his land for villas. An Act of Parliament secured the hill as public open space in 1842, after which the Crown drained and levelled it into a park.

On screen. Primrose Hill and the streets below it are the home ground of the Paddington films: the park is a main location in both Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2, and the Brown family's house at "Windsor Gardens" is on Chalcot Crescent, a curving terrace of brightly stuccoed early-Victorian houses laid out between 1849 and 1860 a few minutes south-east of the park. Those houses are private homes, mostly Grade II listed and inside the Primrose Hill Conservation Area, so the courteous thing is to photograph from across the road and move on. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) filmed partly on the hill. Blur's "For Tomorrow" — the song with the line about taking a drive to Primrose Hill — used the park as a location for its video, and the extended mix carries the hill's name in its title. Jackass: The Movie staged its "rocket skates" stunt on these slopes. Through the 1990s the surrounding streets housed enough actors, musicians and fashion people for the press to coin the term "the Primrose Hill set".

What you actually see today. The summit is paved with a viewing platform and an orientation plaque naming the buildings on the horizon; an engraved quotation from William Blake — "I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill" — is set into the stone. The skyline reads left to right as the City cluster, the Shard, the BT Tower and, further west, the London Eye; the Post Office Tower is the easiest fixed point for orientation. The park is otherwise simple: mown grass, mature plane and lime trees on the perimeter, an outdoor gym known as the Hill Trim Trail, a children's playground and toilets on the south side near the bridge. There is no café inside the park; the food is on Regent's Park Road at the foot of the hill, a short parade of bakeries, delis and pubs.

Getting there and timing. Chalk Farm station is about eight minutes' walk to the north-east entrance; from Camden Town it is a fifteen-minute walk west along Regent's Park Road. The gates never close — the park is open 24 hours — and the summit is a well-known spot for sunset and for watching the 5 November fireworks scattered across the whole basin of London. Sunrise from the top, with mist over Regent's Park and the zoo waking up below, is the quieter alternative. The paths to the summit are surfaced but consistently steep, which makes the top hard work for wheelchairs and pushchairs; the level ground along the southern edge is easy. Combine the hill with the canal towpath at Camden Lock, twenty minutes east, or with London Zoo directly across the bridge.