Patrick Comerford
I was wandering around Hampstead and Finchley in north London earlier this week, in search of the London Jewish Mural, synagogues, churches, street art and the places where TS Eliot was married and lived for a few short years during World War I.
To my surprise, in a front garden in Ellerdale Road, I unexpectedly came across what has become known as the ‘Mystery Head of Hampstead’, a sculpture that become something of niche landmark in Hampstead.
When I photographed the sculpture and posted it on social media, there was a curious response, with many friends and contacts asking about the head, where it had come from and who was the artist or sculptor. It truly was the ‘Mystery Head of Hampstead’, and I had to dig deeper and find out more about it.
The imposing three-metre-high head has been in Ellerdale Road for more than 25 years and seems to be a former stage prop.
The story of the ‘Mystery Head of Hampstead’ goes about 25 years, when the then owner of the house Ellerdale Road was driving past a scrapyard and saw the enormous head. When he asked the proprietor of the scrapyard about it, he was told it was a prop from a production of Shakespeare at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and had been thrown out.
He bought the head for about £100 and brought back to his home in Hampstead, although it is not quite clear how it fitted into his car or how he fitted it up in his front garden.
The head soon became something of a landmark as passers-by noticed it in his front garden.
Most people seem to think it is made of stone, but a closer look shows that it made of fibreglass.
The head in Ellerdale Road toppled over in high winds five years ago (2019), and the nose was dented or broken and needed repairs. It remained wrapped in blue tarpaulin for weeks awaiting repairs, sparking concerns from neighbours who were worried that they might lose what has become a beloved landmark.
The landmark head remains in its front garden setting – and it remains a mystery. Nobody knows which Shakespeare play it was used for, and when the Lyric Theatre was approached by the Camden New Journal, it was unable to identify it.
Shakespeare’s plays with classical Roman settings plays include Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. But when Camden New Journal spoke to academicss at University College London, they admitted they were baffled over who the head is based on.
Dr Mairéad McAuley, a lecturer in Classics at UCL, told the Camden New Journal: ‘The hair and the fillet (head band) look vaguely Greek. It doesn’t look like it’s a Roman emperor to me.’
Professor Jeremy Tanner, Professor of the Institute of Archaeology was even more uncertain: ‘This is a fascinating specimen, if a little horrible – it is not closely after any ancient statue type. There is no specific iconography here that would suggest an identity, and the face broadening as one goes down onto a very heavy chin is not at all classical looking.’
Professor Gesine Manuwald of UCL told the Camden New Journal: ‘If it is indeed a prop from a Shakespeare play, it could have been used in one of his plays with a classical theme, like Julius Caesar. To me it looks as if the size and shape of the head is meant to look like the Colossus of Constantine, yet applied to another individual, maybe reminiscent of portraits of empresses of the Roman imperial period.’
So, although the ‘Mystery Head of Hampstead’ remains a niche landmark in Hampstead, it also remains a dramatic mystery too and continues to confound and baffle the experts.
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