SAND AND WEEDS:
AESTHETICS AND POLITICS ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH
Jessica J. LEE
York University, Canada, jlee11@yorku.ca
Hampstead Heath has for centuries been a destination for Londoners in search of
fresh air. Yet its history as a site of labour — as farmland, for sand, as a site for land
developers — is deeply entangled with its history as a space for aesthetic
appreciation. I consider the debates around what is “desirable” for the Heath, working
from late-19th century issues around the Heath’s sand and its native plants. The
rugged landscape of the north Heath is in part thanks to centuries of sand-digging, a
major source of economic revenue from the land. In the 1860s, efforts by landowner
Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson to develop the Heath involved extensive sand-digging,
deliberately attempting to despoil the land and discourage visitors from appreciating
it. Sand circulated at the centre of the Heath’s decades-long battle of land access,
and the aesthetics of the landscape in the wake of sand-digging were key in efforts to
enclose it. The issue of “weeds” or undesirable plants on the Heath came to a head
in this period as well, as the despoliation of the Heath was followed by intense
“landscape improvement” via the planting of non-native species. I explore the ways in
which aesthetic notions of nature or landscape are entangled with politicised notions
of what is desirable, in terms of who has access to land or what is permitted to
flourish, human or nonhuman.