Admiral's House

Admiral's House in Hampstead, London, is a 1700 structure famous for its rooftop ship's quarterdeck added by a naval officer, which inspired Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins. Built by Charles Keys, the property served as a Masonic lodge from 1730 to 1745. Later residents included architect Sir George Gilbert Scott from 1856 to 1864, while artist John Constable featured Admiral's House in an 1832 painting.

London · from the walk “Heights, Heaths & Hidden Lanes” · Generated

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Admiral's House, Admiral's Walk, London NW3 6RJ

Which Hampstead home inspired Admiral Boom's ship-shaped house in Mary Poppins?

Look up at this whitewashed building on Admiral's Walk... and notice something unusual about the rooftop. Does that look like the deck of a ship to you?

This house was built in seventeen hundred by a man named Charles Keys. But back then, it looked nothing like what you see today. It served as a Masonic lodge between seventeen thirty and seventeen forty-five, and was called Golden Spikes — a name likely drawn from the lodge's own symbol.

Everything changed when a naval officer named Fountain North moved in around seventeen seventy-five. North missed life at sea so much that he constructed a ship's quarterdeck on top of his house. But he didn't stop there. He added bulwarks and portholes to the property, and even mounted cannons on the roof. North fired salutes on the king's birthday and after Britain's naval victories. Imagine the neighbors' reaction... Boom at dawn on a quiet Hampstead morning!

Now here's where it gets truly strange. The house's name is a misnomer — no admiral has Ever lived here. Fountain North was only a lieutenant, or possibly a captain. The quarterdeck was built sometime before seventeen ninety-six, when it appeared in a print by James Peller Malcolm... but that print was incorrectly titled "Admiral Barton's Hampstead." You see, there was a Real Admiral Matthew Barton living nearby in Hampstead, and reports of cannons being fired from rooftops got confused — the cannons may actually have been Barton's doing, fired from His roof, not North's. But the mix-up stuck... and the name Admiral's House was born.

The painter John Constable lived just around the corner on Lower Terrace. He painted this very house from the upper window of his home, around eighteen twenty-one to eighteen twenty-two. He exhibited a version in eighteen thirty-two entitled "A Romantic House at Hampstead" — and you can still see his paintings of this building at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The architect Sir George Gilbert Scott — the man behind Saint Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial — occupied the house from eighteen fifty-six to eighteen sixty-four. But his wife Caroline found the place rather cold and the location isolated... the Hampstead Underground station wouldn't open for another forty years!

And perhaps the most beloved connection of all... This strange-looking house is said to have inspired P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins series, where a retired naval officer called Admiral Boom lives next door to the Banks family in a house shaped like a ship, and fires his cannon every once in a while. There's even an old legend that through the garden ran a tunnel which was said to communicate with the Heath — supposedly the escape route of highwayman Dick Turpin.

Take a moment to look up at that rooftop one more time. Three centuries of eccentric sailors, great painters, legendary architects... and a cannon-firing character who sailed straight into one of the most beloved children's books ever written — all from this one quiet corner of Hampstead.

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