Gospel Oak Information & Gospel Oak Links at HealthHaven.com

**Gospel Oak**
	Gospel Oak
	; Gospel Oak ; Gospel Oak shown within Greater London
OS grid reference	TQ285855
London borough	Camden
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	NW5 (central); NW3 (north); NW1 (south)
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
EU Parliament	London
London Assembly	Barnet and Camden
	List of places: UK • England • London

for the EP by Sinéad O'Connor, see Gospel Oak EP

Coordinates: 51°33′14″N 0°08′53″W / 51.55376°N 0.14795°W / 51.55376; -0.14795

Gospel Oak is an inner urban area of north London in the London Borough of Camden below Hampstead Heath. It is bordered by the more affluent areas of Belsize Park to the west, Kentish Town to the south, Eastern Hampstead to the North and Dartmouth Park and Tufnell Park to the east. It has a large amount of social housing, in particular many high-rise and tower block estates in the south of Mansfield Road, and housing in the area is fairly cheap in comparison with surrounding areas such as Hampstead and Chalk Farm.

The name derives from an oak tree, under which parishioners gathered to hear an annual gospel reading when the area was still rural. Lords Mansfield, Southampton and Lisburne were the local landowners when development began in the mid-19th century. Plans were drawn up for elegant streets radiating from Lismore Circus but after two railway lines were extended across the area the first buildings were two- and three-storey cottages for "navvies and quarrelsome shoemakers." Later the neighbourhood became more respectable and solidly residential - although in 1909 when John Betjeman's family moved to West Hill, Highgate they obviously felt that they were a cut above Gospel Oak:

Here from my eyrie, as the sun went down,
I heard the old North London puff and shunt,
Glad that I did not live in Gospel Oak.^[1]

St Martin's Gospel Oak designed by Edward Buckton Lamb is discussed by John Summerson in his Victorian Architecture in England (Norton 1970)

In 1938 Parliament Hill Lido was opened next to Gospel Oak station. At £34,000 this was the most expensive of the lidos built by the London County Council.^[2]

All Hallows Church by James Brooks is a notable late Victorian church. After World War II much of the original housing around Lismore Circus was demolished and a series of estates built for Camden Council. Today Gospel Oak is a socially mixed area with sizeable Jamaican, South American and African communities. The NW5 section of Gospel Oak has long been notorious for drugs and gangs, and is one of the most deprived areas in London, especially around Queen's Crescent, but many more peaceful parts of the area are still near central London and are desirable and expensive. Crime and drug dealing in the southern "Haverstock" area went down significantly after the crack cocaine surge of the 1990s, but crime to the north (Lismore Circus and Mansfield Road) is now on the rise, the most recent example being a shooting on Mansfield road of a man sitting in his car by an unidentified boy riding a bike. Famous residents include Tony Blair’s former head of communications Alastair Campbell and his partner journalist Fiona Millar, Python Michael Palin, Britain's top networker Carole Stone and her husband broadcaster Richard Lindley. The area is covered by the Gospel Oak and Haverstock wards, with Gospel Oak to the north of Queen's Crescent Marketplace and Haverstock to the South. In 2009, the prime-minister Gordon Brown toured the Kiln Place estate in Gospel Oak and was confronted by a resident who told him how she had been chased, been broken into and been set on fire by gangs of youths on the estate. Nevertheless, the are still remains a deirable compromise to fashionable ares such as Camden Town and expensive inner-suburbs like Belsize Park and Hampstead