V is for Vale of Health

LONDON A-Z V is for Vale of Health We're now at the tough end of the alphabet for unsung suburbs. There's Victoria and Vauxhall but they're way too well known. There's Kingston Vale, Putney Vale and Streatham Vale, but that's stretching alphabetical licence too far. The only other V in the Ordnance Survey's 681-strong list is a small residential hollow at the top of Hampstead Heath, essentially just one street, but in the absence of anything better it'll have to do. Thankfully it's fascinating with links to DH Lawrence, fairgrounds and the Daily Mail, also extremely aspirational so well done if you live there. The Vale of Health was once an insalubrious dip amid open heathland above Hampstead, so has undergone a sly nominal transformation over the years. As one of the sources of the River Fleet it's long been a bit damp, and was described by one Georgian gentlewoman as 'a stagnate bottom, a pit in the heath'. Its first inhabitant arrived in the 1710s, a harness maker called Samuel…