West Hampstead Life
West Hampstead Life was a hyperlocal news website and newsletter covering West Hampstead in north-west London, in the London Borough of Camden. It ran for nine years, from the beginnings of the local Twitter community in 2009 until its closure in April 2018, and became one of the best-known British hyperlocal projects of its era: a digital newspaper, a weekly digest of neighbourhood news and, through its whampgather social events, a community institution that Camden Council itself cited as an example of how social media could build connections in a transient part of London. This profile is written in the past tense, because the site stopped publishing in 2018.
Beginnings in 2009: Twitter and the first whampgather
West Hampstead Life grew out of the @WHampstead Twitter account and the community that formed around the #whamp hashtag. Its founder, Jonathan Turton, began by sharing local news and information online and quickly found that the project unearthed a local community that responded to its social side as much as to its news. The site's early West Hampstead Digest editions gathered the neighbourhood's news into a short publication whose readers were invited to set the agenda.
The gatherings had a playful streak from the start. The organisers repeatedly invited the actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry to the first event, and were delighted when he eventually noticed one of the invitations and replied, an episode the site's digest reported with pride. A draw for a local T-shirt, coverage in the local press and plans for a second gathering followed within the week, showing how quickly the experiment had taken hold.
The first whampgather, a social meet-up for the online community, took place on Monday 12 October 2009 at the Alice House pub. Sixteen people attended, most of whom had never met before, and talked about their experiences of the area. The event was reported by the Camden New Journal, and the gatherings became a fixture: by the sixth whampgather, held at The Lion on West End Lane in the spring of 2011, around sixty people attended over the course of the evening.
The patch: what counted as West Hampstead
The site defined its territory loosely but clearly. It regarded West Hampstead as bordered by Belsize Road to the south, Kilburn High Road to the west, Finchley Road to the east and the University College School playing fields to the north. That area covered all of the West Hampstead and Fortune Green wards, most of Kilburn ward and a good share of Swiss Cottage ward, in what was generally known as South Hampstead, with a total population of 33,000 according to the 2011 census. Good stories from just outside the boundary appeared from time to time, with the site's sympathies leaning towards Kilburn, Cricklewood and Swiss Cottage rather than Hampstead and Belsize Park.
Content: news, newsletter and restaurant reviews
West Hampstead Life described itself as West Hampstead's digital newspaper. Its core product was a regular email newsletter, the "What have you missed..." round-up, which summarised the neighbourhood's news: planning and development proposals, transport changes at the area's three stations, new shops and restaurants, council decisions and community campaigns. The website carried longer articles, interviews and features between newsletters.
One of the site's most popular elements was its restaurant reviewing. A contributor known to readers as Tom wrote a restaurant review column that the editors described as a readers' favourite, assessing new and established restaurants around West End Lane and Mill Lane with humour and local knowledge. Food and drink coverage, from café openings to pub changes, formed a substantial part of the site's appeal in an area rich in independent businesses.
Whampgather and The Winch
The whampgather events grew into large neighbourhood parties. The tenth whampgather was held at The Alliance pub on Mill Lane on 15 November 2012, with exclusive use of the venue, music and a treasure hunt in the week running up to it. The thirteenth, in May 2014, celebrated the fifth anniversary of the @WHampstead Twitter account and thus of the whole whamp community project. Raffles at the gatherings raised money for The Winch, a long-standing youth charity based in Swiss Cottage that works with young people across Camden; one raffle alone raised £500, and previous gatherings had funded drama programmes and IT equipment for the charity. Local businesses donated prizes, tying the area's traders into the events.
Camden Council's place plan for West Hampstead recognised the project's civic value. It described West Hampstead Life as an excellent blog with a Twitter feed of nearly 3,500 followers, noted that it gave residents the latest news and information about meetings in the area, and credited its regular informal get-togethers with helping residents from a range of groups meet up and build long-term connections in an area with a transient population.
People: Jonathan Turton and Mark Stonebanks
Jonathan Turton was the site's publisher and founder. A former business journalist, he lived in West Hampstead from 1998 to 2015, with spells abroad, and afterwards worked as a freelance writer, editor and communications consultant. His company, Smoking Pen Ltd, owned the site. He believed communities were better when there was more understanding of what was happening within them and when people communicated outside their usual peer groups.
Mark Stonebanks was the site's editor in its second era. He had lived in West Hampstead since 1998 and was chair of the Friends of Fortune Green. When the site fell dormant, he kept in contact with Turton about how it could be revived, and he took over as editor for its relaunch, building a team of regular contributors alongside the established restaurant column.
Hiatus and relaunch, 2015 to 2016
West Hampstead Life paused in August 2015, when Turton sent out the last newsletter of its first era. The gap lasted nine months, during which readers told the team they missed it; Stonebanks later wrote that there had been a West Hampstead Life-sized hole in the neighbourhood. The site returned on 29 May 2016 with Stonebanks as editor, initially making the newsletter fortnightly rather than weekly while the project rebuilt, keeping the best features of the original and recruiting new contributors.
Closure in April 2018
The relaunched site ran for about two years. On 2 April 2018, West Hampstead Life announced that it was stopping the presses after nine years. The final "What have you missed..." post and a last newsletter closed the project. Stonebanks was moving from West Hampstead to Berlin, while Turton, who had moved out of the area three years earlier, had decided to devote his time to other projects. Both men thanked readers and each other, and Turton credited Stonebanks with saving the site from a premature end in 2016 and editing it with exemplary commitment for its final two years.
Coverage and character
In content the site mixed hard local news with the texture of neighbourhood life. Development and planning were recurring themes in an area under constant pressure for new housing around its transport interchange. Local democracy, licensing, policing and transport all featured, alongside profiles, history pieces, event listings and the restaurant column. Its tone was conversational and knowing, written by people who lived on the patch for readers who did the same, and its social events meant its audience knew one another offline as well as online.
Legacy
West Hampstead Life is frequently remembered as a model of what a hyperlocal site could achieve beyond page views: it created a named community, raised money for a local youth charity, won recognition in the borough's own planning documents and sustained a news service for a London neighbourhood for nine years on a volunteer and small-company basis. Its archive at westhampsteadlife.com remains a record of West Hampstead through a decade of change, and its trajectory, from a Twitter account to a tweet-up, a newspaper, a hiatus, a revival and a fond farewell, captures the whole arc of Britain's first hyperlocal wave.
