In the cellar of one of London's oldest pubs, jazz has found a listening room of genuine intimacy. Hampstead Jazz Club operates beneath the Duke of Hamilton at 23-25 New End in Hampstead, a pub that has traded since 1721 and was once the favoured watering hole of Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed. The club presents an eclectic mix of established names and emerging talent in the low-lit basement, which has its own bar and doubles as a space for rehearsals, live recordings, album launches and private events, with catering from the pub kitchen above. Shows are ticketed and seats are close to the bandstand - the room rewards attention rather than background chatter, and weekend programming is the backbone of the calendar. The pub itself has its own recent drama: renamed the Hampstead Lounge and Jazz Club in 2017-18 after a closure that mobilised 800 petitioning locals, it was restored to its historic name when the Loci Pubs team - brothers who grew up nearby - took it over in 2019 and refurbished it as a neighbourhood local with craft beer and a seasonal menu. The combination of a near-300-year-old bar upstairs and a working jazz cellar below has made the corner one of NW3's most distinctive nights out, a short climb from Hampstead tube. The pub's survival was a genuine community fight. In 2015, 800 locals petitioned to have the building listed as an Asset of Community Value - a designation that keeps it a pub - provoking the then-landlord to ban all 800 of them before departing in 2017. The rescue by the Robson brothers, who had previously run the nearby Horseshoe, restored both the name and the neighbourhood role, and the jazz cellar has since become the room's signature: an eclectic weekend programme in a space small enough that the double bass needs no amplification.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 23-25 New End, London, United Kingdom, NW3 1JD

Website: https://hampsteadjazzclub.com

Serves Food