Run by the Burgh House Trust, Burgh House serves the community as an art exhibition centre, meeting place, café, and concert and events venue. It also provides a fascinating insight into Hampstead's past and present through the collections and temporary exhibitions on display at Hampstead Museum, which is on the first floor. Burgh House was built in 1704 and has had many notable residents including Elsie Kipling, daughter of the poet Rudyard. The building was used as a local meeting place from the 1940s, but was threatened with permanent closure by Camden Council in 1977. Local residents got together in December 1977 and formed the Burgh House Group, planning to save the house for the public. Melvyn Bragg and Judi Dench supported the campaign, and by 1979 the Council agreed to lease Burgh House to the newly formed charity the Burgh House Trust. Local historians Christopher and Diana Wade created a museum dedicated to the history of Hampstead, which now houses over 3,000 objects relating to the local area, including oil paintings by artists George and Daphne Charlton and a watercolour by Christopher Nevinson, who lived at Steeles Studios on Haverstock Hill. Work by prolific local artist Donald Towner is also included in the collection, and the Museum acquired a painting of Jack Straw’s Castle in 2007, by well-known artist Duncan Grant.