Christopher Wade, Hampstead's own history man, the passionate yet forever modest community champion and creator of the Burgh House Museum, died on Monday in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead. He was a mighty 95.

He often felt he should write the history of the world, not just a remarkable slice of the hilltop village overlooking London which Daniel Defoe claimed was fit only for a special race of because it was “so close to heaven”.

And indeed it was heaven for Christopher, who knew he had found the perfect place to live the day he stepped out of the Tube at Hampstead in 1956, the delightful Diana, his secretary at the BBC, promising to marry him, but only if they lived on a hill.

So he had left his small apartment in St John's Wood to come house-hunting. “And that's when I feel in love with Hampstead too,” he once told me. “Instead of a lot of flat roads, they went off in all different directions, different gradients, downhill and up and I got lost quite quickly.”

But the magic of the setting stayed with him throughout his years living in Willoughby Road. And at 90 too, despite the property boom resulting in only millionaires affording to buy once modest homes – and the forever changing face of High Street shops – he insisted that the village remains unchanged at heart.

For a competition at Burgh House he once wrote a poem beginning: “The please of old Hampstead is its constant metamorphosis” and told me: “I didn't win a prize and was severely criticised by the one and only Peggy Jay for being inaccurate.

“I argued that, though Hampstead had certainly changed, it was amazing how much of old Hampstead had survived. In my years here most of old Hampstead is still recognisable – despite the tourity chain shops, the bra boutiques, the traffic.

“We still have the muddle of buildings, the stagger of streets, the corners and alleys – and the ambience. Not only the residents but the semi-residents and the variegated visitors combined to produce a pleasurable Hampstead hum.”

Born in Bradford, the son of a solicitor, he became a script editor for tV drama after completing his war service, then took early retirement in 1973 on a then-generous BBC pension.

His role as Hampstead's history man followed through membership of the Camden History Society and the creation of a remarkable series of more than a dozen popular pocket books, beginning with The Streets of Hampstead.

Similar tomes followed for other parts of the old borough – Constable's Hampstead, Hampstead Town Trial and even Buried in Hampstead too. And there were a number of Burgh House publications too – a labour of love after the grade one listed Queen Anne property was saved for community use in 1979, then revamped with the help of a Heritage Lottery grant and a major fund-raising campaign.

“We were largely trying to make history for the man in the Street,” explained Christopher, who set up the Burgh House Museum with his late wife with what he described as “mostly photo-copies and sellotape.”

And he explained: “There was all this fascinating information here, about the houses, their architecture, those who lived in them, their passions and ideals.

“I sometimes felt I ought to write 'The History of the World According to Hampstead' because, when important events happen, there's always some link with Hampstead. Everything has been touched by NW3 at some time.”

Paying tribute to Christopher tireless involvement in Hampstead, Matthew Lewin, chairman of the Burgh House Trust, told me: “Christopher was not only one of the 'magnificent seven' who saved Burgh House from being sold off by Camden Council, but was also with his late wife Diana the founder and first curator of the Hampstead Museum.

“Increasing deafness led him to withdraw from attending meetings, but he continued to take a keen interest in the work of the Trust, and continued too to support — with amazing generosity — the activities of the museum and its acquisitions programme.

“He was a treasured resource and he will be missed beyond measure.”