Hampstead and Marylebone Part 1

Hampstead and Marylebone.

by Geraldine Edith Mitton.

PREFATORY NOTE

A survey of London, a record of the greatest of all cities, that should preserve her history, her historical and literary a.s.sociations, her mighty buildings, past and present, a book that should comprise all that Londoners love, all that they ought to know of their heritage from the past--this was the work on which Sir Walter Besant was engaged when he died.

As he himself said of it: "This work fascinates me more than anything else I've ever done. Nothing at all like it has ever been attempted before. I've been walking about London for the last thirty years, and I find something fresh in it every day."

He had seen one at least of his dreams realized in the People's Palace, but he was not destined to see this mighty work on London take form. He died when it was still incomplete. His scheme included several volumes on the history of London as a whole. These he finished up to the end of the eighteenth century, and they form a record of the great city practically unique, and exceptionally interesting, compiled by one who had the qualities both of novelist and historian, and who knew how to make the dry bones live. The volume on the eighteenth century, which Sir Walter called a "very big chapter indeed, and particularly interesting,"

will shortly be issued by Messrs. A. and C. Black, who had undertaken the publication of the Survey.

Sir Walter's idea was that the next two volumes should be a regular and systematic perambulation of London by different persons, so that the history of each parish should be complete in itself. This was a very original feature in the great scheme, and one in which he took the keenest interest. Enough has been done of this section to warrant its issue in the form originally intended, but in the meantime it is proposed to select some of the most interesting of the districts and publish them as a series of booklets, attractive alike to the local inhabitant and the student of London, because much of the interest and the history of London lie in these street a.s.sociations. For this purpose Chelsea, Westminster, the Strand, and Hampstead have been selected for publication first, and have been revised and brought up to date.

The difficulty of finding a general t.i.tle for the series was very great, for the t.i.tle desired was one that would express concisely the undying charm of London--that is to say, the continuity of her past history with the present times. In streets and stones, in names and palaces, her history is written for those who can read it, and the object of the series is to bring forward these a.s.sociations, and to make them plain.

The solution of the difficulty was found in the words of the man who loved London and planned the great scheme. The work "fascinated" him, and it was because of these a.s.sociations that it did so. These links between past and present in themselves largely const.i.tute The Fascination of London.

G. E. M.

HAMPSTEAD

The name of this borough is clearly derived from "ham," or "hame," a home; and "steede," a place, and has consequently the same meaning as homestead. Park, in a note in his book on Hampstead, says that the "p"

is a modern interpolation, scarcely found before the seventeenth century, and not in general use until the eighteenth.

HISTORY

Lysons says that the Manor of Hampstead was given in 986 A.D. by King Ethelred to the church at Westminster, and that this gift was confirmed by Edward the Confessor; but there is an earlier charter of King Edgar of uncertain date, probably between 963 and 978. It granted the land at Hamstede to one ManG.o.da, and the limits of the grant are thus stated: "From Sandgate along the road to Foxhanger; from the Hanger west to Watling Street north along the street to the Cucking Pool; from the Cucking Pool east to Sandgate."

Professor Hales, who thinks, whether genuine or not, this charter is certainly of value, interprets Sandgate as North End, Foxhanger as Haverstock Hill, Watling Street as Edgeware Road, and the Cucking Pool he concludes was in the marshy ground at the north-west corner of the parish.

This earlier charter is only interesting because it carries the history one point further back; the gift to the monks by King Ethelred was in its consequences far more important. The Bishop of Westminster, who held the land after the dissolution of the monastery, surrendered it to the King in 1550, by whom it was given to Sir Thomas Wroth. It remained in the Wroth family until 1620, when it was acquired by Sir Baptist Hickes, afterwards Viscount Campden. Hickes' daughter and coheir married Lord Noel, ancestor of the Earls of Gainsborough, and it was held by the Gainsboroughs until 1707. In that year it was bought by Sir William Langhorne, who left it to his nephew. It then went to a Mrs. Margaret Maryon, later to Mrs. Weller, and about 1780 to Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson, in right of his wife. Her son, Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, succeeded her, and in this line it has remained since 1818.

Besides the Manor of Hampstead there is included in the borough the ancient Manor of Belsize, or Belses. Sir Roger de Brabazon in 1317 gave an estate to Westminster Abbey to found a chantry for himself, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and Blanche his wife. After many changes it was occupied by Lord Wotton, who had been created a Baron by Charles II. His half-brother, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, succeeded him, and the family held the Belsize estate until 1807. The house was afterwards turned into a popular place of amus.e.m.e.nt.

Hampstead as a whole has grown very rapidly. In a map of the beginning of the nineteenth century there are comparatively few houses; these nestle in the shape of a spear-head and haft about the High Street. At West End and Fortune Green are a few more, a few straggle up the southern end of the Kilburn Road, and Rosslyn House and Belsize House are detached, out in the open country.

Seymour, writing in 1735, gives a quaint description of Hampstead as follows: "This Village ... is much more frequented by good company than can well be expected considering its vicinity to London, but such care has been taken to discourage the meaner sort from making it a place of residence that it is now become, after Scarborough and Bath and Tunbridge, one of the Politest Public Places in England, and to add to the Entertainment of the Company there is, besides the long room in which the Company meet publicly on a Monday evening to play at cards, etc., a new Dancing Room built this year."

Hampstead itself, now a town of 80,000 people, is almost entirely modern; the old village has been gradually destroyed until there is next to nothing left. But the Heath remains, the only wild piece of ground within easy reach of the Londoner. It remains to be seen whether the authorities will continue to observe the difference between a park and a heath.

No suburb of London can point to so many distinguished residents as this, the most favoured and the most favourite. Among them may be mentioned Sir Henry Vane, Dr. Butler (author of the "a.n.a.logy"), Lord Alvanley, Lord Chatham, Lord Erskine, Crabbe, Dr. Johnson, Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Barbauld, Constable, Romney, Sir James Mackintosh, Steele, Gay, Arbuthnot, Akenside, Thomas Day, Leigh Hunt, Keats, William Blake, John Linnell, Wilkie, Stanfield, Du Maurier, and many others.

Directly you get within the boundaries of Hampstead you are aware that the borough has an atmosphere of its own--an atmosphere in two senses, for the great height of part of the borough and its distance from London combine to give it as wholesome and pure an air as may be found in any place in England, and an atmosphere in the metaphorical sense--a peculiar feeling of brightness and lightness which proclaims a favoured suburb. Hampstead has always been celebrated for its trees, and in spite of the great annual increase in the number of its houses these have not been wiped out of existence. Nearly every house possesses one or more, and some are very fine specimens. The long sinuous backbone of the borough, beginning as Haverstock Hill, continuing as Rosslyn Hill, and running through High Street and Heath Street to the Heath, is tree-shaded almost all its length. The streets on either side show vistas of irregular red brick, softened and toned down by the greenery of trees; every road is an avenue. The main artery, indicated above, is all uphill, not all equally steep, but collar-work throughout its length; at the top it bifurcates, and the winding of Heath Street reminds one of a Continental town. The steep little streets or alleys running down into it are furnished with steps like the Edinburgh wynds.

The way is long, but the toil is forgotten at the summit in the splendid view from the flagstaff. Here the rolling blue outlines of distant hills are emphasized by the beautiful foreground of the West Heath. There is none of what painters call the "middle distance"; everything is near or far, and the near is extraordinarily beautiful, especially if it be seen in springtime when the spray of blossom is like the spray of deep water breaking upon rocks, and the gorse twinkles like the twinkling of ripples in the golden sunlight. The immediate foreground is bare and worn, but a little further away the miniature heights and hollows, the scrubby bush and little winding paths, add that mystery which so greatly increases delight. The pond by the Flagstaff is frequently very gay; there are carriages and horses, children with flotillas of white-sailed craft, and horses splashing knee-deep from end to end of the pond, an advantage much appreciated in the hot and thirsty summer. Away to the east stretches of rolling green form a joyous playground for all at holiday times, but are bare and arid compared with the West Heath.

Below North End on West Heath this character is maintained, and there are few sights in England more beautiful than the richly clothed broken ground stretching away from the slopes below Jack Straw's Castle when the sunlight catches the leaves of the poplars and beeches, making them shine with shimmery silver light. On all sides are magnificent views of distant horizons.

The Heath forms one of the greatest attractions of Hampstead, and that the inhabitants are fully alive to its beauty and importance is shown by their gallant and successful efforts to preserve it intact, when, from time to time, it has been threatened. Neither the proposed curtailments by the Lord of the Manor nor the park-like "improvements" of the London County Council have been permitted. It is still a wide s.p.a.ce of undulating ground, outlined by ma.s.ses of foliage rising to the heights of Highgate, and is an untold boon to the dwellers in the City, who throng its slopes on Bank Holidays. In 1866 a contest arose between the Lord of the Manor, Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, and the inhabitants of Hampstead as to the preservation of the Heath. Up to that date for twenty years a guerilla warfare had been going on in dispute of Sir Maryon Wilson's right to build upon the Heath, and when he began to build a house close to the Flagstaff pond the matter came to an issue. A subscription list was opened called the Hampstead Heath Protection Fund, and the matter was taken into court. Before the case was ended Sir Thomas died, and was succeeded by his brother Sir John, who was open to a compromise. Under an Act of Parliament the Metropolitan Board of Works acquired the Heath for 55,045. The ground thus acquired comprised 220 acres. In 1889-90 Parliament Hill Fields and the Brickfields were purchased for 302,000, with money partly raised by the local Vestries, partly by public subscription, and partly by Metropolitan taxation. The land thus bought from Lord Mansfield and Sir Spencer Wilson comprised 261 acres, and was dedicated to the public as an open s.p.a.ce for ever.

The part of the Heath known as East Heath consists of rolling gra.s.sy slopes outlined with clumps of trees and intersected by roads and footpaths. The great road known as Spaniards, which cuts across as straight as an arrow, gives the impression of having been banked up and levelled at some previous date, but this appearance is due to the excavations for sand and gravel at its sides which took place while the ground was still under the rule of the lord of the manor.

The Heath has suffered from highwaymen in common with most lonely spots in the vicinity of the Metropolis. One, Jackson, in 1673, was hung behind Jack Straw's Castle for highway murder, but no other very notorious crimes are attached to this spot as there are to Hounslow or Blackheath.

The Heath is not altogether dest.i.tute of houses; of those detached, several have had the origin of what Baines terms "Squatters' right," and have established their t.i.tle by process of time. There are also several hamlets: the Vale of Health, the houses about Jack Straw's Castle, North End, and the group near the Spaniards.

The curious little cl.u.s.ter of buildings called the Vale of Health, situated in a basin near to one of the Hampstead ponds, has always attracted considerable attention. Here Leigh Hunt came to live in 1816; his house was on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. Thornbury quotes an old inhabitant, who writes of Leigh Hunt's cottage as having a "pretty balcony environed with creepers, and a tall arbor vitae which almost overtops the roof." There are very few even tolerably old houses left here; the little streets are of the modern villa order, and the great square tavern, with its tea-gardens and merry-go-rounds, its shooting-galleries and penny-in-the-slot machines, has vulgarized the place. Prince Esterhazy is said to have taken a house in the Vale of Health in 1840; this has been "long since pulled down." The place is now dedicated to the sweeping tide of merry-makers which flows over it every recurring Bank Holiday.

The charming spot called North End still remains rural in appearance: small cottages with red-tiled roofs and quaint inns survive side by side with the modern red-brick school-house. The Bull and Bush is said to have been the country seat of Hogarth, and later, when it became a tavern, to have been visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Sterne, Foote, and other celebrities. The house is very picturesque: the projecting wing northward is of rusticated woodwork; the leads of the bayed-windows are covered with flowers in summer. There are still the old-fashioned tea-gardens attached.

There are many substantial and comfortable residences about North End, but the Hampstead boundary does not include them all. Wildwoods, or, as it used to be called, North End House, is the most important within the boundary. The original fabric of the house is two centuries old, but has been altered and repaired largely. The spot is named Wildwood Corner in Domesday Book. Its chief historical interest lies in its occupation by William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, who shut himself up here from all communication with his fellow-Ministers in 1767; he was then a miserable invalid, afflicted with a disorder which in modern times would have been termed "nerves"; he refused to see anyone, even his own attendant, and his food was pa.s.sed to him through a panel of the door. However, he afterwards returned to public life. In Wildwood Terrace are the Home of Rest for the Aged Poor, and a Convalescent Cottage Home. Wilkie Collins was born at North End. Besides this, the names of Linnell, portrait and landscape painter, Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Craik, Eliza Meteyard, a minor author, and Sir Fowell Buxton, are more or less intimately a.s.sociated with the little hamlet.

A charming path leads over the broken ground from North End to the Spaniards. The most noticeable object as the pedestrian approaches the latter is a grove of fine Scotch firs, which at one time formed an avenue to a substantial, unpretentious house on the north. A Mr.

Turner, a tobacconist of Fleet Street, built the house and planted the trees in 1734. The road past the house turns to the left or north, and is bounded on the east side by the wall of the Caenwood property.

Following the road we come upon Erskine House, a stuccoed house with covered porch, chiefly remarkable for the immense size of its upper windows, which are out of all proportion to those of the ground-floor.

These command a magnificent prospect, and light a room which, it is said, was designed as a banqueting-hall in which to entertain George III. The house was the residence of the great law lord, Thomas Erskine, and on that account alone is worthy of special mention. A tunnel connecting it with Lord Mansfield's grounds formerly ran under the road.

Below the house, standing at an angle to the Highgate Road, and looking down the hill, is the famous old inn called the Spaniards. Here, at least, the modern builder has not been at work. From the quaint tiled roof to the irregular windows and white-washed brick walls, all is simple and charming. A little lean-to shed of rusticated woodwork forms a bar at the back. This tavern is actually outside the boundary of Hampstead, but it is so closely connected with the parish that it cannot be overlooked. It is on the site of a lodge at the entrance to the park or grounds of the Bishop of London.

From Wroth we learn that about the middle of the eighteenth century or earlier one Staples laid out a curious pleasure-garden here, with quaint designs, which attracted much attention. It was the landlord of the Spaniards Inn who in the time of the Gordon Riots dexterously detained the rioters from proceeding to Caenwood House until the troops arrived to protect it. The tea-gardens at the back still survive; in these was the old bowling-green. Close by was another pleasure-garden, New Georgia, but this is quite beyond the parish limits.

Returning across the Heath, we come to Jack Straw's Castle, though there is no evidence to show that the riotous ringleader of 1381 had ever any connection with the hostelry named after him, but it is quite possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his time. In early times an earthwork stood on the site, which gave rise to the name "castle." The real Jack Straw's Castle was at Highgate. It is almost certain that the Hampstead hostelry was originally a private house; the wood of the gallows on which one Jackson had been hanged behind the house, in 1673, for highway murder, was built into the wall. When the place became an inn it was called Castle Inn, and the first mention of Jack Straw's Castle is in a book published in 1822 called "The Cabinet of Curiosities." The present inn was built in the early part of the eighteenth century, and is a nice-looking stuccoed old house; through the entry to the yard we get a glimpse of red-tiled, rusticated wooden outbuildings. On one side are the tea-gardens. d.i.c.kens often resorted here, as is mentioned in Forster's "Life of d.i.c.kens," and the inn is referred to also by Washington Irving in "The Sketch-Book."

There was a race-course behind the hotel on the Heath, but the races have been suppressed. In a paper contributed to Baines' book on Hampstead a correspondent says: "The Castle Hotel is a.s.sociated with the meetings of the Courts Leet, and in the old days during the Middles.e.x Parliamentary elections the house was a famous rendezvous for candidates and voters." A brick house two centuries old at the corner of Spaniards Road is Heath House. It was long occupied by the h.o.a.re family, of banking fame, whose name has been intimately a.s.sociated with Hampstead.

Visitors of distinction have often been received here, and the names of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Crabbe were among those of frequent guests.

The Flagstaff marks a very high point on the Heath, 439 feet, which is, however, surpa.s.sed by Jack Straw's Castle at 443 feet.

The Whitestone Pond has been enlarged, and is supplied by New River water. From this site a view of surprising beauty is seen--broken ground covered by bracken and gorse, bushes and trees, with the blue outlines of the distant hills.

South of the Whitestone Pond is the Hampstead water reservoir, and near it beds of flowers, rhododendron bushes, etc., are neatly laid out.

Almost immediately opposite is a quiet, dark-coloured little brick house, with area steps descending in front and the entrance on the north. This (now a private residence) was once the Upper Flask Tavern, familiar to all the readers of Richardson, for here he makes the unhappy Clarissa Harlowe fly in his famous novel. The Kit Kat Club used to meet here during the summer months, and many celebrities of Queen Anne's reign, including Pope and Steele, are known to have patronized the tavern. George Steevens, the commentator on Shakespeare, who died in the beginning of the present century, lived here, and spent much money on alterations and improvements. Anything less suggestive of a tavern than this cool, shady, retired spot cannot well be imagined. A very large red-brick house, modern, with fancy tiles, stands in its own grounds adjacent, overlooking Holford Road. But it is quite impossible to enumerate all the charming residences scattered about in this locality.

East Heath Road skirts the edge of the Heath. In itself it contains nothing remarkable, but closely adjoining are one or two of those charming old red-brick mansions which make Hampstead what it is.

Heathfield House, Squires Mount, and The Pryors are specimens of these.

On the south side is Cannon Hall, an old Queen Anne mansion. Old cannon, which have doubtless some connection with the name, stand in the roadway before it, and close by is Christ Church Vicarage, of the same type, with red-tiled roof.

Christ Church Road is a long tree-shaded thoroughfare descending the slope of the hill; it was formerly called Green Man Lane, from the public-house of that name at the foot.

The church stands at a great elevation, and has a high spire, which forms a landmark far and wide. It was built by Sir Gilbert Scott, consecrated in 1852, and was the successor of the chapel in Well Walk, an account of which is given on p. 18. The church was enlarged in 1882.

The streets hereabouts are set at all angles, and the result to a stranger is a little perplexing.