HEATH HOUSE.
It would be doing injustice to a family long known and honoured in this neighbourhood to bid farewell to Hampstead and the Heath, without some special notice of Heath House, the present residence of Lord Glenesk, but in 1790 the home of Samuel Hoare, Esq.
It is a large, square, heavy-looking Georgian house of brown brick, surrounded by trees and shrubs, close to the Broad Walk on one side, and divided by a narrow roadway from Jack Straw’s Castle on the other. It stands upon the highest ridge of the Heath, at the same elevation as the tavern, and the windows command fine views east, west, and north, whilst from the flat, lead-covered roof one may see on a clear day, it is said, six counties.
In 1772 Mr. Hoare had joined the firm of Bland and Barnett, bankers, of 62, Lombard Street, in which his son, grandson, and great-grandsons were afterwards partners, when the bank was known as Barnett, Hoare and Co.
When the first Samuel Hoare moved to Heath House, his family consisted of himself and second wife, whom he had married two years previously; his only son Samuel, a boy seven years old; and a little daughter. The coming of this family to the Heath was an epoch in the social history of Hampstead.
Refined, intellectual, religious in the best sense of the phrase, yet largely liberal, the Quaker banker opened wide his hospitable doors to friends and neighbours, and brought into their midst the men and women then most distinguished in literature, philanthropy, and for high social aims. Nor were the poor forgotten in the ‘beneficent schemes that filled the mind of this benevolent man.’ Whatever could improve the condition, or help the needs of his humble neighbours had his earnest aid. England had been for some time conscience-smitten, and agitated with the wrongs inflicted on the unhappy negro race. Young Clarkson was calling the attention of every man of influence he could get at to their cause, and Wilberforce, one of his earliest converts, had become his eloquent and pertinacious second. It is well known that the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade presented to the House of Commons came from the people called Quakers. To this amiable and unobtrusive sect belongs the honour of having taken the initiative in the crusade against this barbarous traffic, and the young enthusiast Clarkson, who was preparing for the Church, but had chosen a wider platform for the diffusion of his impressions of Christian charity, found in Mr. Hoare, not a disciple, but an apostle already in close sympathy with his purpose, and daily working for its accomplishment.
Here at Heath House these ever-to-be-remembered men discussed with their host their trials, hopes, and disappointments; for during a series of sixteen or seventeen years the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which Wilberforce Session after Session presented to the House of Commons, was as constantly thrown out, and two years before the final triumph of their cause (1827) their associate and helper, Samuel Hoare senior, died (1825), aged seventy-five.
I have not seen it mentioned in the History or ‘Records of Hampstead,’ but find in a paragraph of the Lady’s Magazine, December, 1812, that ‘the Lancastrian school which Mr. Hoare, the banker, has erected at his own expense at Hampstead was opened a few days ago with about a hundred children. The establishment is capable of accommodating about one hundred and fifty, and promises to be soon filled up.’
Some years before his father’s death, Samuel Hoare junior had married one of the famous Earlham sisters, Louisa, daughter of John Gurney, banker, of Norwich, and had gone to reside at the Hill, North End (the house a wedding-gift from his father). Later on Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who had married Hannah, another of the Miss Gurneys, also resided for some time at North End, at a house now known as Myrtle Wood, a delightful event for the sisters, their relatives, and friends. It is of Hill House, during the residence of Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton in its near neighbourhood (1820), that the celebrated Severen of Cambridge wrote: ‘More of heaven I never saw than in the two families at Hampstead’ (the Hoares and Buxtons).
Of course, the same circle of friends were received at the houses of both father and son; but when the death of Samuel Hoare senior occurred, though his widow and daughter continued to occupy Heath House, the delightful reunions that have made it memorable ceased.
Like his father and his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Samuel Hoare the second entered heartily into the views of his friends, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and gave their great scheme for the abolition of slavery his steady help and influence. He lived long after the cause they battled for so pertinaciously had been won, and, with his sympathetic wife, inaugurated various projects for bettering the condition of the poor of Hampstead, some of which I am told are still actively beneficial.
There are just two or three old inhabitants of Hampstead who remember the tall figure of the second Samuel Hoare, who used to go down to town on horseback followed by his servant; later on I am told the servant’s place was changed, and he rode very close to—indeed, side by side with—his master, who towards the end of his life was subject to sudden seizures.
This gentleman died December 26, 1846, at the comparatively early age of sixty-four, and Hill House became the property of his son Samuel, who did not live very long to enjoy it, dying in the twenty-sixth year of his age, October 27, 1833. The present Sir Samuel Hoare, Member for Norwich, is the fourth of the name, and the great-grandson of the first Samuel Hoare of Heath House, of which he is the owner, as well as of the Hill, and other property at Hampstead.
Mrs. Hannah Hoare, the second wife and widow of Samuel Hoare of the Heath, continued to reside there with her step-daughter for many years in the near neighbourhood of their relations at the Hill. There is something touchingly suggestive in the fact that they both died in the same year, the widow on January 21, and her step-daughter on October 21, 1833. Mr. Gurney Hoare, son of the second Samuel Hoare, lived at Hill House many years, and died there. The only representatives of this family now at Hampstead (1899) are Mrs. MacEnnis and her sister, Miss Greta Hoare, who reside at Wildwood Avenue.