The other side of the Edgware Road is far better populated, for, at the “New” Welsh Harp, above the “Old” one, it touches the growth of Hendon, stretching and straggling across almost to the Finchley Road. Our tram-line passes close to Hendon Station, a mile below the row of old almshouses where one turns aside to the Church of which Hampstead’s was once a chapelry. This, with its monuments of dignity, has the air of a true village church, and its shady churchyard overlooks green slopes. Beyond Church End comes a knot of lanes, bordered by new and old houses, one of which belonged to David Garrick. But elsewhere Hendon has grown too much “up to date,” and its outskirts are beset by huge piles of public buildings, among them the new newspaper depot of the British Museum Library. In the southern quarter, dropping to the Brent, one might think oneself back in London; while to the north greedy tongues of brick still stretch out over green fields, on which Anthony Trollope’s readers may remember how Polly Kneefit was wooed and won.
But there are some pleasant field-walks left about Hendon, and as our tram for the next two or three miles will show us little beside workhouse palaces and the like, the reader may as well be taken on towards Edgware by a circuitous route across country. About two miles north of the Hendon heights another ridge is crowned by the more eminent features of Mill Hill. For this one may make by two paths starting from Hendon Churchyard, on either side of a line of villas projecting northwards. The field-path on the west side is to be preferred for its open view on the heights of Harrow and Stanmore. After a mile it comes into a road, that bridges the Great Northern Railway branch to Edgware, and presently turns up an avenued way, from the top of which a path mounts over park-like meadows with fine backward prospects, leading into Mill Hill opposite its “King’s Head.” If here one turned right as far as the “Adam and Eve,” beside it one could come back to Hendon by the other path above mentioned, passing near the Great Northern Railway Station, from which a road climbs to Mill Hill’s “Angel and Crown.” Such a place has to take the consequences of its loftiness in keeping both its valley stations at a distance, a mile or so to the south. Down the northern slope of the ridge lead other pleasant field-ways, that would bring us to Totteridge on the next swell of land, which belongs to that inlet of Hertfordshire crossed by the Great North Road.
This finely situated village straggles roomily along the swarded and shaded ridge road, dropping at the west end into a valley in which lies its Midland station. Where our paths from Hendon come out upon the road, to the left we have the Church, making a very modest appearance in face of a Nonconformist neighbour that turns a conspicuous face to the south. This is Mill Hill School, founded a century ago as a Congregational seminary, and now flourishing as an undenominational public school, which has had among its pupils Judge Talfourd, Lamb’s friend, and among its masters Dr. Murray, of the “Oxford Dictionary,” an enterprise begun here in the “Scriptorium,” that made a treasured shrine till lately destroyed by fire. Older relics are the cedars and other fine trees, some of them said to have been planted by the hands of Linnæus, when these grounds made Collinson’s Botanic Garden. The school has now a chapel that would open the eyes of primitive sectaries, and a museum representing the natural history of the neighbourhood.
While this school has thrown off all particularity of austere dissent, Mill Hill bears a banyan-grove of Catholic institutions, which stand prominent about the ridge, St. Vincent’s Orphanage to the east, at the other end a Franciscan nunnery with an adjacent industrial school, and behind it St. Joseph’s Missionary College, its tower crowned by a conspicuous gilt statue, stamped on the memory of its alumni in all parts of the heathen world. The place seems thus to be mostly made up of public buildings, the more so now that barracks have been built at the east end of the ridge; but of late there appear signs of suburban invasion towards the Midland station.
The wanderer in no hurry should by all means keep on to the west end of Mill Hill, and thence mount to Highwood, a height running across to the next ridge, thus gained most pleasantly when the clay bottom between is well soaked. Highwood itself is a select hamlet, about the gates of three mansions and their grounds. The gardens of the Moat Manor make a sight open on Sundays, and here is another relic of old London, ex-neighbour of Temple Bar, the Hall of Serjeants’ Inn, re-erected by the late Serjeant Cox, on the dissolution of the society. Highwood House, where Coventry Patmore lived in his youth, was once the home of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and of the Zoological Gardens, who had Samuel Wilberforce for a neighbour. On coming up to a little patch of green before the “Rising Sun,” one can turn along by a road of grand old trees hiding these mansions, which presently reaches a stile looking over to the ridge on which Barnet stands, and here forks, the left branch going up to Barnet Gate, the right one running airily along the Totteridge ridge with its mile of village green. Or, a little way beyond the “Rising Sun,” one might have taken a lane turning left by the gate of Moat Manor, then presently a field-path to the right, which goes down and up to the road by Barnet Gate, giving off a left fork to reach this road nearer Elstree. So near London it is not easy to find a stretch of country that seems so well to keep its rural innocence wedded to squirely dignity, though, indeed, its squires are now like to have the luck of being Metropolitan brewers or newspaper proprietors.
To get back to Watling Street from Highwood, one takes the road downhill in the other direction, turning to the right where in doubt till Dean’s Brook is passed, beside which a path cuts across towards the station at Edgware. Turns to the left would have fetched Mill Hill Midland Station, whence a path leads to the winding lane that reaches the London end of Edgware through its dependency Hale. From Hendon the shortest line is through Colin Dale, by which, perhaps, came a branch of the ancient way leading over Hampstead Heath.
On the opposite side of the Edgware Road, marked ways go off towards Kingsbury and Harrow. There is not much to say about Red Hill and the last two miles of this road, on which the tram-line stops for the present at the top of the village street, still looking like a real village, with old inns that hint at its importance in coaching days. The original name is said to have been Edgworth, transplanted into Ireland by the family of the novelist. On the right turns off the way to the station, beyond the Church, with its ancient tower. The turning to the left, for Stanmore, leads in a few minutes to Whitchurch, where Handel was, or was not, organist for a time; and in the churchyard is the tomb of William Powell, that Edgware Vulcan whose rhythmic hammerings were understood to have suggested the melody of the “Harmonious Blacksmith”; but this legend is doubtful. Dr. W. H. Cummings, in his book on Handel, claims to have proved it a fable. This church is notable for the Chandos tombs and the elaborate ornamentation supplied by the prodigal Duke of Chandos, who was Handel’s patron as well as Hogarth’s. His seat, Canons Park, still overshadows Whitchurch and the upper end of Edgware with its timber, but it seems about to share the fate of all “eligible building land” so near London.
James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, held the then profitable office of Paymaster-General under Queen Anne, and out of its perquisites built here what Defoe described as the most magnificent palace in the kingdom, surrounded by gardens and canals that could be equalled only at Wanstead Park, another English Versailles, now a playground of East-End Londoners. The Canons household numbered over a hundred persons, including a guard to make the rounds of the park at night, and musicians for giving that despoiler of the public purse the luxury of a full choral service in his chapel, to accompany a preacher who “never mentioned hell to ears polite.” At his dinner in public state each course was proclaimed by a flourish of trumpets. Nor was music the only art he patronized in an outlay which seems to have given Pope a cue for his satirical account of Timon’s Villa.
Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around,
The whole a laboured quarry above ground.
The Duke was also a butt for Swift’s sneering muse. The Dean asserts that he lost by speculation what he had gained by fraud.