From Elstree the border-line closely follows the road to Barnet as far as the hamlet of Barnet Gate, where it turns south-east for its most extraordinary vagaries. Holding straight on by the road north-eastward, in little more than a mile we should strike it again across the mouth of that inlet, miles deep, by which Herts flows into Middlesex about the Great North Road. A little below Barnet Gate the line bends southward towards Highwood, then again eastward in the dip between Totteridge and Mill Hill, so as to bring the former ridge into Herts. On the road mounting it, the boundary is marked by a half-buried post, economically abbreviating our county’s style as D.D.X. I stray only some few hundred yards from my diocese in pointing out the beautiful walk along this ridge—a long mile of broad-swarded road, or stretched-out common, bordered by ponds, farms, cottage gardens and trees, through which one gets fine glimpses of Barnet to the north and Mill Hill to the south. Then comes the village and its Church, opposite which Copped Hall was at one time occupied by Bulwer Lytton; Cardinal Manning, Richard Baxter, and Lady Rachael Russell being other names connected with this pretty place, only a little blighted as yet by the suburban builder. Further on, at the “Orange Tree,” opens the cottage-bordered green, an unusually long one, from the foot of which run most rustic paths that would soon bring us back into Middlesex, as does Totteridge Lane, holding eastward across the Barnet line to Whetstone.
For here the eccentric boundary, after attaining its “furthest south” near Woodside Park station, has taken another bend north beside the Dollis Brook, so as to stretch out a tongue of Middlesex for some two miles along the Great North Road, across which it strikes, then again turns south by the Great Northern Railway, till it ends its maddest deviation in this direction near Colney Hatch Asylum, only about eight miles from the Thames. Crossing the railway beyond New Southgate station, and walking on eastwards to the next cross roads, one reaches the invisible head of this crook in a field still open to the north. The boundary stones having disappeared, the exact run of the line, by a few feet, is at present in question, a dispute of some consequence upon ground now “ripe” for the builder, since building regulations differ in the two counties.
Now, as if scared from the thickening suburbs, it turns back north to enclose Southgate and Winchmore Hill in Middlesex, leaving the Barnets in Herts with the valley of the Pymmes Brook, here tripping like a younker and a prodigal, yet after a few miles more to creep so lamely into the Lea over Tottenham Marshes. At Cock Fosters the wilful line takes a westward course along Hadley Common, at the further end of which it wanders round the outskirts of High Barnet, so as to fall in again with the road from Elstree; but soon it starts off on a fresh northward tack along the county’s north-eastern headland. It would now seem to be tired of freakish tricks, and in the woods below North Mimms it bends eastward to run pretty steadily on between Potter’s Bar and Northaw, beside the first stage of the road to Enfield, then a little to the north of White Webbs Park, by the south side of Theobald’s Park, across the New River and the high-road entering Waltham Cross, a mile beyond which it is brought up with a round turn by the Lea.
The sluggish crooks of the Lea make the county’s eastern boundary. But alas for that once idyllic river, loved and lost by gentle piscators! Amateurs of Dutch scenery might here and there find a bit to their taste; and the Essex bank has heights that show to more advantage over Middlesex flats, where one sees how this lower course of the Lea has been fouled into a dull Lethe, suggesting few poetical images, unless those of Browning’s “Childe Roland to the dark tower came.” Its meadows, on which nowadays one will hardly find a “milkmaid singing like a nightingale,” or “young Corydon, the shepherd, playing purely on his oaten pipe,” are more fitly described as marshes; and the wandering and branching stream is drained into the Lea Navigation, in part coinciding with the river’s course, but more often holding aloof from it like a prosperous and prosaic citizen from some ne’er-do-well idler of the family.
Not that it is altogether idle, indeed, for as it creeps and twists to its slimy mouth behind the forlorn Isle of Dogs, “the wanton Lea” has been pressed into the service of London’s water-supply, stored and well filtered, let us hope. Reservoir embankments ill adorn the river scenery; nor does a new pea-green swimming-bath excite such curiosity as did a towering pile of faggots or brushwood, once used as rifle-butts, that made a landmark of Tottenham Marshes till the other day it lit them up in its moment of glory as a gigantic bonfire. The cheerfullest sight here is the football scrimmages of would-be Hotspurs, played on gateless flats. The creeks and channels of the river-bed are still frequented by local Izaak Waltons, in whose breasts springs eternal hope of roach or dace. Very hot weather tempts venturesome youth to bathe in the Stygian stream. The sophisticated main channel is ploughed by crews of athletic East Enders who have little need to be admonished, “Eyes in the boat!” This river was once capable of more serious navigation, if we may trust the legend that a fleet of Danes sailed up it for twenty miles, settling themselves in a camp from which Alfred diverted the stream, and set on the bold Londoners to make havoc of that stranded fleet, so that, in Drayton’s verse, “old Lea brags of the Danish blood.”
We are here skirting close to the high-road by which we came out through Edmonton. “But I now see Tottenham Cross, and our short walk hither shall put a period to my too long discourse.” It is as well we are not bound to enter the County of London, since there the Lea would bring us to Hackney Marsh, perhaps the most unlovely spot of Middlesex soil—one which some examiners, indeed, might propose to bracket with Staines Moor, that at least deserves a proxime accessit.
Such blotches, however, are exceptional, and between those dismal flats on the most distant edges of the county so recklessly libelled as “all ugly,” it has been shown how one can find much pleasant and not a little charming scenery of a truly English type. If a jury of my fellow-countymen and gentle readers be not now ready to give a verdict of slander against Cobbett, let them go forth to examine with their own eyes the evidence on which I have been able faithfully to discharge my duty as advocate for Middlesex.
“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new!”
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD