Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

How or when the notorious Sion Chapel was disposed of we learn nothing.[249] Park is silent on the subject. I think it not impossible that on the falling off of visitors to the Wells, and the probable discontinuance of marriages at the chapel, the latter being private property, the owner may have turned it wholly to secular uses, and have converted it into the fine Assembly Room, with the hope of adding a new attraction to the place for the general public.

If so, he appears to have wholly failed in his speculation, for, owing to the questionable company who found admittance to it, the resident gentry withdrew their patronage, and held their assemblies in the long room of the Upper Flask. This movement must have destroyed at one stroke the prestige and prosperity of the beautiful Assembly Room, the assured support of which rested with the resident subscribers.

But if Park ignores the fate of the degraded Sion Chapel, he is almost as reticent with regard to the New Episcopal Chapel in Well Walk. He makes a mistake of eight years in the date of its opening. The bell, and the altar plate, the first given by Mr. Rous and Mr. Wood (a name long known in connection with Hampstead), the latter by the old physician, Dr. Gibbons, were severally inscribed, ‘New Chapel, Hampstead, 1725,’ and ‘Nova Capella de Hampstead, 1725.’ Park did not know of this till the editor or a contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine challenged the correctness of the date he had given (1733) for the opening of the new chapel.

In 1725 Dr. Gibbons died, leaving, as a testimony of his concern for them, £100 to the poor of Hampstead. Six years later I find in the obituary of the Gentleman’s Magazine, under the date of September 26, 1731, ‘At Hampstead, Mr. Rous, who built a chapel there.’ Park states that the New Chapel in Well Walk was universally understood to have been the Assembly room of the Wells Tavern,’ but he admits that Mr. Rous having built a chapel, and the expressions ‘Nova Capella’ on the altar plate, and ‘New Chapel’ on the bell, seem rather to contradict the traditionary account that it was originally a ballroom; but he observes with the tenacity of an unconvinced man, ‘I have met with no positive evidence on this subject.’

During the lapsed quarter of a century between the opening of the Wells and the opening of the New Chapel in Well Walk, great additions and alterations had taken place in the village. The beauty of the situation and the well-known healthiness of the air induced many of the wealthy merchants of London to purchase or build mansions on and about the Heath, and their example was followed by some of the well-to-do people of a lower grade, who began to run up (every man being his own architect) edifices that in their fantastic reality vied with the imaginary structure of Joseph Wilks, of Thames Street, Esq., who, in the event of his ticket in the lottery winning, resolved to fit up a snug little box at Hampstead in the Chinese taste for his retirement on Sundays.[250]

I find from a guide-book of 1724 that at that time Hampstead had risen from a little country village almost to a city. In October, 1734, Dr. Arbuthnot, who was ill at Hampstead, says when writing to Swift: ‘I am going out of this troublesome world, and you, amongst the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and good wishes.’ He had gone there so reduced by a dropsy and asthma that he could ‘neither sleep, breathe, eat, or move,’ and, contrary to his expectation, had recovered his strength to a considerable degree, and was able to ride, sleep, and eat with appetite. He tells his friend that he expects upon his return to London and the coming of winter that the symptoms of his disease will return with them, for that ‘no man at his age could hope to recover.’

His experiment had been, not with a view to life, but ease. ‘I am at present,’ he says, ‘in the case of a man that was almost in harbour, and then blown back to sea; who has a reasonable hope of going to a good place, and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad one;’ and then he corrects himself, having experienced many comforts in this world in the affections of his family and the kindness of friends, and gives a touching peep at his domestic relations in three or four lines:

‘My family give you their love and service. The great loss I sustained in one of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I have with the rest to bring them to a good temper to bear the loss of a father who loves them, and whom they love, is really a most sensible affliction to me.’[251]

Shortly after the date of this letter, Pope, writing to one of the Miss Blounts, tells her that he had seen Dr. Arbuthnot, who was very cheerful: