The opening of St. John’s Chapel of Ease to St. John’s, Frognal, does not appear to have interfered with the congregation attending the chapel in Well Walk, who continued to worship there till Christ Church was built, when the congregation removed to it, about 1852-53. Then the chapel in Well Walk was let to the Scotch Presbyterians, and it remained their place of worship till about 1861-62, after which (never having been consecrated) it was let to the Hampstead Rifle Volunteers, who were in want of a drill-hall, and it continued to be retained for this purpose till about a dozen years ago, when it was taken down and the site used for building upon.
A gentleman then connected with the Hampstead Rifle Corps, and who was deputed to oversee the alterations in the building, necessary to fit it for its new purpose, has kindly enabled me to follow, and with his help unravel, the story of the origin of the Wells Chapel.
The conversion of this mutable building to military uses involved the taking down of all its former fittings—pews, galleries (of which there were three), etc. The space thus gained resulted in a vast room, 90 feet long by some 36 feet wide, and 24 feet high. A wainscot, about 4 feet high, ran round the wall, and on removing a portion of it at the north-east end of the apartment, a sort of niche or recess in the depth of the wall, which was very thick, disclosed itself, and was clearly, to men acquainted with such appearances, the place where the basin and discharge-pipes of an old fountain had been. It had remained hidden behind the wainscot from the time this had been put up. This was surprise the first; but ‘some time after’ (I will let my correspondent tell the story) ‘the workmen, who were cleaning the walls for recolouring, came to tell me that they had found some old paintings on the walls. On going to look at them, I found that there were just nine life-sized figures representing the Muses. There could be no doubt about this, for the name was painted under each figure—Clio, Euterpe, and so on. These paintings were seen by various people; but they were rather faint and much damaged, and, as the work of redecoration had to go on, they were again coloured over with distemper.’ Now, leaving the region of fact and entering that of speculation, I think that this large apartment, some 90 feet long by 36 feet wide, could not have been the chapel spoken of by various writers.[274] I cannot but think it was the old Pump Room, converted afterwards into a large chapel (with its galleries capable of holding some 1,000 persons). My correspondent adds: ‘Besides its great size, one can hardly imagine that such uncanonical figures as the Muses could ever have been painted on the walls of a chapel, and I am sure that the paintings I saw were as old as the building itself.’
Assembly and Pump Rooms, Well Walk.
All this mystery was delightful to me, for I felt sure I held the key to it. I remembered the fine Assembly Room, 60 feet long, and elegantly decorated, and felt confident that Park’s belief was vindicated, and that, as he had stated, the chapel in Well Walk was ‘made out of the old Assembly Room.’ This room, however, was stated to have been 60 feet long, and here were 90 feet to be disposed of. But my informant quickly wrote: ‘Thanks to our correspondence, I think I see a way of explaining that which has perplexed you with respect to the chapel mentioned by the authors you quote. Your last letter seems to give the clue to the whole matter. If you will kindly refer to the sketch-plan I sent you, you will see that the size of the building there depicted is given as 90 feet long by 36 feet wide. I have, perhaps, rather mistaken the width. Now, if you take off from this building 60 feet, you will have left an apartment 30 feet long. Was not this smaller room the Pump Room, and the other the Assembly Room? If you look at the view of this old building given in Baines, you will see that it is one as seen from the outside, and I know from my own observation as a surveyor that from its style this building must have been built about the commencement of the last century. I consider,’ adds this gentleman, ‘that the Pump Room and Assembly Room were converted into what was known as Well Walk Chapel in the last century.’[275] The change took place, as we know, in the first quarter of it. Subsequently I learned that the paintings were at the end and sides of the building farthest from the recess, which, of course, appertained to the Pump Room. Baines’ view shows that there were eight windows on the north-west side of the building, next the Well Walk, and my informant thinks the windows on the opposite side were equal in number. The figures of the Muses were painted in the spaces between the windows and at the end. The exterior walls of the building were of red brick, but had been coloured over, and, after the mode of building in those times, were very solid. I think this discovery definitively establishes the origin of the Well Walk Chapel, and proves Park to have been correct.
Until pretty deep in the fifties, the upper part of Well Walk possessed a small but beautiful grove of century-old lime-trees, now very nearly destroyed by the unskilful hands of someone ignorant of the knowledge of forestry. It is perhaps noteworthy that Mr. Gurney Hoare, his brother, wife and children, were members of the Well Walk Chapel congregation, the first part of the family, it is said, to become members of the Church of England.
About fifteen years ago the public basin on the left-hand side of Well Walk as you entered it from the Heath was removed, and a new stone structure, with pipe and basin, was placed by the Wells Charity on the opposite side of the Walk. A memorial tablet attached to this structure bears the following inscription: ‘To the Memory of the Honourable Susannah Noel, who with her son Baptist, third Earl of Gainsborough, gave this Well, with six acres of land, to the use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead, December 20, 1691.’