‘I rather congratulate myself on not being in Church Row during the delightful excitement of the murder’ (the murder of Delarue) ‘and the inquest, which appear to have had so many charms for the million. One comfort is, that the murdered man appears to have been anything but a loss to society. But I think the event will give me a kind of dislike to Belsize Lane, which I used to think the pleasantest, as well as the shortest, way from us to you.’[297]
From this time Belsize and the beautiful lane became suspected; people looked shudderingly down the by-paths before entering them, and few cared to pass that way after nightfall.
For some time part of the house remained, with windows boarded, the garden run to waste, the paths weed-grown, the lilied ponds filled up, the park a wilderness, the great trees lopped and broken, till the builder and his men set about their business in earnest, and evolved almost a suburban town on what had been a nobleman’s mansion and park for centuries.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE HAMLET OF KILBURN.
As only one side of this hamlet is in Hampstead parish, there is not much to be said of it here. It was rapidly increasing when Park wrote his description of it; but that was nothing to the proportion of its increase during the last ten years, when it has grown to the dimensions of a town. Its name comes from two Saxon words, kele, cold, and bourn, a rivulet.
By this cool stream,[298] which rose on the southern slope of Hampstead, hard by the forest-side, one Godwyn, in the time of Henry I., built himself a cell, and for a time at least led a hermit’s life.
There can be little doubt, from the fact of his ultimately making over this nucleus of the future nunnery, with the grounds belonging to it, to the Church of St. Peter of Westminster, in trust to the Abbot for the use and abode of three retired Maids of Honour to Queen Matilda (herself a Benedictine nun), that Godwyn was a penitent courtier or nobleman. Eventually he himself was made Warden of the abode and guardian of the maidens, Emma, Christiana, and Gunilda, who took upon themselves a holy life, though no particular monastic rule is mentioned, nor does it appear in the foundation deed that they were vowed to celibacy.
On the death of Godwyn some other person was to be chosen to his office, with the advice of the Abbot of Westminster, and with the consent of the nuns themselves; no one could be appointed without their approval, nor was to interfere with matters relative to their temporal affairs, nor with the affairs of the church, except at their desire.