In contrast with the poet’s triumph in the beauty of his views, we find Sir Samuel Romilly, many years later, complaining, in a letter to his sister written from his chambers in Gray’s Inn, ‘that, having but one row of houses between him and Hampstead, a north-west wind, sharp as the piercing bise, blows full against his windows.’[14]
Long after this date, Rosslyn House and Park could be seen from Clerkenwell Green, and later still the green heights of Caen Wood were visible from Bedford Row.
One of the advantages that Ned Ward’s public-house in Red Bull Yard possessed was ‘commodious rooms, with Hampstead air supplied’; and I think it is Lysons who quotes the advertisement of a house of entertainment near Bagnigge Wells, the proprietor of which sets forth as an inducement for the favour of the public that his windows command fine views of Hampstead and Highgate Hills.
These details help us to realize the relation of Hampstead to London when its wooded crest could be seen from such distant points, and it had come to be regarded as the air-filterer and health invigorator of the whole district. Even as late as 1820, from the west of Oxford Street to the skirts of Hampstead Heath, there were green fields and pastures all the way.
CHAPTER I.
HAMPSTEAD AND THE HEATH.
Hampstead, situated in the Hundred of Oussulston and County of Middlesex, is separated from London by St. Pancras and Marylebone, and otherwise bounded by Finchley, Hendon, Willesden, and Paddington.
In the account of the several districts into which the Registrar-General has divided London, Hampstead claims the greatest elevation, standing 400 feet above Trinity high-water mark, a circumstance that, in connection with its gravelly soil, accounts for its dry, salutary air. It contains in its parochial area 2,169 acres.[15]