APPENDIX.
HEATH HOUSE.
It would be doing injustice to a family long known and honoured in this neighbourhood to bid farewell to Hampstead and the Heath, without some special notice of Heath House, the present residence of Lord Glenesk, but in 1790 the home of Samuel Hoare, Esq.
It is a large, square, heavy-looking Georgian house of brown brick, surrounded by trees and shrubs, close to the Broad Walk on one side, and divided by a narrow roadway from Jack Straw’s Castle on the other. It stands upon the highest ridge of the Heath, at the same elevation as the tavern, and the windows command fine views east, west, and north, whilst from the flat, lead-covered roof one may see on a clear day, it is said, six counties.
In 1772 Mr. Hoare had joined the firm of Bland and Barnett, bankers, of 62, Lombard Street, in which his son, grandson, and great-grandsons were afterwards partners, when the bank was known as Barnett, Hoare and Co.
When the first Samuel Hoare moved to Heath House, his family consisted of himself and second wife, whom he had married two years previously; his only son Samuel, a boy seven years old; and a little daughter. The coming of this family to the Heath was an epoch in the social history of Hampstead.
Refined, intellectual, religious in the best sense of the phrase, yet largely liberal, the Quaker banker opened wide his hospitable doors to friends and neighbours, and brought into their midst the men and women then most distinguished in literature, philanthropy, and for high social aims. Nor were the poor forgotten in the ‘beneficent schemes that filled the mind of this benevolent man.’ Whatever could improve the condition, or help the needs of his humble neighbours had his earnest aid. England had been for some time conscience-smitten, and agitated with the wrongs inflicted on the unhappy negro race. Young Clarkson was calling the attention of every man of influence he could get at to their cause, and Wilberforce, one of his earliest converts, had become his eloquent and pertinacious second. It is well known that the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade presented to the House of Commons came from the people called Quakers. To this amiable and unobtrusive sect belongs the honour of having taken the initiative in the crusade against this barbarous traffic, and the young enthusiast Clarkson, who was preparing for the Church, but had chosen a wider platform for the diffusion of his impressions of Christian charity, found in Mr. Hoare, not a disciple, but an apostle already in close sympathy with his purpose, and daily working for its accomplishment.
Here at Heath House these ever-to-be-remembered men discussed with their host their trials, hopes, and disappointments; for during a series of sixteen or seventeen years the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which Wilberforce Session after Session presented to the House of Commons, was as constantly thrown out, and two years before the final triumph of their cause (1827) their associate and helper, Samuel Hoare senior, died (1825), aged seventy-five.