Black Whortleberry, or Whinberry (Vaccinium myrtillus).—On several parts of the Heath.
Lesser Skullcap (Scutellaria minor).—Among the bushes near the bogs on the west side of the Heath, and very abundant on the east side between the Vale of Health and Well Walk.
Musk Mallow (Malva moschata).—In a field between Turner’s Wood and North End.
Only two species of moss were said to grow in a bog to the west of the Heath, and these I found still growing there, viz.: Hypnum stramineum, straw-like feather moss, and Hypnum cuspidatum, pointed bog feather moss. In 1895, the researches of the London Natural History Club added quite a long list to them, and they appear to be as numerous in the bogs and on the Heath as in the strictly preserved precincts of Caen Wood.
BENEFACTORS OF HAMPSTEAD AND THE CHARITIES.
One of the earliest benefactors of Hampstead was Elizabeth, Dowager Viscountess Campden, widow of Sir Baptist Hicks, the donor of Hicks’s Hall to the county of Middlesex, and Lord of the Manor of Hampstead (whose town house, by the way, was Campden House, Kensington), ‘with whom, in all peace and contentment, she lived, his dear consort and wife, for the space of forty-five years.’
She bequeathed by will, dated February 14, 1643, the sum of £200 to trustees for the purchase of land of the clear yearly value of £10, ‘in trust to pay yearly for ever one moiety towards the better relief of the most poor and needy people that be of good name and conversation, inhabitants of the Parish of Hampstead; to be paid to them half yearly at or in the Church porch. The other moiety to put forth annually one poor boy, or more, of the said Parish to apprenticeship.’ To this gift was joined the sum of £40, bequeathed by an unknown but eccentric gentlewoman in the same year, for the purpose of distributing a halfpenny loaf (probably a crossed bun) annually on Good Friday morning to the inhabitants of Hampstead, rich and poor. Mad as a March hare! for what did the rich inhabitants of Hampstead want of a halfpenny loaf on Good Friday, or any other morning, even in the days when a crossed bun was a panacea for almost every ailment? Yet the bequest proved as bread cast upon the waters, and seen after many days; for being joined to Lady Campden’s £200, the whole was laid out in the purchase of fourteen acres of meadow-land at Child’s Hill, in the parish of Hendon, of the clear value of 10s. per acre.
When Park wrote, this estate was rented at £84 per annum; at the present day it must be worth much more, though on inquiry being made on the part of the Vestry into the management of this charity in 1873, it was said that it had not been developed.
Next on the list of Hampstead benefactions, in point of time, but far beyond the Campden charity in its importance, is what is called the Wells Charity, that gift of ‘six acres of waste land lying about and encompassing the Well of Medicinal Water,’ which the Hon. Susanna Noel of the one part, and the grantees of a piece of waste ground on the Heath of the other (on behalf of Baptist, Earl of Gainsborough, her son, then an infant), bestowed with all the improvements of the same in trust to the sole use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead.
On this land stand the houses and chapel in Well Walk, which when Park lived there produced £95 per annum, the trustees having at that period £1,100 stock in the Three per Cents. In 1859 the estate was said to be capable of producing from £2,000 to £3,000 per annum.