Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

No traces of such a road have been found on Hampstead Heath, though Roman relics and proofs of Roman burial have been discovered there, and accepted by our oldest antiquaries as strengthening their theory of the Watling Way having skirted or crossed it. That there was a road from St. Albans to the Heath is curiously confirmed by an old French folio, published in Paris (time of Elizabeth), which explains the reasons why the Romans built a city on the site of the present London,[20] and states that ‘subsequent to the recall of the legions in consequence of its rapid growth and absorption of the population and commerce of the other great cities, it so raised the envy and indignation of their inhabitants, that the people of St. Albans threatened to come and destroy the rising city of London, until the Londoners advanced as far as Hampstead Heath, where they entrenched themselves, and prepared to do battle in defence of their homes.’ A writer in the New Monthly Magazine, commenting on this extract, says that the remains of the entrenchments are still pointed out.[21]

Dr. Hughson, writing of the Reed-mote, or six-acre field, formerly to the north-west of White Conduit House, and which was supposed to have been the site of a Roman camp, observes ‘that a Roman road[22] passed this way, we have great reason to believe, for from Old Ford we pass Mere (vulgarly called Mare Street), Kingsland, Islington, Highbury, the Hollow-way, Roman Lane, over Hampstead Heath through Hendon to Verulam.’ With the vanishing of the pilgrims’ route over Hampstead Heath, we lose the reason for the name of the hamlet suggested by Lysons, who supposed the wearied pilgrims on reaching the heath to exclaim at the sight of the city at their feet, ‘Hame-sted!’ the place of their home and the end of their journey. Park believes the homely name was given to it by the Saxon churls[23] who inhabited it previous to the date of the Domesday Survey.[24]

In the time of Abbot Leofstan, when Albanus[25] had become a very popular saint, ‘especially with merchants and traders going beyond sea, who sought his protection, and made rich offerings at his shrine,’ the state of the great forest, its ways infested not only with beasts of prey, but by ‘outlaws, fugitives, and other abandoned beings,’ with the probable effect of diminishing the revenues of his Church, set the Abbot seriously to the task of removing these obstructions. He had the woods in part cut down, rebuilt bridges, repaired rough places, and finally entered into a contract with a certain knight to defend the highway with two trusty followers, and be answerable to the Church for anything that might happen through his neglect.[26]

In the eighth of Henry III., the great Forest of Middlesex was ordered to be disforested, giving the citizens of London, as Stowe tells us, ‘an opportunity of buying land, and building, whereby the suburbs were greatly extended.’

But the disforesting appears to have been partial, and the building limited to the east. Hampstead retained its woods in all their savage wildness; the paths through them, to the terror of passengers, continued to be scoured by wild beasts, especially wolves, which had not all been extirpated when the ‘Boke of St. Alban’s’ was written.[27]

During Henry III.’s reign (1256) we find Richard de Crokesley, Abbot of Westminster, ‘“assigning the whole produce of Hamestede and Stoke for the celebration of his anniversary in that monastery by ringing of bells, giving doles during a whole week, to the amount of 4,000 denarii. A thousand to as many paupers on the first day, and the same dole to 500 others on the six days following. A feast with wine, a dish of meat and a double pittance to the monks in the refectory. A Mass by the Convent in copes, on the anniversary day; and four Masses daily at four different altars for the repose of his [the Abbot’s] soul for ever!” With many other daily forms and ceremonies. But the keeping of this commemoration was found to be so heavy a burden that the monks petitioned the Pope in less than ten years after the Abbot’s death to dispense with it, and he very sensibly sent his mandate to Westminster, dated 5 Kal. June, 1267, declaring that he found these things to abound more in pomp than the good of souls, and “that it was evident they accorded not with religion, nor were suitable to religious persons,” and recommending the monks to limit the mode of commemoration to their ideas of the dead Abbot’s deserts, and the advantages that had accrued to the monastery by his administration. Upon which the said manors and revenues became at the free disposal of the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, towards the welfare of the abbey; an annual portion of 10 marks being assigned for making such celebration as that sum would admit of for the said Richard de Crokesley.’[28]

At the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII., by way of a sop to the Church, created a new bishopric, that of Westminster, giving it for its diocese the county of Middlesex, of which he deprived London. Great part of the revenues of the dissolved monastery were settled upon the new bishopric, the manor and advowson of Hampstead making a portion of it, but in nine years the new Bishop had alienated his lands to such an extent that there was scarcely anything left to maintain ‘the port of a Bishop.’

In this reign, while the Manor of Hampstead was in the hands of the newly-made Bishop of Westminster, we find that a considerable part of the woods still covered the ground in this neighbourhood, as well as in that of Hornsey, and that game was still plentiful in them.

Of this we have proof in the proclamation of the King for the preservation of his sport in these places:[29]

‘A Proclamacion yt noe p’son interrupt the King’s game of Partridge or phesaunt.