But, unfortunately, there were other troubles to be encountered. The Board of Works were privileged to make grants of some portions of the Heath, a privilege that resolved itself into helping certain influential individuals to enclose some of the loveliest and most interesting portions of it into their own premises. The angle of ground on which stood the famous group of trees, the Nine Elms, was made over to the late Lord Mansfield, with what result we all know. Another gentleman, before a voice could be raised against it, was allowed to enclose the loveliest bit of North End, known for generations as the Lovers’ Walk, in his demesne. And just when a third claimant was bargaining for the historic grove of trees called the Judge’s Walk, the remnant of which recalls a memorable fact, not only in the history of Hampstead, but of England,[307] Mr. Le Breton, who had fortunately heard of the transaction, was enabled to interfere and frustrate it.
A similar piece of good fortune helped the inhabitants to preserve the remains of the Old Avenue at North End from being enclosed in an adjacent demesne. The committee of the Hampstead Heath Protection Society, who now charge themselves with looking after the Heath and maintaining it intact for the people, are resolved on getting back as many of its original acres as possible. When, therefore in the summer of the year 1898 the beautiful estate of Golder’s Hill, the residence of the late Sir Spencer Wells, was to be sold, the inhabitants of Hampstead were naturally disturbed by the report that a syndicate of builders were plotting its purchase, with the intention of covering the charming grounds with streets of houses.
Part of these grounds impinge upon the Heath, and it was said included the Flagstaff Hill, the very crowning point of view upon it, the threatened loss of which affected all the inhabitants, and roused, says my authority, a collective spirit of resistance. A letter from Mrs. Hart, widow of the artist, who had left a sum of money for such contingencies, appeared in some of the London papers, and called popular notice to the threatened vandalism. A committee was formed, and subscriptions were raised, to which the local and London County Councils, as well as many of the inhabitants of Hampstead, generously contributed, till the whole of the purchase-money, £40,500, was in a very short time happily provided.
It is intended to let the house, but the picturesque grounds are to be kept in their integrity and added to the Heath, from which, the new ride now divides them. The cost of the ground purchased averages about £1,000 per acre. This was the price paid to Lord Mansfield for 209 acres of the Heath, while Sir Spencer Wilson received £100,000 for sixty-one acres, making together, with all extra expenses in the purchase of the Heath, £302,000.
Everyone who knows the pleasant suburb must rejoice that a neighbourhood which has delighted the people of successive ages, as well as our own, is reserved to give enjoyment to those who shall come after us, and that henceforth, from generation to generation, each being, we may hope, more able to appreciate its natural beauty than the last, Hampstead will continue to be the scene of unnumbered holidays; the Heath,
‘Where sweet air stirs
Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold,’[308]
with its wide margin of hundreds of added acres, under the wise supervision of skilled conservators, growing year by year into fuller beauty of Nature-planted wild-flowers and indigenous furze and ferns.
Long may the people of the close courts and alleys of London come hither in their tens of thousands on the gold-letter days of their sparse holidays, to revel in the winnowing freshness of its breezy height, and pleasant groves and lanes and grassy nooks, and take back with them to their crowded homes a measure of the health that ‘floats upon the genial atmosphere.’ So shall Hampstead still (as in old Drayton’s time) ‘remain the noblest hill.’