[219] The freeholders and copyholders of the manor did not even receive the courtesy of a notice of the intention to bring in the Bill, which was almost surreptitiously passed through the House.
[220] Prints of the handsome arch were treasured in Hampstead homes long after the event. One of them, coloured and gilt, is now before me, rather the worse for sixty-three years’ wear and tear.
[221] The Styrian Hunters were a band of foreign musicians so called, very popular in London just then.
[222] This was written in 1872 before the great hillocks had been levelled, or the pits and hollows filled up.
[223] It is the belief of geologists that the whole of Middlesex was the bed of an estuary of the sea, from which the waters subsided into the Thames.
[224] A lady whose girlhood was spent at Hampstead tells me she used to find bright little stones amongst the gravel, locally known as ‘Hampstead diamonds’; a ring made of them, in her possession, still sparkles very prettily.
[225] These have been found in the gravel-pits, and also a specimen of Concha rugosa.
[226] Authors of the ‘History of Clerkenwell,’ London, 1828.
[227] So called because formed of the united streams which supplied the city and suburbs with clear, sweet, and wholesome water in the west part, whose first decay was owing to certain mills erected thereon by the Knights of St. John, and by degrees gave it the name of Turnmill Brook, which name is still preserved in Turnmill Street, through part of which it took its course. In time this name was lost in that of Fleet Dyke or Ditch.
[228] There is a mystery about this Walk which, when I first knew Hampstead, I often heard spoken of. Now I am told, on very reliable authority, that no such Walk exists; yet the above traditional account of the course of the Fleet was given me as late as 1895 by a very intelligent inhabitant, and he spoke of Willow Walk as if he knew it.