Shepherd’s Well.
The road becomes steeper at the entrance of Rosslyn Street, where one looks in vain for the old ‘Chicken House,’ which Brewer describes ‘near the entrance of the village, an ancient domestic dwelling of low proportions built of brick,’ in all probability the home of the wood-reeve or keeper, and not, as local tradition persisted in believing it, a royal hunting-lodge.[48]
In 1815 it was in a state of dilapidation, the front disfigured by the presence of some miserable tenements, and in 1866 was so built in, blocked up, and divided, that, with the exception of the wide oaken staircase projecting into a yard at the end of the narrow alley—about the sixth house to the right in Rosslyn Street—no part of the original structure remained. Up these stairs on the night of August 25, 1619, passed James I. and his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, an event commemorated by two small portraits of the monarch and his Master of the Hounds, preserved till late in the eighteenth century in the window of an upper room in the Chicken House, with another painting of the infant Christ in the arms of Simeon. Under the former was inscribed: ‘Icy dans cette chambre couche nostre Roy Jacques premier de nom, le 25th Aoust 1619’—a legend sufficient in itself to show that the incident was an unusual one.
Here Mr. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, whose attachment to Hampstead is said to have ‘amounted to a passion,’ was in the habit of taking up his summer quarters. Towards the latter years of the eighteenth century it was a favourite lodging-house for young gentlemen from the Inns of Law, the Toupees, and other sprightly youths of fashion, who affected Hampstead for the facilities the horse-course afforded of exhibiting their talents as curricle and hackney-coach drivers.
Gale, the antiquary, also lodged here, and on one occasion commissioned Signore Grisoni to make a drawing of the picturesque old church, an entry of which is preserved in the Trust Book.[49]
In 1754 Gale returned to the Chicken House, where he died. He was buried in the old churchyard. To the left of Rosslyn Hill, a little removed from the road, at the commencement of the bank, which shows the depth to which the hill has been cut down, stands the large red-brick mansion, occupying the site, and in part formed of, Vane House, a staircase of which is preserved.[50] It is now the Home for Soldiers’ Daughters, which was formally opened for their habitation by the Royal Consort, Prince Albert, on a summer’s day of 1860. A little beyond, on the same side of the way, is Green Hill, where, on the site of the late eminent publisher’s house (William Longman, Esq.[51]), stands the new Wesleyan Chapel, and, divided from it by Prince Arthur’s Road, Stanfield House, which preserves in its name that of the well-known marine painter, Clarkson Stanfield, who for some years resided here, never tired of tending his pretty garden, which has almost entirely disappeared. It is now the Institute and Public Library.
Vane House, 1800.
On the right are Rosslyn Hill Schools and Trinity Presbyterian Church.[52] It was formerly called Red Lion Hill. The original site of the small secluded chapel, in which Rochemont Barbauld officiated from 1785 to 1799, now underlies in part the present Unitarian Chapel schoolroom.