The house appears to have been particularly affected by members of the law. It was tenanted by Mr. Thomas Walker, Master in Chancery, and subsequently by Lord Loughborough (afterwards Lord Rosslyn). In 1799 it was purchased by Colonel Parker, a younger son of Lord Macclesfield; and later on it became the residence of Mr. Thomas Neave (eldest son of Sir Richard Neave, Bart.), who was living here when Park wrote his history. This gentleman amused himself by altering, adding to, and greatly improving the house and grounds. He was fond of collecting painted glass, and, besides some very fine Continental specimens, obtained much of that which Bishop Butler possessed; and the pieces from the old Chicken House were said to have found a sanctuary at Branch Hill Lodge.[91] The house has had other tenants since then, and whether the painted glass has been removed or still adorns the mansion, I know not.
Considerably raised above the road, to the left, upon a sort of wedge-shaped promontory of land pushing out into the highway, between Branch Hill and Frognal House, one is attracted by an ancient grove of lime-trees, at the end of which is Montagu House, so called in honour of Mr. Montagu, whose memory the people of Hampstead with great reason revere.
The house was formerly the home of Mr. Flitcroft, the architect, who, finding the then beautiful avenue ready grown, built a villa at the end of it. He died in 1769. His fortune was due to what proved to be a happy accident. A man of great natural talent, but employed at Burlington House as a journeyman carpenter, a fall from a scaffold and a broken leg brought him to the notice of Lord Burlington,[92] a born builder himself, a patron of art, and evidently also a man of much humanity and warmth of heart. In some drawings with which Flitcroft amused himself during his recovery, his lordship discovered great cleverness, and interesting himself in his advancement, got him placed on the Board of Works, of which he eventually became Comptroller. He was the architect of St. Giles’s Church, London, and unfortunately for his fame, as we have elsewhere said, of St. John’s Church, Hampstead. His St. Olave’s, Tooley Street, is his most original work; St. Giles’s is but an inferior copy of Wren.
During his residence Montagu House had been known as Frognal Grove, a name it retained during the residence of Edward Montagu, Esq., Master in Chancery, who, some time subsequent to 1769, tenanted it.[93] A man of sense and refined feeling, a philanthropist and practical benefactor to Hampstead, he was one of the leaders of a band of gentlemen who had wakened up from the general apathy as to the moral, social, and religious wants of their poorer neighbours, and who (to quote Park), ‘setting their faces against the drinking habits prevalent in mixed society, pledged themselves to keep within the bounds of temperance, and to introduce subjects, or topics of conversation, that should tend to improve the understanding and the mind. Under the ill-chosen name of Philo-investiges, the members of the society held their meetings at the Flask Tavern, and from the quarterly subscriptions, fines, etc., established a fund for charitable purposes.’[94]
In 1787 the members, with Mr. Montagu at their head, founded the Hampstead Sunday-School, a proof that the intention of the society had been adhered to, and had borne fruit after its kind, for in those days, when neither national[95] nor other schools existed in villages for the children of the poor, the value of Sunday-schools could scarcely be overrated. Mr. Perceval also patronized this school. It is only just to say that the absolute founder of the Sunday-school was Mr. Thomas Mitchell, who kept a school at Hampstead for twenty-two years on week-days, and was so real a philanthropist that he continued the vocation on Sundays for the benefit of poor children.
To return to Mr. Montagu. This gentleman was the trusted friend of Lord Mansfield, who placed in his hands his resignation of the Lord Chief Justiceship. After Mr. Montagu’s death, and in honour of him, Frognal Grove was called Montagu House, a name it still retains.
Stevens, the Shakespearian annotator, had a house in Frognal before he purchased the premises of the Upper Flask, which is now known as Upper Heath.
Previous to 1811 Lord Walpole had a residence at Frognal, which Mr. Thomas Kestevan afterwards bought for £400, the price of a very humble abode in the present day. At this time two of the four joint purchasers of the Belsize estate, German Lavie and James Abel, Esqs., were living in Frognal. Thomas Carr, Esq., had a residence here early in the present century, where Crabb Robinson was a frequent visitor. His house appears to have been the literary centre of this part of Hampstead, and the pleasant diarist tells us of meeting there on one occasion Sir Humphry Davy and his bride (Mrs. Apreece), the poet Wordsworth, and Joanna Baillie, adding that ‘Sir Humphry and Lady D—— seem hardly to have finished their honeymoon.’
Frognal in the present day is by no means devoid of literary associations. In the cosy home known as Frognal End resides the well-known and well-regarded Sir Walter Besant, whose unstained pen, powerful as the lamp of Aladdin, has helped to raise a Palace of Delight in the dreary heart of East London, and where the thick ‘darkness of ignorance’ prevailed has let in light and hope, and the love of healthful and intelligent pleasures.
When Baines was writing his ‘Records of Hampstead,’ the late well-known artist and novelist, George du Maurier, was living in New Grove House. He had been resident at Hampstead for many years, and, like others of his brotherhood, appears to have found the neighbourhood helpful to his art. A well-known writer[96] tells us ‘that the Hampstead scenery made in Punch his mountains and valleys, his backgrounds and foregrounds ... the group of Scotch firs suggested a deer forest ... and the distant dome of St. Paul’s an always interesting perspective point.’[97]