Now if silence and dulness be signs of propriety, few places can be better behaved than West End Green, or what is left of it; even the cheerful clangour of the blacksmith’s forge, which used to stand at the further end of it, where many a traveller’s tire has been mended, and many a loose shoe replaced for gentlemen of the road in their wake, has passed away, and though the Cock and Hoop stands where it did, that, too, is changed, and has taken to new ways, and ‘lives cleanly.’[108] Only the conservative old houses still set their faces against class confusion, and aim at retirement behind tall walls and taller trees. But rank upon rank of modern minor houses is rapidly approaching from the south, while New West End, on the other side of the highway, threatens to absorb the fields still stretching between the Finchley Road and Kidderpoor Hall—a mansion which is said to occupy one of the healthiest situations in Middlesex, and was at one time recommended for a royal nursery.[109] A short distance along the main-road brings us to Platt’s Lane, leading to Child’s Hill. Almost opposite to this a path takes from the Finchley Road by Fortune Green Lane back to West End.
Another and shorter way to Child’s Hill is by the footpath at New West End, which, crossing diagonally a hillside field, takes through two others, in the last of which in line, but at a distance from each other, are three trees—an elm, lime, and horse-chestnut—remarkable in summer time for their richness of foliage and fine shape. At the end of this field (to the left of which is a pretty house of modest dimensions, and on the right in a hollow a barn) there is an opening into Platt’s Lane, which takes its name from a former owner of Child’s Hill House, Thomas Platt, Esq., which house subsequent to 1811, when he resided at Upper Terrace, he altered and enlarged. Brewer gives an engraving of it in his ‘Beauties of England and Wales,’ 1813, and describes it as an unostentatious brick building, with a cottage roof, and though it has been raised a story by its recent proprietor, Joseph Hoare, Esq.,[110] it is perfectly recognisable in the engraving. The ground to the east of Platt’s Lane preserves the pastoral character it must have had two centuries ago, and which induced the trustees of the Campden Charity to invest their trust in the purchase of ‘fourteen acres of meadow land at Child’s Hill for the benefit of the poor at Hampstead.’
Leg of Mutton Pond.
At the top of Platt’s Lane, where the road is crossed by Child’s Hill Lane, is a bit of waste, an unclaimed angle, where the turf grows green or sunburnt with the seasons, and which in bygone years was seldom without the ‘burnt spot’ which marks the camping-place of gipsies. Now the trees are scant about it, and the gipsies rarely seen, though till 1825-30 Hampstead Heath was seldom without some stragglers of the tawny tribe. Walking on, we pass the back of the premises of Child’s Hill House,[111] which, standing some 300 feet above the level of the Thames, commands charming and extensive views, and is surrounded by several acres of pleasure-ground and gardens. A short distance further on we enter the West Heath Road, and can either follow it to its junction with the Broad Walk, or cross the sandy margin of the Heath in any direction we please. There is a way by the bottom of Leg of Mutton Pond, or, if we prefer it, we can strike into a path higher up than the boggy ground which occupies a wide space on either side of the watercourse running into it. From the higher ground the views are delightful, and there are seats scattered here and there in the most eligible places for enjoying them. Upon the brow of the Heath, North End Hill as it is called, some of the houses in the North End Road are seen now to be facing us. There lies Cedar Lawn and the wooded grounds of Hill House, fraternally looking towards Child’s Hill; in 1856 the residence of another member of the Hoare family; and pushing out a recently-erected wall many feet beyond its original enclosure is Heath Lodge, of which there is a story to tell.
This house was built by a Mrs. Lessingham, an actress of no very good repute, on a piece of gorse-covered waste about 1775. Having wit as well as beauty, she appears to have done pretty much as she liked, for having a mind to a villa at Hampstead, no obstacle appears to have been thrown in the way of a grant of land to build on, either by the Lord of the Manor or his agent, although she was not a copyholder of the manor, upon which the copyholders, headed by one Master Folkard, asserted their common rights, and destroyed the building as fast as it was raised. In order to obviate the illegality of the transaction, Mrs. Lessingham[112] purchased an insignificant cottage, and so became a copyholder; and being supported by Mr. Justice Addington, she braved the lawsuit (by means of which the Hampstead people hoped to exorcise the witch) and won it. The accounts of the riots at Hampstead between the builder’s men and the copyholders, or the mob who represented them, afforded the newspapers a subject for some time, and engaged the satirical pen of George Steevens, who sided with the Helen of the local war. She, clever as impudent, turned her opponents and their efforts into ridicule, and published an account (metrical) of the transaction and of the actors in it, which is not to be bought at the present day. She was sufficiently popular as an actress to figure on articles of pottery of the period, and I have met with her effigy at Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinsons’ rooms, in the character of Ophelia, on one of Sadler of Liverpool’s printed tiles. Mrs. Lessingham appears to have held quiet possession of her Hampstead villa for the brief remainder of her life, dying there in 1783; she was interred in the village churchyard, where her son subsequently erected an altar-tomb to her memory.[113]
At present Heath Lodge is the residence of D. Powell, Esq.,[114] since whose occupation a pretty bosky bit of waste between his premises and those of Hill House has been enclosed, and a meagre footpath substituted.
In 1750 the hamlet of West End contained about forty houses. Abrahams, in his ‘Book of Assessments’ (1811), has unfortunately included it with Frognal, and by thus confusing the localities has deprived us of the exact information his pamphlet would otherwise have supplied.