Sit and smile on the night.’
Who knows? And Varley, with his portfolio of mingled horoscopes and drawings, must have added many a rapid sketch to these latter from this fair neighbourhood.[131]
Jack Straw’s Castle.
Flagstaff.
At this point the well-known tavern, Jack Straw’s Castle, claims the distinction of occupying the highest of the London levels, standing, as I have elsewhere said, 400 feet (local historians say 443 feet) above the level of the Thames. The tavern, according to a fast-fading tradition, has its name from a robber who assumed it, and who lived on this spot, where, of course, he commanded a good look-out on all footpaths leading to or crossing the Heath. A cave on the premises is said to have been the depository of his spoils. In all probability it had been the site of a rude fort or mound, thrown up as a defence either against or by Jack Straw’s and Wat Tyler’s rebel army.[132] At present Jack Straw’s Castle is best known as a pleasant resort of summer visitors to the Heath, and of late years as the scene of the Christmas Court Leets, one of the rare occasions when the red-crossed flag of St. George, the Lord of the Manor’s flag, waves from the adjacent flagstaff. From this spot two roads fork off, that to the left leading to North End, the other to the Spaniards, an inn standing at the entrance of the Heath on the road to Highgate, on the site of an ancient toll-gate which formerly divided the Bishop of London’s park from Hampstead Heath. It was primitively known as the Gate-house or Park Gate-house, and has its present name from its first landlord, a Spaniard, who converted the lodge into a house of entertainment. So the story runs, but how it grew to a plural is not explained. It is quite outside the precincts of Hampstead, being really in Finchley parish, but is too closely connected with the Heath to be left out in a description of it.
The Spaniards’ Garden.
(From a print by Chastelaine.)