Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

Their stars are more in fault than they.’

The house next the Evergreens, Heath End House, was in 1811 in the possession of Edward Coxe, Esq., the author of various poems, many of them referring to the Heath;[138] and the large square one opposite the beautiful grove of pine-trees (which Constable painted, and which were raised from seeds of the stone-pine brought from Ravenna,[139] and planted by that ancient Sylvanus of the Heath, Mr. Turner, a retired tobacconist of Thames Street) originally belonged to him, but at the date above mentioned was the residence of Charles Bosanquet, Esq. It stands on an eminence, and is said to command beautiful and extensive views. These houses have had various tenants since then, but not one who has conferred such lasting benefits on the Heath as Mr. Turner, who appears to have devoted his retired leisure to beautifying it. The groups of ash and elm and horse-chestnut trees, now railed in (thanks to the Board of Works) for their better preservation, are of his planting. He also made the road, the Sandy Road, as it is called, from this point to North End. Hereabouts is the scene of that charming bit of nature, to which we have already referred, ‘Taking out a Thorn,’ which had for its point of view, the late Mr. Charles Collins tells us, the clump of fir-trees near the Spaniards, looking towards North End. ‘There, upon the bank, sits the old furze-cutter, extracting a thorn from the finger of a chubby urchin, who rubs his eye dolefully during the operation with the corner of his pin-before.’

North Heath.

If, following the tree-shaded winding way, we make a little détour to the right, we shall see, lying in the bottom, half in shade, by reason of new sheds and a great square, vane-crested barn (the natural outcome of thrifty labour, and better times for farmers than of late), the little Morland-like farmhouse to which they belong. When the trees about it are in leaf, its high-pitched, red-tiled roof, white weather-boarded front, and small windows, set in a garden in which rue and southernwood still flourish, the whole inclosed with palings and defended by a gate on the latch, makes a pretty picture. A few ash-trees, the remains of a grove of them, fringe the path to it past the new barn, and the view in front is closed by a little gravelly hill, on the summit of which seats are placed, and charming views are to be had for the climbing. This is Collins’ Farm, now called Tooly’s Farm, a dwelling that, for all its seeming humility, has been the temporary abode of many men of genius.[140]

This was for successive summers the ‘sunshine holiday’ home of the elder Linnell and his family, who perhaps never worked harder himself than when here, and who, being here, drew around him a little company of his brother artists and men of letters—amongst them Blake, Varley, Flaxman, and Morland.

Nearer to our own times Dickens had lodgings here, and wrote, it is said, several chapters of ‘Bleak House’ in this retirement. Lover is also said to have made it his summer quarters on one occasion. Other artists than the elder Linnell have found its simple comfort and quiet, in addition to its close proximity to the lovely Heath and its surroundings, excellent reasons for preferring Collins’ Farm to more pretentious lodgings in the neighbourhood. It is easy to return from this point to the broad holly hedge opposite Lord Erskine’s house. At the end of it is the site (until quite recently) of the most interesting relic that Hampstead retained of what may be called its classic days—the Nine Elms, whose boughs had shaded the favourite resting-place of Pope and Murray (the after owner of Ken Wood, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield). Poetically they were dedicated to the Muses,

‘Who chose them for their favourite shrine:

The trees were elms, their number nine.’

So sang Edward Coxe, the poet of the Heath, and friend and neighbour of Erskine, who, because they impeded his view, had had a mind to have them cut down, but spared them for the sake of their associations. ‘So late as the spring of 1872 these trees were standing. In April or May of that year the writer of a letter to the Board of Works, which appeared in the Hampstead Express, called their attention to a bit of unappropriated land near the Nine Elms on the Spaniards Road, and suggested that, as the Board had got possession of Judges’ Walk, the Wildwood Avenue, the triangular piece of ground at the end of Holford Road, and the piece of ground where the band used to play, the Vestry should endeavour to get hold of this also.’ But soon after it was stated that the ground had been granted to Lord Mansfield, and the first thing that had been done was to cut down these trees, with which the name of his famous kinsman had been so charmingly connected.