Hence it occurred to me that I might fill a vacant place in the literature of ‘Sweet Hampstead,’ and give to others, without the toil, the pleasure I have had in recalling forgotten incidents connected with it, and memories of some of the celebrated men and women who, from the days of Queen Anne till our own, have added to the intrinsic delights of the place the charm of their association with it.
When the idea of undertaking ‘this labour of love’ occurred to me, the window near which I loved to write commanded a last fragmentary view of Gospel Oak Fields, which divided Hampstead from the parish of St. Pancras. These fields were even then (early in the sixties) in the hands of speculative builders, but a few green hedges, a group of elms, a pollard oak or two—scions, perhaps, of the traditionary one that for centuries had given its name to these now obliterated prata et pasturas—remained.
Ten years previously the hollow trunk of a very aged tree (fenced round) was still standing, and was locally said to be the remains of the original Gospel Oak, one of the many so called, in various counties of England, from the use made of them by the Preaching Friars, who under their shade were wont to read and explain the Scriptures to the people. It was at that time, and for years afterwards, used as a boundary tree, when once in three years the clergyman, parochial authorities, and charity children perambulated the boundaries of the parish of St. Pancras, of which it was the terminus in this direction.
Where Fleet Road is now, the shallow remnant of the once ‘silvery Fleet,’ as Crosby calls it in his ‘Additional Notes,’ written only a very few years before the period I am writing of, ‘meandered, irrigating those charming meadows which reach on either side of Kentish Town.’
South End Road, 1840.
In my time it crept, a sluggish stream, a mere ditch in dry weather, but after copious rain it rose suddenly, brimming to its margin, to disappear at the end of Angler’s Lane by a subterranean channel under part of Kentish Town, where it once more came to light as a narrow runlet in the main road that was easily stepped over. There were persons then living who remembered this portion of the river, a limpid stream flowing by the west side of Kentish Town towards King’s Cross, for it is not much more than half a century since it was arched over and built upon.
The fields through which it passed showed signs of its meanderings, and were still lovely with trees that had figured in many an artist’s sketch-book, and had thence imparted the refreshment of their pictured beauty to many a home.
The footpath through these meadows from Kentish Town followed the curve of an old rivulet scarcely dry in places, the whole course of which was traceable in the wavering line of aged willows, hollow and splintered, but putting forth hoar green branches above the exhausted stream that had once fed their roots.
This was Mary Shelley’s lovely walk from Kentish Town through the fields, with their fine old elms and rivulets and alder-trees, and a view to the north of the wooded heights of Highgate. In her time Carlton Road and the region thereabouts were all meadows.