CHAPTER XII.
CAEN WOOD.

Caen Wood (or Ken Wood, as Lord Mansfield always spelt it), lying between the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, belongs to neither, but is situated in the parish of St. Pancras, which adjoins Hampstead Heath at the upper corner of Lord Mansfield’s demesne. Part of Caen Wood comes out upon the Heath, from which it has been emparked, and the whole is so nearly connected by neighbourhood and association with the local history of Hampstead, that in writing of the one it is impossible to ignore the other.

Ken Wood, a name which Loudon believed preserved the British one of Kerns, or oak-woods, with which its site was anciently covered, is thought by Lysons to be derived from that of some remote possessor, a family of the name of Kentewoode having in bygone times held land in this neighbourhood and in Kentish Town.

Mr. Lloyd quite recently, in a lecture entitled ‘Caen Wood and its Associations,’ gives it as his opinion that the name comes from the French Caen; and he says that in all probability the Conqueror gave the property to a relation of his own, who, having lands at Caen in Normandy, naturally called his new estate after that town. I give this suggestion, which is very probable, for what it is worth.

In the time of Charles II., I learn from Somers’ Tracts, Ken Wood was not the name of a part only, but of the whole remaining portion of the great woods belonging to the See of London, part of the old Forest of Middlesex, of which Park, with reason, imagines Ken Wood to be a remnant.[194] It is situated in the Manor of Cantleowes, in the north-east corner of the parish of St. Pancras, and ‘is a portion of one of its four great manorial properties, viz., Cantleowes, Kentish Town, St. Pancras, Somerstown, Ruggemere, Marylebone, and Tottenhall, Tottenham Court Road.’[195]

Leaving the names of its more ancient proprietors to the dead past, in 1640-42 Sir James Harrington resided at Ken Wood. He was an active Commonwealth man, and fled beyond seas at the Restoration, having narrowly escaped arrest. Subsequently we find Mr. John Bill, the younger, whose father, John Bill, Esq., one of the King’s printers,[196] had been sequestered for delinquency by the Long Parliament, writing to Sir Harry Vane for his advice touching the purchase of the property, which he (Sir Harry), then—1658—resident in his fine house on Hampstead Hill, knew all about. He reports that the ‘estate of Ken Wood appears to him to require handling well; the home demesne is particularly good, and capable of much improvement, but that little castle of ruinous brick and stone could only be used for materials to build another house. There are nearly thirty acres of waste, as ponds, moate, etc., and a deal of trees to be cut down, and many serious expenses to be considered.’ He adds that it is not worth by £100 the price asked for it, and advises his friend not to purchase—advice which appears to have met with the usual fate of counsel that runs counter to the inclination of the client, for two years afterwards (1660) Mr. John Bill the younger purchased the estate. It then consisted of 280 acres of land, well covered with timber, and the house is described as a ‘capital messuage of brick, wood, and plaster.’ That ‘little castle of ruinous brick and stone’ on the demesne must have been a mere excrescence, a relic of more antique times. There were, besides, eight cottages, a farmhouse, windmill, and fishponds.[197] The windmill occupied the summit of what is now known as Parliament Hill, where, says my authority, ‘the trench formed by the removal of its foundation is still to be traced.’[198]

It was, no doubt, the Manor Mill, a source of much profit to the Lord, ‘the tenants being compelled to grind their corn there, at his own price.’ Having ‘found a place that he could live in with comfort,’ as he expresses it, Mr. John Bill married Diana, daughter of Mildmay, Earl of Westmoreland, and widow of John Pelham, Esq., of Brokesly, Lincolnshire, whose name the lady preferred and retained. The St. Pancras register for 1661 records the baptism of Diana, daughter of John Bill and Lady Pelham, at Caen Wood, an event that inspired James Howell, the author of ‘Poems on Several Choice and Various Subjects: Lond. 1663,’ to write one

‘Of Mrs. Diana Bill,
Born and Baptized lately in Cane Wood,
Hard by Highgate.’