In 1825 the peaceful shades of Caen Wood were the scene of a sad domestic tragedy, for here, in a wood near the house, Colonel James Hamilton Stanhope, who was on a visit to his father-in-law, the second Lord Mansfield, committed suicide. The unhappy gentleman had long been suffering from mental depression, the result of an unhealed gunshot wound he had received at the siege of San Sebastian.
It is pleasant to hear that the present owner of the beautiful demesne is likely to reside there more frequently than his predecessor.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GEOLOGY OF THE HEATH.
The appearance of the Upper Heath, as that portion of it beyond Jack Straw’s Castle to the north-west is called, shows that the purchase of it for the sake of its preservation was not a day too soon, while as far as preserving the primitive beauty of the Heath, it was years too late.
The surface, originally flush with the paddock near the North End Hill, has been delved by sand and gravel diggers into a series of pits and hollows, with corresponding mounds and hillocks. At one period (1811), owing to the multiplicity of building operations going on, upwards of twenty loads a day passed through Hampstead, besides the quantity taken away by other roads.
Looking at the ravaged Heath as it appeared in 1872, it would seem as if this wholesale devastation had been going on ever since, without reference to anything but the market value of the deep layer of gravelly sand which geologists tell us overlays the Heath in places to the depth of 80 feet. No doubt the barren appearance of the surface east of the Spaniard Road and in the vicinity of the Vale of Health may be attributed to the removal of this gravelly substratum till the clay was reached, which formed the vari-coloured hillocks that used to make quite a feature of this portion of the landscape. Subsequently, as we have seen, the highest part of the Heath was treated as one huge gravel-pit, the purchasers of which dug out their loads any and every where, encroaching within my memory on the Fir-tree Avenue, in front of the historic houses at Park Gate, as this entrance to the Heath continues to be called; and, not content with delving it in the open, the purchasers were permitted to ruthlessly dig out the sand from under and between the roots of the fine old trees, undermining many of them, and leaving them a prey to the first tempest.
In this way nearly all the trees on this part of the Heath have suffered; and to this cause may be attributed the fragmentary condition of the Stone Pine Avenue, and the curious exposition at one time of the efforts of some of the remaining ones to support themselves by sending pile-like roots into the ground on the side on which they are most exposed to tempests. Fortunately for their existence, the Board of Works have taken steps to preserve their weird beauty to the Heath, and protect the groups of elm and ash and other trees, which so long as the season of leafage and blossom remains to them will literally keep green the memory of that lover of Nature, the planter of the majority of them, Mr. Turner, of Thames Street.
Naturalists and geologists may still find here abundant materials for their studies,[222] and the geology of Hampstead Heath would in capable hands prove a most interesting chapter in its history. But the writer is not a geologist, so must be content to summarise what others have said, or written, of it.