“Don’t you think ’Iget pretty?” he asked.
“Really,” the guest is supposed to have replied, “I haven’t known you long enough to say.”
“I’m not talking of meself,” returned the Alderman, “but of ’Iget on the ’Ill.”
Until 1813 coaches and foot-passengers alike toiled over the Hill, through Highgate village, and by a roundabout road into East End, Finchley, which, with its adjoining hamlets, was until quite recently so greatly cut off from London by these comparatively Alpine heights and the lack of suburban railways, that it was, for all practical purposes, as distant as many other places fifty or sixty miles away, but situated on more level roads or on direct railway routes. To remedy this the Archway Road was cut direct from the Upper Holloway Road to East End, saving half a mile in the distance to be travelled and a hundred feet in the height to be climbed.
The Archway and the Archway Road were constructed about 1813, following upon the failure of the original idea of driving a tunnel through the hill-top. The Hill is a great outstanding knob of London clay, a substance both difficult and dangerous to pierce; but it was not until the work was nearly completed that it fell in, one day in 1812, happily before the labours of the day had been begun. The present open cutting of the Archway Road, rather over a mile in length, took the place of the projected tunnel, and the Archway was constructed for the purpose of carrying Hornsey Lane across the gap. If an unlovely, it was in its way an impressive, structure, even though the impression was, rather of the nightmare sort. It was scarcely necessary, for Hornsey Lane has been at no time a place of great resort, and the traffic along it could have been diverted at small cost, and with little inconvenience made to cross the Archway Road by a circuitous route. Highgate Archway has now disappeared, giving place to a lighter structure, spanning the road without the support of the cumbrous old piers which, until the summer of 1900, continued to block three-fourths of the way. It has gone because the road-traffic has grown with the suburbs and the way was not wide enough; but its disappearance removes a landmark proclaiming where town and country met.
The making of the Archway and the road was no public-spirited act, but the commercial undertaking of a Company, whose total expenses were very large, and, by consequence, the tolls exacted extremely high. Pedestrians were not chargeable at ordinary toll-gates, but here they had to pay a penny, or go the tedious way over the Hill. Sixpence was levied on every laden or draught horse.
It was not a profitable undertaking, even at these rates, and the tolls had a very decided effect in stemming the advance of Suburbia in this direction. In 1861, when the abolition of tolls within fifty miles of London was a burning question, the Company owed the Consolidated Fund no less than £13,000. The Government bought it out for £4,000, receiving £9,000 by instalments spread over fifteen years, after which period the road was to be declared free. It was accordingly opened free of toll in 1876. And thus it remained, as in the illustration, until 1897, when it was demolished and the roadway widened. The present Archway was opened in 1900.
XI
East End, Finchley, to which we now come, is one of the many straggling settlements built upon Finchley Common. Stretches of fields alternate with rows of new shops and tiny old-world cottages. Here stands the “Bald-Faced Stag,” with the effigy of a stag surmounting the appropriately bald elevation of that huge and ugly public-house. The yards of monumental masons jostle it on either hand; a grim and unpleasing conjunction, and a prelude to those vast townships of London’s dead, the St. Marylebone, Islington, and St. Pancras Cemeteries, which with other properties of the Cemetery Companies render the road dismal and people these northern heights with a vast population of departed citizens. The merry market-gardener has betaken himself and his cabbages to other parts, and the builder builds but sparely.
Just where the Great Northern Railway bridge crosses over the road at East End stands the “Old White Lion,” in a pretty wooded dip of the road. The house was once known, and marked on the maps as the “Dirt House,” from its having been the house of call of the market-wagons on the way to London with produce, and on the way back with loads of dirt and manure. The wood was also known as “Dirt House Wood.” It was here also that Horne the coachmaster’s stables were situated.