THE “GREEN MAN,” HATTON.
THE HIGHWAYMAN’S HIDING-HOLE.
That Putney Heath was a favourite resort of the gentry of the horse-pistol and crape mask is a mere commonplace to the student of these byways of history, and, however little it may be suspected by those who look in casually at the “Green Man” that stands on the crest of Putney Hill, where the Heath and the Portsmouth Road begin, that house was in the old days rightly suspect. About it—and no doubt also in it—lurked that bright and shining light of the craft, Jerry Avershawe, that bold spirit who, after making his name a name of dread, and Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common places to be avoided by all travellers with money and valuables to lose, died on the scaffold at Kennington in 1795, in his twenty-second year.
Footpads, too, frequented the “Green Man”: despicable fellows, who were to highwaymen what “German silver” and “American cloth” are to the real articles. The footpads waited for revellers who had taken too much liquor and were zig-zagging their unsteady way home, before they dared attack. A curious little incident in this sort was enacted in 1773 at the “Green Man.” Two convivial fellows drinking there had been watched by two footpads named William Brown and Joseph Witlock. When the two jolly topers came forth and corkscrewed a devious course home-along, Messrs. Brown and Witlock set upon them and secured the highly desirable booty of twenty guineas and some snuff-boxes and pen-knives. It was ill gleaning for any other of the fraternity, after thoroughgoing practitioners like these had gone over the pockets of the lieges. The smallest involuntary contributions were gratefully received, and they condescended even to relieve a baker’s boy of his little all, which was little indeed: consisting of a silver buckle and some halfpence. It is rather satisfactory, after all this, to learn that Messrs. Brown and Witlock were hanged.
The “Green Man” still keeps a stout, bolt-studded door, and the house, seen across the road from where the large old-fashioned pound for strayed horses, donkeys, and cattle stands on the Heath, presents a charming scene.
The “Spaniards” inn, that picturesque and picturesquely situated old house, built about 1630, in what was then an extremely lonely situation on the roadside between Hampstead and Highgate, stands actually in the parish of Finchley. It occupies the site of a lodge-entrance into what was once the Bishop of London’s great rural park of Finchley, where there stood until quite modern times a toll-gate that took tribute of all wayfarers. The odd little toll-house itself is still a feature of the scene, and may be noted on the left hand of the illustration.
How the “Spaniards” derived its name is rather a matter of conjecture than of ascertained, sheer, cold-drawn fact. If the generally received version be correct, the name should be spelled with an apostrophe “s,” to denote a single individual; for, according to that story, the original lodge was taken over by a Spaniard about 1620, and converted into a place of entertainment for Londoners, who even then had begun to frequent Hampstead and the Heath. The fact that the Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, retiring from the danger of plague in the infected air of London, resided at neighbouring Highgate, 1620-22, may possibly have some bearing upon the question.
