Hampstead and Marylebone

by G. E. Mitton

The girls are received between the ages of six and eleven years, and remain until sixteen. They are trained in every requisite for domestic service, and make all their own clothes except hats and boots. As a badge of the army, they are always dressed in scarlet.

High Street has been greatly changed within recent years, and it is within the memory of living persons that there were trees on each side. The opening of the two new roads, Prince Arthur Road and Gayton Road, affected its appearance. At the corner of Prince Arthur Road is a large Wesleyan chapel in many coloured bricks. Opposite is the King of Bohemia, a public-house which dates back to Jacobean times, and contains some good Jacobean woodwork; also Stanfield House, once the residence of Clarkson Stanfield the artist, now used as a subscription library. The Free Library reading-room is under the same roof. The house is of brick with ivy climbing over it. About the end of old Church Lane cluster a few old red-brick houses, which preserve a certain flavour of picturesqueness in the street. Opposite the Wesleyan chapel a few more peep over more modern additions. The north-east side is almost entirely modern. The Bird in Hand public-house, where the London omnibuses complete their journey, inherits the name and site of an old tavern. A Presbyterian church at the corner of Willoughby Road dates from 1862, but replaces a much older one removed 1736. In the earlier one Mr. Barbauld, chiefly known on account of his famous wife, ministered for many years. After his death Mrs. Barbauld continued to live at Rosslyn Hill.

Heath Street cuts diagonally across the top of High Street. Below the junction it is all modern, immense red-brick buildings of similar type, with large shops on the ground-floors. At the junction is an imposing fire-station, built by Vulliamy in 1874 on the site of the old police-station. The street higher up is narrow and irregular, with a row of elms above the level of the roadway on the west side. A conspicuous Baptist chapel in white stone with two western spires was built in 1862, but the origin of the congregation here dates from the preaching of Whitfield on the Heath in 1739. The watch-house and stocks were formerly situated at the foot of Heath Street, and later removed to Flask Walk. About Golden Square there are many little irregular entwined streets and passages, with here and there a cottage, here and there the flat sashed windows of a house of a bygone generation, all intricate, entangled, but very quaint and charming.

The Grove is a long shady avenue, with one or two fine old houses on either side of the road and a few cottages. At the top is a big boys' school. On the east in one building are Old and New Grove Houses, and opposite is Fenton House, which was long known as the Clock House. New Grove House was the residence of Du Maurier. At the north end is the Hampstead Waterworks reservoir.

A tree-shaded eminence, crowned with pleasant seats and commanding a magnificent view of the Heath, leads to Branch Hill. This, marked in Park's map Prospect Walk, is now called the Judge's Walk. This name is derived from a tradition that the judges came here and held their courts under canvas while the plague was raging in 1665. But derivations of this sort are very easy to make up and entirely unreliable.

Lower and Upper Terraces just behind are full of charming residences. In the former Constable lived at intervals (No. 2) during 1821, and to the latter Mrs. Siddons came in the autumn of 1804. In Montague House Sir G. Scott lived.

Branch Hill runs down into Frognal Rise, and on the west there are one or two big houses scattered about.

Branch Hill Lodge belonged to Sir Thomas Clarke, Master of the Rolls in 1745, who presented it to Lord Chancellor Macclesfield. It was for a period the residence of the Earl of Rosslyn, and tradition connects Lord Byron's name with it. It stands in beautiful and extensive grounds. Further along Branch Hill Road there are many new terraces and one or two big houses.

Hollybush Hill is in a straight line with High Street, and between it and Heath Street there are curious little steep passages and alleys, which resemble those found in some Continental towns. Hollybush Hill is associated with the name of Romney the artist, who lived here and built a studio in 1796. He was then sixty-two, the zenith of his career was past, he suffered from ill-health and was morbid and irritable. The studio was converted into Assembly Rooms after his death, and is now incorporated into the Constitutional Club building which adjoins. This club is social and Conservative. The exterior is of rusticated woodwork, and a flagstaff stands before it. In the curious little side-street known as Holly Mount is the front of the Hollybush Tavern, a stuccoed building with a somewhat fantastic wooden porch or veranda. Three houses in a row face the open space at the top of Hollybush Hill. The most easterly possesses a charming old ironwork gate supported by old brick piers and the inevitable stone balls. This is protected by an outer modern gate. All three houses stand back behind gardens, so that only glimpses of them can be seen from the road.

In Bolton House, the most westerly of the three, Joanna Baillie, dramatic writer, and her sister Agnes lived. Mr. Shaw, writing in the "Dictionary of National Biography," says: "Geniality and hospitality were the characteristics of the two sisters during their residence at Hampstead, and even when one became an octogenarian and the other a nonagenarian they could enter keenly into the various literary and scientific controversies of the day." This is next door to the house known as Windmill Hill, which is also the name given to the locality. Opposite is Mount Vernon, where the Hospital for Consumption stands, a pleasant red-brick building which contains accommodation for eighty in-patients; the out-patient department is in Fitzroy Square. A new wing was opened by Princess Christian in 1893. On the sloping ground near the old workhouse used to stand; before it was a workhouse, Colley Cibber used to meet Booth and Wilkes to arrange his dramatic campaigns in this building.