Hampstead and Marylebone

by G. E. Mitton

Finchley Road bounds the borough on the west. Beginning at Swiss Cottage, we recall the fact that Hood died in a house near the present railway-station which is now pulled down. The first building that strikes the eye is New College, for Nonconformists, a big stone edifice standing on a green lawn behind a row of small trees. On the opposite side, further northward, building operations are taking place on a large scale. On the west side again is Trinity Church, date 1872, a small church of ragstone with red-tiled roof. We travel much further on before arriving at any other feature of interest, passing Finchley Road Station and the shops gathered in the vicinity, also the Hampstead Public Library, a big building at the corner of Arkwright Road. Hampstead was comparatively slow in adopting the Public Library Act. The site for its library was acquired from Sir Maryon Wilson, and the stone was laid by Sir Henry Harben, who had given £5,000 for the erection of the building. Five branch libraries are established in connection, and the main one is chiefly for reference. This was opened in 1897. Further on, we pass on the east numerous rows of red-brick houses, and on the west the fields and meadow-lands still open.

Then we come to a huge red brick building with terra-cotta facings; this was founded in 1866, and is intended both as a college and seminary. It belongs to the Congregationalists, and their chapel attached is of the same materials, and was founded in 1894. Another well-known institution is Westfield College for ladies, which stands in Kidderpore Avenue on the rising ground to the west of Finchley Road. The front of the house, in which the entrance is, is an old building called Kidderpore Hall, and to this the large modern wing inhabited by the students was added in 1890. The work is for the London Degrees in Arts and Sciences. There are forty-five students, and each one has two rooms, a larger allowance than is made at Girton. Through the fields, beyond the cemetery, a winding footpath takes us over the railway into the Edgware Road.

The part of the road which goes by the name of Shuttup Hill or Shoot-up-Hill deserves some comment. The Knights Templars anciently held an estate here of which the origin is obscure. At the Dissolution King Henry seized it, and handed it over to the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. But their turn was to come also. In 1540 the King despoiled them, and gave Shoot-up-Hill to Sir Roger Cholmeley. At a later date we find that this and the estate at Kilburn were vested in the same holder, Sir Arthur Atye and Judith his wife.

There is very little to remark on in this hill. A few of the houses on the west are not aggressively modern, but those on the east are all startlingly new. St. Cuthbert's Church, built in 1887, stands at the end of St. Cuthbert's Road.

Howitt derives the name of Kilburn from Kule-bourne or Coal-brook. The earliest mention of this locality is when one Godwyn, a hermit, retired here in the reign of Henry I., and "built a cell near a little rivulet, called in different records Cuneburne, Keelebourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne, on a site surrounded with wood." This stream is the same which passed southward to the Serpentine, and empties itself into the Thames at Chelsea, called in its lower course the Westbourne.

Between 1128 and 1134 Godwyn granted his hermitage to the conventual church of St. Peter, Westminster. The Abbot, with the consent of the convent, gave it to three pious maidens, Emma, Gunhilda, and Cristina, who are said to have been maids of honour to Queen Matilda. They were to live here, and Godwyn was to be master warden, and on his death they were to choose some staid and senior person to fill his place. It is to be gathered that the maidens were bound to celibacy, though no particular monastic rule seems to have been enjoined. In the ensuing years there were jealousies between the Bishop of London and the Abbot of Westminster, who both claimed jurisdiction over the Priory. The Pope, in 1224, who arbitrated, gave the award in the Abbot's favour, but the Bishop appealed to the Bishops of Rochester and Prior of Dunstable, and, as they were on his side, he calmly assumed authority. The Priory was enriched by various grants and privileges, and its devotees increased in number. At the dissolution of the monasteries the King gave it to the Prior of St. John of Jerusalem in exchange for some lands he wanted. But in 1540 he wrested it from him, and regranted it to Robert, Earl of Sussex. As has been mentioned above, Kilburn eventually came into the same holding as Shoot-up-Hill.

A sketch of the Priory as it remained in 1772 is still extant, and shows a little barn-like building with exterior buttresses and gable-ends. Needless to say that no trace of it now remains, though its memory is perpetuated in the names of Priory, Abbots, and Abbey Roads.

When the foundations for the London and North-Western Railway were dug in 1850 various relics were found—tessellated tiles, human bones, and a bunch of old-fashioned keys, etc.—which pointed to the fact that the Priory had stood on that site. This spot is still pointed out not far from Kilburn Station, close by the place where Priory Road goes over the railway. It is a most uninteresting spot at present, with dull respectable middle-class shops leading up to it.

A legend of Kilburn given in Timbs' "Romance of London" may be alluded to here. It states that at "a place called St. John's Wood, near Kilburn," there was a stone stained dark-red with the blood of Sir Gervase de Mertoun, who was slain by his brother, who had become enamoured of his wife. Gervase, with his dying breath, exclaimed: "This stone shall be my deathbed!" The brother Stephen suffered remorse for his crime, and ordered a handsome mausoleum to be erected to his victim's memory, which was to be built of stone taken from the quarry where the murder was committed. As the eye of the murderer rested on a certain stone, blood was seen to issue from it. This completed the murderer's horror and remorse; he confessed his fault and died shortly after, leaving his property to Kilburn Priory.

Kilburn Wells became famous about the middle of the eighteenth century, and soon rivalled those of Hampstead as a place of entertainment. Even so late as 1818 they were a favourite resort for Londoners.