Hampstead and Marylebone

by G. E. Mitton

No suburb of London can point to so many distinguished residents as this, the most favoured and the most favourite. Among them may be mentioned Sir Henry Vane, Dr. Butler (author of the "Analogy"), Lord Alvanley, Lord Chatham, Lord Erskine, Crabbe, Dr. Johnson, Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Barbauld, Constable, Romney, Sir James Mackintosh, Steele, Gay, Arbuthnot, Akenside, Thomas Day, Leigh Hunt, Keats, William Blake, John Linnell, Wilkie, Stanfield, Du Maurier, and many others.

Directly you get within the boundaries of Hampstead you are aware that the borough has an atmosphere of its own—an atmosphere in two senses, for the great height of part of the borough and its distance from London combine to give it as wholesome and pure an air as may be found in any place in England, and an atmosphere in the metaphorical sense—a peculiar feeling of brightness and lightness which proclaims a favoured suburb. Hampstead has always been celebrated for its trees, and in spite of the great annual increase in the number of its houses these have not been wiped out of existence. Nearly every house possesses one or more, and some are very fine specimens. The long sinuous backbone of the borough, beginning as Haverstock Hill, continuing as Rosslyn Hill, and running through High Street and Heath Street to the Heath, is tree-shaded almost all its length. The streets on either side show vistas of irregular red brick, softened and toned down by the greenery of trees; every road is an avenue. The main artery, indicated above, is all uphill, not all equally steep, but collar-work throughout its length; at the top it bifurcates, and the winding of Heath Street reminds one of a Continental town. The steep little streets or alleys running down into it are furnished with steps like the Edinburgh wynds. The way is long, but the toil is forgotten at the summit in the splendid view from the flagstaff. Here the rolling blue outlines of distant hills are emphasized by the beautiful foreground of the West Heath. There is none of what painters call the "middle distance"; everything is near or far, and the near is extraordinarily beautiful, especially if it be seen in springtime when the spray of blossom is like the spray of deep water breaking upon rocks, and the gorse twinkles like the twinkling of ripples in the golden sunlight. The immediate foreground is bare and worn, but a little further away the miniature heights and hollows, the scrubby bush and little winding paths, add that mystery which so greatly increases delight. The pond by the Flagstaff is frequently very gay; there are carriages and horses, children with flotillas of white-sailed craft, and horses splashing knee-deep from end to end of the pond, an advantage much appreciated in the hot and thirsty summer. Away to the east stretches of rolling green form a joyous playground for all at holiday times, but are bare and arid compared with the West Heath.

Below North End on West Heath this character is maintained, and there are few sights in England more beautiful than the richly clothed broken ground stretching away from the slopes below Jack Straw's Castle when the sunlight catches the leaves of the poplars and beeches, making them shine with shimmery silver light. On all sides are magnificent views of distant horizons.

The Heath forms one of the greatest attractions of Hampstead, and that the inhabitants are fully alive to its beauty and importance is shown by their gallant and successful efforts to preserve it intact, when, from time to time, it has been threatened. Neither the proposed curtailments by the Lord of the Manor nor the park-like "improvements" of the London County Council have been permitted. It is still a wide space of undulating ground, outlined by masses of foliage rising to the heights of Highgate, and is an untold boon to the dwellers in the City, who throng its slopes on Bank Holidays. In 1866 a contest arose between the Lord of the Manor, Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, and the inhabitants of Hampstead as to the preservation of the Heath. Up to that date for twenty years a guerilla warfare had been going on in dispute of Sir Maryon Wilson's right to build upon the Heath, and when he began to build a house close to the Flagstaff pond the matter came to an issue. A subscription list was opened called the Hampstead Heath Protection Fund, and the matter was taken into court. Before the case was ended Sir Thomas died, and was succeeded by his brother Sir John, who was open to a compromise. Under an Act of Parliament the Metropolitan Board of Works acquired the Heath for £55,045. The ground thus acquired comprised 220 acres. In 1889-90 Parliament Hill Fields and the Brickfields were purchased for £302,000, with money partly raised by the local Vestries, partly by public subscription, and partly by Metropolitan taxation. The land thus bought from Lord Mansfield and Sir Spencer Wilson comprised 261 acres, and was dedicated to the public as an open space for ever.

The part of the Heath known as East Heath consists of rolling grassy slopes outlined with clumps of trees and intersected by roads and footpaths. The great road known as Spaniards, which cuts across as straight as an arrow, gives the impression of having been banked up and levelled at some previous date, but this appearance is due to the excavations for sand and gravel at its sides which took place while the ground was still under the rule of the lord of the manor.

The Heath has suffered from highwaymen in common with most lonely spots in the vicinity of the Metropolis. One, Jackson, in 1673, was hung behind Jack Straw's Castle for highway murder, but no other very notorious crimes are attached to this spot as there are to Hounslow or Blackheath.

The Heath is not altogether destitute of houses; of those detached, several have had the origin of what Baines terms "Squatters' right," and have established their title by process of time. There are also several hamlets: the Vale of Health, the houses about Jack Straw's Castle, North End, and the group near the Spaniards.

The curious little cluster of buildings called the Vale of Health, situated in a basin near to one of the Hampstead ponds, has always attracted considerable attention. Here Leigh Hunt came to live in 1816; his house was on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. Thornbury quotes an old inhabitant, who writes of Leigh Hunt's cottage as having a "pretty balcony environed with creepers, and a tall arbor vitæ which almost overtops the roof." There are very few even tolerably old houses left here; the little streets are of the modern villa order, and the great square tavern, with its tea-gardens and merry-go-rounds, its shooting-galleries and penny-in-the-slot machines, has vulgarized the place. Prince Esterhazy is said to have taken a house in the Vale of Health in 1840; this has been "long since pulled down." The place is now dedicated to the sweeping tide of merry-makers which flows over it every recurring Bank Holiday.

The charming spot called North End still remains rural in appearance: small cottages with red-tiled roofs and quaint inns survive side by side with the modern red-brick school-house. The Bull and Bush is said to have been the country seat of Hogarth, and later, when it became a tavern, to have been visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Sterne, Foote, and other celebrities. The house is very picturesque: the projecting wing northward is of rusticated woodwork; the leads of the bayed-windows are covered with flowers in summer. There are still the old-fashioned tea-gardens attached.

There are many substantial and comfortable residences about North End, but the Hampstead boundary does not include them all. Wildwoods, or, as it used to be called, North End House, is the most important within the boundary. The original fabric of the house is two centuries old, but has been altered and repaired largely. The spot is named Wildwood Corner in Domesday Book. Its chief historical interest lies in its occupation by William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, who shut himself up here from all communication with his fellow-Ministers in 1767; he was then a miserable invalid, afflicted with a disorder which in modern times would have been termed "nerves"; he refused to see anyone, even his own attendant, and his food was passed to him through a panel of the door. However, he afterwards returned to public life. In Wildwood Terrace are the Home of Rest for the Aged Poor, and a Convalescent Cottage Home. Wilkie Collins was born at North End. Besides this, the names of Linnell, portrait and landscape painter, Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Craik, Eliza Meteyard, a minor author, and Sir Fowell Buxton, are more or less intimately associated with the little hamlet.