The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

High Barnet

High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, is a far more important place than Edgware or the Stanmores, and is supposed to date from Anglo-Saxon times. Its site, with that of East Barnet, both once covered with the forest of Southaw, belonged to the abbots of St. Albans, to whom Henry I. granted the privilege of holding a weekly market in it, and it is still the chief cattle-mart of the district, a great fair taking place there every year in September. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, founded in the early part of the fifteenth century, and in which is a fine monument to Thomas Ravenscroft, a local worthy of the seventeenth century, was originally very characteristic of the time at which it was built, with a well-proportioned nave and aisles, and square embattled tower; but it has been added to from time to time, with unsatisfactory results. To make up for this, the ancient grammar-school, now used as a dining-hall only, the charter of which was granted by Queen Elizabeth to her beloved Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is much what it was when completed in 1575, the new buildings that supplement it being quite distinct.

On the common, about a mile from High Barnet, there is a spring of medicinal water that was held in high esteem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is often referred to in contemporary records. A farmhouse now occupies the site of the old spa, but the actual well, though covered over, is even now occasionally resorted to by invalids, to whom the water is supplied by means of a small pump. The chief claim to distinction of the village is, however, that it is near to the scene of the great battle of 1471 between the Lancastrians and Yorkists, at which the former were defeated, the mighty king-maker, the Earl of Warwick, was slain, and Edward IV. firmly established on the throne.

There has been much heated controversy concerning the actual place where the great struggle took place, but it is now generally supposed that the fiercest fighting occurred on Hadley Green, half a mile north of Barnet, extending thence along the ridge sometimes called Gladsome Heath, and sometimes Monken Mead. An obelisk, locally known as the Highstone, with a rudely carved inscription commemorating the victory, was set up in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambook, about two hundred yards from the spot where it now stands at the junction of the St. Albans and Hatfield roads, and the low ground sloping down from Monken Mead is marked on old maps as Deadman's Bottom, an incidental proof that it was there the bodies of the dead were buried after the battle.

Monken Hadley

The village of Monken Hadley, that is rapidly becoming a suburb of High Barnet, is very picturesquely situated along a green and common, all that now remain of the once famous Enfield Chase, and its fine old church, built some twenty years after the great battle, and well restored in 1845-50, looks down upon the scene of that historic event. Not far from it still stands the trunk of a huge oak, that has been identified as the 'gaunt and lifeless tree' on which, as related by Lord Lytton in the Last of the Barons, Adam Warner was hanged by Friar Bungay, and at the foot of which the victim's daughter fell down insensible close to the shattered fragments of the mechanical invention from which her father had hoped so much; and a little distance off is an elm known as Latimer's, because the zealous Protestant after whom it is named, who was later to die for his belief, is said to have sometimes preached beneath it.

East Barnet, a pretty village nestling in a charming valley, is the mother parish of the other communities of the same name, and its manor was part of that of High Barnet at the time of the Conquest. Its church, recently enlarged and modernised, was founded as early as the twelfth century, but it has few historic memories. Some writers, however, assert that it was from the house of Thomas Conyers at East Barnet that the unfortunate Arabella Stuart, whose marriage to William Seymour so greatly incensed James I., escaped, disguised as a man, on 3rd June 1611, only to be taken prisoner immediately after her embarkation in the boat that was to have borne her to France, whence she was removed to the Tower, there to die four years later, without having again seen her husband.

Enfield

The extensive parish of Enfield, through which flows the New River, and of which the Lea forms the eastern boundary, is divided into four parts, known as the Town, the Chase, the Bull's Cross, and Green Street. It is finely situated on the borders of what was once a famous royal hunting-ground, that although now almost entirely enclosed, is not yet built over. The actual town is one of the most prosperous of the suburbs of London, for it is the seat of a thriving Government small-arms factory, employing several hundred hands. The whole district is full of interesting historic memories, for even in the eleventh century, as proved by the descriptions in Doomsday Book, Enfield was a populous village, and the parish included no less than eight manors—Enfield proper and Worcesters, that long belonged to the Crown; Durants, Elsynge or Norris, Suffolks, Honeylands, Pentviches, and Goldbeaters, each with a palace and park of its own. The children of Henry VIII. were educated at Enfield, and it was there that Prince Edward heard of his father's death. In 1552 the young king settled the chief manor of Enfield on his sister Elizabeth, and also built for her the palace, of which a small, but very picturesque, portion still remains in the High Street, but the future queen appears to have spent the short time of liberty enjoyed by her before she was imprisoned by the jealous Mary at Elsynge Hall, of which no trace is left. It was there, too, that she and her escort probably put up, when in 1557 her indulgent gaoler, Sir Thomas Pope, allowed her to take part in a hunt in Enfield Chase, and she certainly often held her court in it during her long and prosperous reign. Of the chief manor-house of Enfield all that has been preserved is a fireplace incorporated in the library of a private house in the so-called Old Park, whilst the mansion of Worcesters, the other royal demesne, is represented by a seventeenth-century house known as Forty Hall—in which, by the way, there is a fine collection of pictures—designed by Inigo Jones for Sir Nicolas Raynton, to whom the estate was given in 1616 by the then owner, the Earl of Salisbury.

Of the other manor-houses of Enfield the memory alone survives, but the neighbourhood is still rich in fine old private mansions, of which the most note-worthy are Enfield Court and Foxhall, and on Chase side is an ancient cottage in which Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived for some time not far from which was the 'odd-looking gambogish house' in which Charles Lamb, writing in 1825, declared he would like to spend the rest of his life.