The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

In his remarkable work Les Récits de l'Infini, the famous French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, hit upon a somewhat original device to bring vividly before his readers the fact that the heavenly bodies are seen by the dwellers upon earth, not as they are now, but as they were when the light revealing them left them countless ages ago. Having endowed an imaginary observer with immortality, he takes him from star to star, showing him all the kingdoms of the world at the various stages of their development, and finally makes him a witness of the Creation by the aid of the light that first shone upon the waters of chaos. Unfortunately, the student of history cannot hope to share the supernatural facilities of vision of Flammarion's hero, but for all that he can lay to heart some of the lessons of the astronomer's story by bringing to bear upon his task the sympathetic imagination which alone can enable him to reconstruct the past, and by remembering that that past should be judged not by the light of modern progress, but by such illumination as was available when it was still the present. No matter what the subject of study, the accumulation of facts is of little worth without the power of realising their interdependence, and this is very specially the case with the complex theme of London, in which an infinite variety of conflicting elements are welded into an unwieldy and by no means homogeneous whole, for in spite of the obliteration of landmarks and the levelling influences of modern times, each of its component parts has a psychological atmosphere of its own. Illusive, intangible, often almost indefinable, that atmosphere affects everything that is seen in it, and is a factor that must be reckoned with, if a trustworthy picture of the past or present is to be called up. The truth of this is very forcibly illustrated in the outlying suburbs of London, with which the present volume deals, for though these suburbs now appear to the cursory observer to bear the relation of branches to a parent stem, many indications prove that they were all not so very long ago independent communities, which were gradually absorbed by their aggressive neighbour, whose appetite grew with what it fed upon, and is still unsatisfied. This is very notably the case with Hampstead, which less than a century ago was still a mere village, the history of which can be traced back for more than a thousand years, and which, through all its vicissitudes, may justly be said to have been true to itself, for its inhabitants have from first to last resisted with more or less success every attempt to merge its individuality in that of the metropolis.

The name of Hampstead, originally spelt Hamstede, signifies homestead, and the first settlement on the site of the present suburb is supposed to have been a farm, situated in the district now known as Frognal, round about which a hamlet grew up that was until after the Reformation included in the parish of Hendon. The earliest historical reference to Hamstede occurs in a charter bearing date 978, in which Edward the Peaceable granted the manor to his minister Mangoda, and many theories have been hazarded to explain the difficulty arising from the fact that the king died in 975, the most plausible of which is that the copyist was guilty of a clerical error. In any case, a later charter, issued by Ethelred II. in 986, gave the same manor to the monks of Westminster, a gift confirmed by Edward the Confessor, and retained until the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century.

A touch of romance is given to the laconic description in Doomsday Book of the Hamstede Manor, by the mention of Ranulph Pevrel as holding one hide of land under the abbot, for that villein married the Conqueror's former mistress, the beautiful Ingelrica, and the fact that the lovers were in fairly prosperous circumstances is proved by Ranulph having owned nearly six times as much land as any other dweller on the estate. Incidentally, too, the effect of the Conquest on the value of property is reflected in the sudden decrease in that of the manor of Hamstede, which was worth one hundred shillings under Edward the Confessor, and only fifty under his successor.

Unfortunately, next to nothing is known of the history of the little settlement on the hill in Norman and mediæval times, but at the Reformation the manor was included in the newly formed see of Westminster, whose first bishop, Thomas Thirlby, appears to have lost no time in dissipating the episcopal revenues, for much of his property, including that at Hampstead, soon reverted to the Crown. The manor was given in 1550 by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Wrothe, and after changing hands many times in the succeeding centuries, it became the property about 1780 of Sir Spencer Wilson, to whose great-nephew, Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, it now (1907) belongs.

The history of the neighbouring manor of Belsize greatly resembles that of Hampstead, for it was given in the thirteenth century to the monks of Westminster by means of a grant from Sir Roger Brabazon, chief justice of the King's Bench. It remained the property of the abbey until the time of Henry VIII., when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who leased it to a member of the Wade or Waad family, whose descendants held it until 1649. Since then it has been sold many times, and the manor has been occupied by many celebrities, including Lord Wotton and his half-brother the second Earl of Chesterfield, but in 1720 it was converted into a place of amusement, and gradually sank into what was known as a 'Folly House,' the resort of gamblers and rakes. Closed in 1745, possibly on account of its evil reputation, it was restored a few years later to the dignity of a private residence, and between 1798 and 1807 it was the home of the famous but ill-fated Spencer Perceval, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the latter date, and Prime Minister two years later. Some sixty years ago, the ancient mansion with the grounds in which it stood were sold for building, with the inevitable result that the rural character of what had long been one of the most charming spots near London, was quickly destroyed. Belsize and Hampstead are now for all practical purposes one, though two hundred and forty acres of the former still belong to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, whilst the bounds of the latter as accepted by the Commission of 1885 remain precisely what they were in Anglo-Saxon times before the cataclysm of the Conquest that removed so many landmarks.

It is difficult, indeed almost impossible, to determine when Hampstead first became a separate parish, but there is no doubt that it was still a part of Hendon in the early years of the sixteenth century, for it can be proved that the rector of the mother church was then paying a separate chaplain, whose duty it was to hold services in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin that is supposed to have occupied the site of the present Church of St. John. It is, however, equally certain that before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, Hampstead had its own church-wardens, for in 1598 they were summoned to attend the Bishop of London's visitation.

At whatever date Hampstead seceded from Hendon, the chapelry of Kilburn seems to have been from the first included in the new parish, and the history of this chapelry is so typical of ecclesiastical evolution that it deserves relation here. The story goes that the first settler in the wilds of Kilburn was a hermit named Godwin, who some time in the reign of Edward I. built himself a cell on the banks of the little stream, the name of which, signifying the cold brook, is very variously spelt—the usual form being Keybourne, which rose on the west of the Heath, flowed though the district now known as Bayswater, fed the Serpentine, and finally made its way to the Thames, but has long since been degraded into a covered-in sewer. Shut in by a dense forest, of which Caen Wood is a relic, the lovely spot was an ideal retreat for meditation and prayer, but the recluse soon tired of its seclusion. He returned to the world, gave his little property to the all-absorbing Abbey of Westminster, by whose abbot it was a little later bestowed upon three highly born ladies named Christina, Emma, and Gunilda, who, fired with enthusiasm by the example of the saintly Queen Matilda, whose maids of honour they had been, had resolved to devote the rest of their lives to the service of God. Leaving behind them all their wealth, they took up their abode in the remote hut, but they were not left entirely to their own devices, for small as was the community it was raised to the dignity of a sisterhood of the Benedictine order, and a chaplain was soon sent to hold services and superintend the daily routine of the sisters' life. This chaplain was none other than the ex-hermit Godwin, and it is impossible to help wondering whether there may not perhaps have been some secret attachment between him and one of the fair maidens. His readiness to return to a place he had intended to leave for ever is certainly suggestive, but his conduct appears to have been in every way exemplary, and he remained at his post till his death. Meanwhile the three original occupants of the nunnery had been joined by several other ladies, a new chaplain was appointed, the little oratory with which Christina, Emma, and Gunilda had been content was enlarged into a chapel, and a considerable grant of land was bestowed upon the community, which continued to grow until what had been but an insignificant settlement had become an important priory, owning much property in the neighbourhood and elsewhere. Strange to say, however, this prosperity was presently succeeded by a time of great distress, for in 1337 Edward III. granted a special exemption from taxation to the nuns because of their inability to pay their debts. It would, indeed, seem that the sisters had not after all been able to manage their own temporal affairs successfully, but had been too generous to the many pilgrims who claimed their hospitality as a right, but very little is really known of the later history of the priory, except that when under the name of the Nonnerie of Kilnbourne it was surrendered to the commissioners of Henry VIII. its annual value was assessed at £74, 7s. 11d. The nuns whose lives had been given up to aiding the poor and distressed were now compelled to beg their daily bread, the rapacious king exchanged their lands for certain estates owned by the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem. Later, the site of the ancient priory was granted to the Earl of Warwick, and after changing hands many times it became the property of the Upton family, one of whom built the spacious church of St. Mary close to the spot where Godwin's little oratory once stood. Near to it is the headquarters of the hard-working sisters of St. Peter's, who carry on under the modern conditions of densely populated Kilburn the traditions of their gentle predecessors, the memory of whose old home is preserved in the names of the Abbey and Priory Roads. Not far away, too, rises the stately spire of the noble Church of St. Augustine, one of Pearson's finest Gothic designs, so that the whole neighbourhood would seem, in spite of all the changes that have taken place, to be still haunted by the spirits of those who withdrew to it so many centuries ago to worship God in solitude.