I now quote the passage relating to this old ridgeway road to Verulam from Norden’s MS. (British Museum, 570). He begins at Clerkenwell instead of from the City: “It is not to be omitted to declare the old and ancient highways heretofore used by our fathers though the new be of greater regard and account for that they yield more ease unto the travellers. There was an old way that passed from Clerkenwell as also from Portpoole [Gray’s Inn] towards Barnet and so to St. Albans. From Clerkenwell it extended as the way now is unto a bridge or brooke between Gray’s Inn Lane and Pancras Church, near which brooke it entered into an old lane leaving Pancras Church on the west. It is called Longwich Lane, through which lane it passed along leaving also Highgate on the west and passed through Tollington Lane, whence it extended to Crouch End and thence through the Park to Muswell Hill near by Colney Hatch and so to Friern Barnet, from thence to Whetstone and there meeteth the new way. The cause why travellers left this old and ancient way was the deep and dirty passage in the winter.”
The road is well described in Pennant’s Tour (1782): “On quitting St. Albans I passed the wall of Sopwell Nunnery mixed with quantities of Roman tiles. After London Colney on the Colne I reached Ridgehill (!), a most extensive view. At South Mimms enter Middlesex and about a mile farther made Barnet; in Saxon times a vast wood filled this tract. From this town is a quick descent. Just beyond Whetstone the road passes over Finchley Common, infamous for robberies, and often planted with gibbets. About a mile beyond stands Highgate, a large village seated on a lofty eminence overlooking the smoky extent beneath. Here, in my memory, stood a gateway at which in old time a toll was paid to the Bishop of London for liberty, granted between four and five hundred years ago, for passing from Whetstone along the present road instead of the old miry way by Friern Barnet, Colnie Hatch, Muswell Hill, Crouch End, and leaving Highgate to the west by the Church of St. Pancras. After resting for a small space over the busy prospect, I descended into the plain, reached the metropolis, and disappeared in the crowd.”
The old miry way by Crouch End is, I cannot doubt, the original British road from Verulam to Londinium. (St. Pancras, it may be mentioned here, must be a very old settlement; near by was a bridge over the Fleet River, at a later time called “Battle Bridge,” on which name theories have been founded, but I think the bridge may have taken the place of “Bradford in the Parish of St. Pancras,” mentioned in the Feet of Fines, 23 H. viii.)
A summer’s day journey to London, such as Matthew Paris would have known it, must have been of beauty unimaginable when the miry lane was not too wet. Mention is made in the time of Henry VIII. of “a capital messuage called Muswell Farm in the parish of Clerkenwell and Hornsey, and the site of a certain chapel in the said parish, now dissolved, lately called Muswell Chapel” (Middlesex Feet of Fines, 35 H. viii.). A memory of the view of St. Paul’s rising from the midst of the walled city is given in a little sketch by Matthew Paris himself. I find this of Highgate in 1753: “On the summit of the hill a view over the whole vale to the city, and that so eminently that they see the ships passing up and down the river for twelve or fifteen miles below London.” Of Hampstead: “The Heath affords a most beautiful prospect, for we see within eight miles of Northampton, and the prospect to London and beyond it to Banstead Downs, Shooter’s Hill, Red Hill, and Windsor Castle is uninterrupted.”
A note of Camden speaks of another old road striking across to Edgware. “Hampstead Heath, from which you have a most pleasant prospect of the most beautiful city of London and the lovely country about it, over which the ancient Roman military way led to Verulam by Edgworth and not by Highgate as now, which new way was opened by the Bishop of London about 300 years since.”
Drayton showed remarkable perception when, describing the hills about London, he wrote of Highgate:
“Appointed for a gate of London to have been
When first the mighty Brute that city did begin;
Its holts to the east stand to look
Upon the winding course of Lea’s delightful Brook.”