Cottage formerly in Hagbush-lane.
Cottage formerly in Hagbush-lane.
“Why this cottage, sir, not three miles from London, is as secluded as if it were in the weald of Kent.”
This cottage stands no longer: its history is in the “simple annals of the poor.” About seven years ago, an aged and almost decayed labouring man, a native of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, with his wife and child, lay out every night upon the road side of Hagbush-lane, under what of bough and branch they could creep for shelter, till “winter’s cold” came on, and then he erected this “mud edifice.” He had worked for some great land-holders and owners in Islington, and still jobbed about. Like them, he was, to this extent of building, a speculator; and to eke out his insufficient means, he profited, in his humble abode, by the sale of small beer to stragglers and rustic wayfarers. His cottage stood between the lands of two rich men; not upon the land of either, but partly on the disused road, and partly on the waste of the manor. Deeming him by no means a respectable neighbour for their cattle, they “warned him off;” he, not choosing to be houseless, nor conceiving that their domains could be injured by his little enclosure between the banks of the road, refused to accept this notice, and he remained. For this offence, one of them caused his labourers to level the miserable dwelling to the earth, and the “houseless child of want,” was compelled by this wanton act to apply for his family and himself to be taken into the workhouse. His application was refused, but he received advice to build again, with information that his disturber was not justified in disturbing him. In vain he pleaded incompetent power to resist; the workhouse was shut against him, and he began to build another hut. He had proceeded so far as to keep off the weather in one direction, when wealth again made war upon poverty, and while away from his wife and child, his scarcely half raised hut was pulled down during a heavy rain, and his wife and child left in the lane shelterless. A second application for a home in the workhouse was rejected, with still stronger assurances that he had been illegally disturbed, and with renewed advice to build again. The old man has built for the third time; and on the site of the cottage represented in the engraving, erected another, wherein he dwells, and sells his small beer to people who choose to sit and drink it on the turf seat against the wall of his cottage; it is chiefly in request, however, among the brickmakers in the neighbourhood, and the labourers on the new road, cutting across Hagbush-lane from Holloway to the Kentish-town road, which will ultimately connect the Regent’s-park and the western suburb, with the eastern extremity of this immensely growing metropolis. Though immediately contiguous to Mr. Bath, the landlord of “Copenhagen-house,” he has no way assisted in obstructing this poor creature’s endeavour to get a morsel of bread. For the present he remains unmolested in his almost sequestered nook, and the place and himself are worth seeing, for they are perhaps the nearest specimens to London, of the old country labourer and his dwelling.
From the many intelligent persons a stroller may meet among the thirty thousand inhabitants of Islington, on his way along Hagbush-lane, he will perhaps not find one to answer a question that will occur to him during his walk. “Why is this place called Hagbush-lane?” Before giving satisfaction here to the inquirer, he is informed that, if a Londoner, Hagbush-lane is, or ought to be, to him, the most interesting way that he can find to walk in; and presuming him to be influenced by the feelings and motives that actuate his fellow-citizens to the improvement and adornment of their city, by the making of a new north road, he is informed that Hagbush-lane, though now wholly disused, and in many parts destroyed, was the old, or rather the oldest north road, or ancient bridle-way to and from London, and the northern parts of the kingdom.
Now for its name—Hagbush-lane. Hag is the old Saxon word hæg, which became corrupted into hawgh, and afterwards into haw, and is the name for the berry of the hawthorn; also the Saxon word haga signified a hedge or any enclosure. Hag afterwards signified a bramble, and hence, for instance, the blackberry-bush, or any other bramble, would be properly denominated a hag. Hagbush-lane, therefore, may be taken to signify either Hawthornbush-lane, Bramble-lane, or Hedgebush-lane; more probably the latter. Within recent recollection, Whitcomb-street, near Charing-cross, was called Hedge-lane.
Supposing the reader to proceed from the old man’s mud-cottage in a northerly direction, he will find that the widest part of Hagbush-lane reaches, from that spot, to the road now cutting from Holloway. Crossing immediately over the road, he comes again into the lane, which he will there find so narrow as only to admit convenient passage to a man on horseback. This was the general width of the road throughout, and the usual width of all the English roads made in ancient times. They did not travel in carriages, or carry their goods in carts, as we do, but rode on horseback, and conveyed their wares or merchandise in pack-saddles or packages on horses’ backs. They likewise conveyed their money in the same way. In an objection raised in the reign of Elizabeth to a clause in the Hue and Cry bill, then passing through parliament, it was urged, regarding some travellers who had been robbed in open day within the hundred of Beyntesh, in the county of Berks, that “they were clothiers, and yet travailed not withe the great trope of clothiers; they also carried their money openlye in wallets upon their saddles.”[200] The customary width of their roads was either four feet or eight feet. Some parts of Hagbush-lane are much lower than the meadows on each side; and this defect is common to parts of every ancient way, as might be exemplified, were it necessary, with reasons founded on their ignorance of every essential connected with the formation, and perhaps the use, of a road.
It is not intended to point out the tortuous directions of Hagbush-lane; for the chief object of this notice is to excite the reader to one of the pleasantest walks he can imagine, and to tax his ingenuity to the discovery of the route the road takes. This, the ancient north road, comes into the present north road, in Upper Holloway, at the foot of Highgate-hill, and went in that direction to Hornsey. From the mud-cottage towards London, it proceeded between Paradise-house, the residence of Mr. Greig, the engraver, and the Adam and Eve public-house, in the Holloway back-road, and by circuitous windings approached London, at the distance of a few feet on the eastern side of the City Arms public-house, in the City-road, and continued towards Old-street, St. Luke’s. It no where communicated with the back-road, leading from Battle-bridge to the top of Highgate-hill, called Maiden-lane.