Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

The Hid or Hide was “the estate of one household, the amount of land sufficient for the support of one family.” By a series of learned calculations and investigations Mr. Kemble has proved that the hide was a stated quantity of arable land, not much over thirty Saxon acres, equal to forty Norman acres; he shews that the Saxons had a large and a small acre, and explains, by this fact, how the hide came to have been considered one hundred and twenty acres. He shews that the forest, meadow, and pasture-land was common property; and that it was attached to the hyde as of common-right. But, for a complete exposition of this subject, I must also refer my readers to the fourth chapter of the first book of Mr. Kemble’s history.

The fact of Paddington in Surrey, or “Padendene” as it was called, being mentioned in the Conqueror’s survey, [114a] while Paddington in Middlesex was not noticed, inclines me to believe the dene, or den, in Surrey, was the original mark of the Pædings; and that the smaller enclosure in Middlesex was at first peopled and cultivated by a migration of a portion of that family from the den when it had become inconveniently full.

I do not mean to say the Surrey valley was too crowded when this migration took place; but the lord, or his man, one or both might have pressed a little too hard on some of the young cubs in the Surrey den; and as they had no Press through which to make their wrongs known, they may have thought it best to move off before any other wrongs were inflicted.

At what period this migration happened, it is impossible to say; but there is very little doubt that the first settlement was made near the bourn, or brook, which ran through the forest. And this brook, though now a deep under-ground sewer [114b] which has been made, by the aid of the mason, to give a few more ground-rents to the bishop and his lessees, while it carries its hidden pollution to the capacious bosom of “Father Thames,”—once gave life to a most beautiful valley, and was itself, at times, no insignificant stream. At the beginning of this century it was a favourite resort for the young fishermen; and, as depicted in Norden’s Map of Middlesex, [115a] we see what it was in the time of Elizabeth, when the waters, taking their natural courses from the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, found their way into it.

What amount of disease and death has been caused by the impurities it has been made to hold since that time is a mystery; but one into which those have had a peep, who have taken the trouble to read the disclosures which have been made respecting the Serpentine, [115b] into which it was for years made to pour its many abominations.

By the side of a pure and then beautiful stream, at a later period named the Westbourn, the first “clearing” was made; and in all probability on the eminence above this brook, perhaps on the very spot where the first Christian temple was raised, the inhabitants of this Mark first offered up their adoration to that God which their intelligence had taught them to worship; and let not those who occupy their places in well cushioned pews near this spot, decry or despise that worship; for it was the sincere and spontaneous act of the unenlightened mind, unmixed with the sins of a cold formality, or the hypocrisy of a political sham. However misguided our ancestors were, they were sincere, and they wanted not the support of the State to bolster up their peculiar dogmas, but freely consecrated a portion of the Mark to the services of religion. And the present christian Bishop of London, and his lay lessees, may now have the honour of receiving the proceeds of land once dedicated to Pagan worship. [115c]

The Mark included a considerable extent of the forest around the portion cleared; and this portion of the Mark, the forest or waste-land, was, as we have seen, the common property of the inhabitants. To protect their rights in this common property against powerful and ambitious individuals, was for centuries the constant care of the people, as it was the special object of many of our ancient laws. How these laws were evaded; how by force or fraud “the lords of the soil” managed to transfer those lands to their own keeping; and how cunning and designing men have over-reached them in return; so that, at last, scarcely a scrap of all their former rights remain to the public, for public uses, I have made some attempt to tell, so far as the Paddington Mark is concerned. But a complete history of these transactions remains to be written.

The formation of the Mark, and the reception of its occupants into the family of the state, were not the work of a day: and these long preceded the parochial arrangement; which latter, indeed, was an ecclesiastical division of the land, said to have been introduced into England in the seventh century by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury: but this is evidently one of those errors so common in history, where one man is often credited or debited with deeds which belong to, and should be fairly divided among many individuals. It is this error, as Mr. Kemble has most strikingly pointed out, which has frequently made a saint, or a devil, when no heroic quality belonged to the person so set on high for admiration or detestation.

Modern research has made it pretty certain that the ancient parishes, “parochiæ,” of England were the districts adopted by the several teachers of Christianity who first promulgated the truths of the gospel in this country. These divisions, made for securing the spread of the “Good News” through the whole of the country, must necessarily, at first, have been very rudely defined—but then there was not, at that time, any fear that these overseers, or bishops, would set people by the ears about territorial titles. They were much better occupied, by the promulgation of God’s tidings, than to trouble themselves about those things which have lately become of so much more concern to christian bishops than the conversion of the heathen; and when those earnest and good men were assisted by others whom they had imbued with their religious spirit they lived in one house, in common, on the free-will offerings of a grateful people.—The overseer of the district being their overseer, and his parish, their parish.

As the religious wants of the people increased, these centres were found to be inconveniently remote from the circumference. The teachers, too, considerably increased in numbers; they demanded as a right that which had been conceded as a favour; and ambition creeping into their community, as their riches increased, separate spheres of action because additionally desirable. So at length, and by degrees, our present parochial system arose; the sub-divisions bearing the same name, diocese, or parish, as the original divisions had done.