CHAPTER XXXIX.
HAMPSTEAD (continued).—BELSIZE AND FROGNAL.
"Estates are landscapes gazed upon awhile,
Then advertised, and auctioneered away."
Grant of the Manor of Belsize to Westminster Abbey—Belsize Avenue—Old Belsize House—The Family of Waad—Lord Wotton—Pepys' Account
of the Gardens of Belsize—The House attacked by Highway Robbers—A Zealous Protestant—Belsize converted into a Place of Public
Amusement, and becomes an "Academy" for Dissipation and Lewdness—The House again becomes a Private Residence—The Right Hon.
Spencer Perceval—Demolition of the House—The Murder of Mr. James Delarue—St. Peter's Church—Belsize Square—New College—The Shepherds' or Conduit Fields—Shepherds' Well—Leigh Hunt, Shelley, and Keats—Fitzjohn's Avenue—Finchley Road—Frognal Priory
and Memory-Corner Thompson—Dr. Johnson and other Residents at Frognal—Oak Hill Park—Upper Terrace—West End—Rural Festivities—The Cemetery—Child's Hill—Concluding Remarks on Hampstead.
On our right, as we descend Haverstock Hill, lies
the now populous district of South Hampstead, or
Belsize Park. It is approached on the eastern
side through the beautiful avenue of elms mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter; on
the west it nearly joins the "Swiss Cottage," which,
as we have seen, stands at the farthest point of St.
John's Wood.
It is traditionally stated that the manor of Belsize
had belonged to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster from the reign of King Edgar, nearly a
century before the Conquest; but it is on actual
record that in the reign of Edward II. the Crown
made a formal grant to Westminster Abbey of the
manor of Belsize, then described as consisting of
a house and 284 acres of land, on condition of the
monks finding a chaplain to celebrate mass daily
for the repose of the souls of Edmund, Earl of
Lancaster, and of Blanche, his wife. This earl was
a grandson of Henry III.; he had taken up arms
against Edward, but was captured and beheaded.
His name survives still in Lancaster Road.
About 1870 the Dean and Chapter of Westminster gave up the fine avenue above-mentioned,
called Belsize Avenue, to the parish of Hampstead,
on condition of the vestry planting new trees as
the old ones failed. A row of villas is now built
on the north side, and at the south-east corner, as
stated above, a new town-hall for Hampstead
was erected in 1876–7.
At the lower end of the avenue stood, till very
recently, a house which, a century ago, enjoyed a
celebrity akin to that of the Vauxhall of our own
time, but which at an earlier period had a history
of its own. An engraving of the house soon after
this date will be found in Lysons' "Environs of
London," from which it is reproduced in Charles
Knight's "Pictorial History of England." It stood
near the site of what is now St. Peter's Church,
facing the avenue above mentioned, at right angles.
Upon the dissolution of the monasteries one
Armigel Wade, or Waad, who had been clerk to the
Council under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and
who is known as the British Columbus, obtained
a lease of "Old Belsize"—for so this house was
called—for a term of two lives. He thereupon
retired to Belsize House, where he ended his days
in 1568. There was a monument erected to his
memory in the old parish church of Hampstead.
His son, Sir William Waad, made Lieutenant of
the Tower, and knighted by James I., also lived
at Belsize and died in 1623. Sir William had
married, as his second wife, a daughter of Sir
Thomas Wotton, who, surviving as his widow, got
the lease of the house and estate renewed to her
for two more lives, at a yearly rental of £19 2s. 10d.,
exclusive of ten loads of hay and five quarters of
oats payable to Westminster. She left Belsize to
her son, Charles Henry de Kirkhaven, by her first
husband; and he, on account of his mother's
lineage, was created a peer of the realm, as Lord
Wotton, by Charles II., and made this place his
residence.
That old gossip, Pepys, thus speaks of it in his
"Diary," under date August 17, 1668: "To Hampstead, to speak with the attorney-general, whom we
met in the fields, by his old rout and house. And
after a little talk about our business, went and saw
the Lord Wotton's house and garden, which is
wonderful fine: too good for the house the gardens
are, being, indeed, the most noble that ever I saw,
and such brave orange and lemon trees."
The gardens, indeed, were quite fine enough to
offer temptations to thieves and robbers, for soon
after this date we find that an attack was made
upon the place. In the True Protestant Mercury
of October 15—19, 1681, we read—"London,
October 18. Last night, eleven or twelve highway
robbers came on horseback to the house of Lord
Wotton, at Hampstead, and attempted to enter
therein, breaking down part of the wall and the
gate; but there being four or five within the house,
they very courageously fired several musquets and a
blunderbuss upon the thieves, which gave the alarm
to one of the lord's tenants, a farmer, that dwelt not
far off, who thereupon went immediately into the
town and raised the inhabitants, who, going towards
the house, which was about half a mile off, it is
thought the robbers hearing thereof, and withal
finding the business difficult, they all made their
escape. It is judged they had notice of my lord's
absence from his house, and likewise of a great
booty which was therein, which put them upon this
desperate attempt."
On Lord Wotton's death the Belsize estate fell
to the hands of his half-brother, Lord Chesterfield.
The latter, however, did not care to live there, but
sold his interest in the place, and the house remained for some time unoccupied. In the reign of
George I., however, we find Belsize in the hands
of a retired "sea-coal" merchant, named Povey,
to whom the then French ambassador, the Duc
d'Aumont, offered the (at that time) immense
rental of £1,000 a year on a repairing lease. It
transpired that the duke wanted the place because
it contained or had attached to it a private chapel.
On this the coal-merchant refused to carry out the
bargain, on the ground that he "would not have
his chapel desecrated by Popery." For this piece
of Protestant zeal he hoped that he would have
been applauded by the magistrates; his surprise,
therefore, must have been great when, instead of
praise, he received from the Privy Council a reprimand, as being an "enemy to the king." It is
recorded that when the Prince of Wales (afterwards
George II.) came soon afterwards to see the house,
Povey addressed to him a letter, informing his
royal highness of these particulars, but the prince
never condescended to vouchsafe him a reply.
Povey, we may add, made himself notorious in his
day by the publication of sundry pamphlets exposing the evil practices of Government agencies.
He also took to himself great credit as a patriot for
having refused to let his mansion to the French
ambassador, and modestly put in a claim for some
reimbursement from the nation, for having "kept
the Romish host" from being offered in Hampstead,
at a cost to himself of one thousand pounds. Our
readers will hardly need to be told that Mr. Povey
got no thanks for his pains, any more than he did
shortly afterwards for his equally disinterested offer
of his house and chapel for the use of his Royal
Highness the Prince of Wales, "for a place of
recess or constant residence." Not obtaining an
answer to his impertinent intrusion, he seems to
have turned Belsize to good account pecuniarily,
and perhaps, at the same time, to have "paid out"
his neighbours for their coolness to him, by allowing
it to be opened as a place of fashionable amusement.
For a period of about forty years—in fact, during
the reigns of George I. and George II.—Belsize
ceased to be occupied as a private residence, being
opened by a Welshman of the name of Howell as
a place of public amusement, and sank apparently
down into a second-rate house of refreshments and
gambling. In the park, which was said to be a
mile in circumference, were exhibited foot-races,
athletic sports, and sometimes deer-hunts and foxhunts: and it is said that one diversion occasionally
was a race between men and women in wooden
shoes. Upon the whole, it is to be feared that
Belsize was not as respectably conducted as it
might have been and ought to have been; the consequence was that its customers fell off, and in the
end it was shut up.
The newspapers of the period announce that the
house was opened as a place of public entertainment "with an uncommon solemnity of music and
dancing." It is somewhat amusing to note that
the advertisements wind up with an assurance that
for the benefit of visitors timid about highwaymen
"twelve stout fellows completely armed patrol
between Belsize and London." Notwithstanding
that the house had been the residence of the lord
of the manor, better company (we are told) came
to it in its fallen estate than before. A year or
two after it was opened to the public grievous complaints were made by the people of Hampstead of
the multitude of coaches which invaded their rural
solitude. The numbers were often as many as two
or three hundred in a single night. We glean from
Park's "History of Hampstead" the following
particulars concerning Belsize House as a place of
amusement:—"Of Belsize House, as the mansion
of a manorial district in the parish of Hampstead, I
have already spoken; it is introduced again here
as a place formerly of considerable notoriety for
public diversions. The following extracts will give
some idea of the nature and character of these
amusements, and indicate that it was the prototype
of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and many other more
modern establishments:—'Whereas that the ancient
and noble house near Hampstead, commonly
called Bellasis-house, is now taken and fitted up
for the entertainment of gentlemen and ladies
during the whole summer season, the same will be
opened with an uncommon solemnity of music
and dancing. This undertaking will exceed all
of the kind that has hitherto been known near
London, commencing every day at six in the
morning, and continuing till eight at night, all
persons being privileged to admittance without
necessity of expense,' &c., &c.—Mist's Journal,
April 16, 1720.
"A hand-bill of the amusements at Belsize (formerly in the possession of Dr. Combe), which has a
print of the old mansion-house prefixed, announces
Belsize to be open for the season (no date), 'the
park, wilderness, and garden being wonderfully
improved and filled with variety of birds, which
compose a most melodious and delightful harmony.
Persons inclined to walk and divert themselves,
may breakfast on tea and coffee as cheap as at
their own chambers. Twelve stout fellows, completely armed, to patrole between Belsize and
London,' &c., &c. 'Last Saturday their Royal
Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales dined
at Belsize-house, near Hampstead, attended by
several persons of quality, where they were entertained with the diversion of hunting, and such
other as the place afforded, with which they
seemed well pleased, and at their departure were
very liberal to the servants.'—Read's Journal,
July 15, 1721.
"In the same journal, September 9, 1721, is an
account of his Excellency the Welsh ambassador
giving a plate of six guineas to be run for by
eleven footmen. The Welsh ambassador appears
to have been the nickname of one Howell, who
kept the house.
"'The Court of Justices, at the general quarter
sessions at Hickes's-hall, have ordered the highconstable of Holborn division to issue his precepts to the petty constables and headboroughs
of the parish of Hampstead, to prevent all unlawful gaming, riots, &c., at Belsize-house and the
Great Room at Hampstead.'—St. James's Journal,
May 24, 1722.
"'On Monday last the appearance of nobility
and gentry at Belsize was so great that they
reckoned between three and four hundred coaches,
at which time a wild deer was hunted down and
killed in the park before the company, which gave
near three hours' diversion.'—Ibid., June 7, 1722."
In 1722 was published, in an octavo volume,
"'Belsize House,' a satire, exposing, 1. The Fops
and Beaux who daily frequent that academy. 2.
The characters of the women who make this an
exchange for assignations. 3. The buffoonery of
the Welsh ambassador. 4. The humours of his
customers in their several apartments, &c. By a
Serious Person of Quality." The volume, however,
is of little real value, except as a somewhat coarse
sketch of the manners of the age.
According to this poetical sarcasm, Belsize was
an academy for dissipation and lewdness, to a degree
that would scarcely be tolerated in the present
times, and that would be a scandal in any; but
some allowance must probably be made for the
jaundiced vision of the caustic writer. We find in
it the following brief description of the house:—
"This house, which is a nuisance to the land,
Doth near a park and handsome garden stand,
Fronting the road, betwixt a range of trees,
Which is perfumed with a Hampstead breeze;
And on each side the gate's a grenadier,
Howe'er, they cannot speak, think, see, nor hear;
But why they're posted there no mortal knows,
Unless it be to fright jackdaws and crows;
For rooks they cannot scare, who there resort,
To make of most unthoughtful bubbles sport."
The grounds and gardens of Belsize continued
open as late as the year 1745, when foot-races were
advertised there. In the course of the next generation, however, a great change would seem to have
come over the place; at all events, in the "Ambulator," (1774), we read: "Belsize is situated on the
south-west side of Hampstead Hill, Middlesex,
and was a fine seat belonging to the Lord Wotton,
and afterwards to the Earl of Chesterfield; but in
the year 1720 it was converted into a place of
polite entertainment, particularly for music, dancing,
and play, when it was much frequented, on account
of its neighbourhood to London, but since that
time it has been suffered to run to ruin."
After the lapse of many years, during which little
or nothing is recorded of its history, Belsize came
again to be occupied as a private residence, and
among its other tenants was the Right Hon. Spencer
Perceval, afterwards Prime Minister, who lived here
for about ten years before taking office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, namely, from 1798 to
1807. Mr. Perceval was the second son of the
Earl of Egmont. Having first applied himself to
the study of the law, he entered Parliament, in
1796, as member for Northampton, and under Mr.
Addington's administration, in 1801, was appointed
Solicitor-General. Next year he became AttorneyGeneral, attaining also great distinction as a Parliamentary debater. On the fall of the Duke of
Portland's Administration, in 1809, Mr. Perceval
was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he was still in
office when he was assassinated by Bellingham, in
the lobby of the House of Commons, in 1812. (fn. 1) A
portrait of Mr. Perceval, painted by Joseph, from a
mask taken after death by Nollekens, is to be seen
in the National Portrait Gallery.
In more recent times Belsize House was occupied by a Roman Catholic family named Wright,
who were bankers in London. The old house,
originally a large but plain Elizabethan mansion,
with central tower and slightly projecting wings,
was remodelled during the reign of Charles II.,
and subsequently again considerably altered. Its
park, less than a century ago, was a real park,
somewhat like that which encompasses Holland
House, at Kensington. It was surrounded by a
solid wall, which skirted the south side of a lane
leading from the wood of the Knights of St. John
towards Hampstead.
Belsize seems, on the whole, to have been rather
an unlucky place. The mansion was pulled down
about the year 1852, and the bricks of the house
and of the park wall were used to make the roads
which now traverse the estate, and to form the site
of the handsome villa residences which now form
Belsize Park; and at the present time all that is
left to remind the visitor of the past glories of the
spot is the noble avenue of elms which, as we have
stated, once formed its principal approach.
On the 21st of February, 1845, Mr. James
Delarue, a teacher of music, was murdered by a
young man named Hocker, close by the corner of
Belsize Park, in the narrow lane leading from Chalk
Farm to Hampstead. The lane, at that time, as
may be imagined, was very solitary, seeing that,
with the exception of Belsize House, there were no
houses near the spot. The crime was perpetrated
about seven o'clock in the evening. Cries of
"murder" were heard by a person who happened
to be passing at the time, and on an alarm being
given, the body of the murdered man was quickly
discovered. Hocker, it seems, had in the meanwhile gone to the "Swiss Tavern," and there
called for brandy and water; but on the arrival
of the police and others, Hocker too appeared on
the spot, inquired what was amiss, and, taking the
dead man's hand, felt his pulse and pronounced
him dead, and gave some bystanders money to
help carry the corpse away. Mr. Howitt, in
noticing this tragedy in his "Northern Heights,"
says, "The murder was afterwards clearly traced
to Hocker, the cause of it being jealousy and
revenge, so far as it appeared, for his being supplanted by Delarue in the affections of a young
woman of Hampstead. On the trial Hocker read
a paper endeavouring to throw the charge of the
murder on a friend, whose name, of course,
he did not disclose, and added an improbable
story of the manner in which his clothes had become stained with blood. The reading of this
paper only impressed the court and the crowd of
spectators with an idea of Hocker's excessive
hypocrisy and cold-bloodedness. He was convicted and executed." Miss Lucy Aikin alludes to
this murder of Delarue in one of her letters to
a friend: "I rather congratulate myself on not
being in Church Row during the delightful excitement of this murder and the inquest, which appear
to have had so many charms for the million. . . . .
But I think the event will give me a kind of a dislike to Belsize Lane, which hitherto I used to think
the pleasantest way from us to you."
FROGNAL PRIORY.
We have stated above that the manor of Belsize
belongs to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster;
we may add here that "Buckland" Crescent and
"Stanley" Gardens, which now form part of the
estate, are named after deans of that collegiate
establishment, and that St. Peter's Church is so
dedicated after St. Peter's Abbey itself. It is a
neat cruciform building, in the Decorated style of
architecture, with side aisle and tower, and was
erected in 1860.
In Belsize Square lived for some time, and
there died in 1875, Henry Malden, M.A., formerly
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and for
forty-five years Professor of Greek in University
College, London. The son of a surgeon at
Putney, he was born in the year 1800, and was
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where
he was elected to a Craven Scholarship, together
with the late Lord Macaulay. Whilst at Cambridge, he contributed to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and wrote a poem entitled "Evening," which
was published in a volume of poems edited by
Joanna Baillie. In 1834 he published a small
work on the "Origin of Universities and Academical Degrees," which was written as an introduction to the Report of the Argument before
the Privy Council in support of the application
of the University of London for a charter empowering it to grant degrees.
On the western side of the Belsize estate, at the
angle of the Finchley and Belsize Roads, stands
New College, a substantial-looking stone-built
edifice, erected about the year 1853, as a place of
training for young men for the ministry of the
Independent persuasion. Not far from it, at the
top of Avenue Road, is a handsome Gothic Chapel
belonging also to the Nonconformists, and known
as New College Chapel.
POND STREET, HAMPSTEAD, IN 1750.
Down till very recently, Hampstead was separated
from Belsize Park, Kilburn, Portland Town, &c.,
by a broad belt of green meadows, known as the
Shepherds' or Conduit Fields, across which ran
a pleasant pathway sloping up to the southwestern corner of the village, and terminating
near Church Row. On the eastern side of these
fields is an old well or conduit, called the Shepherd's Well, where visitors in former times used to
be supplied with a glass of the clearest and purest
water. This conduit is probably of very ancient
date. The spring formerly served not only
visitors but also the dwellers in Hampstead with
water, and poor people used to fetch it and sell
it by the bucket. There used to be an arch over
the conduit, and rails stood round it; but since
Hampstead has been supplied by the New River
Company the conduit has become neglected, and
the spring is now only a small and dirty swamp.
Towards the close of the last century, Lord
Loughborough, who, as we have seen, was then
living close by, desired to stop the inhabitants
from obtaining the water, by enclosing the well, or
otherwise cutting off all communication with it;
but so great was the popular indignation, that an
appeal was made to the Courts of Law, when a
decision was very wisely given in the people's
favour, and so the well remained in constant use
till our own times. In this we are reminded of
"Some village Hampden that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of the fields withstood;"
but who the "village Hampden" was on this occasion is not recorded by local tradition.
From Hone's "Table Book" we glean the following particulars concerning this well:—"The arch,
embedded above and around by the green turf,
forms a conduit-head to a beautiful spring; the
specific gravity of the fluid, which yields several
tons a day, is little more than that of distilled
water. Hampstead abounds in other springs, but
they are mostly impregnated with mineral substances. The water of 'Shepherd's Well,' therefore, is in continual request; and those who cannot
otherwise obtain it are supplied through a few of
the villagers, who make a scanty living by carrying
it to houses for a penny a pailful. There is no
carriage-way to the spot, and these poor things
have much hard work for a very little money. …
The water of Shepherd's Well is remarkable for
not being subject to freeze. There is another
spring sometimes resorted to near Kilburn; but
this and the ponds in the Vale of Health are the
ordinary sources of public supply to Hampstead.
The chief inconvenience of habitations in this
delightful village is the inadequate distribution of
good water. Occasional visitants, for the sake of
health, frequently sustain considerable injury by
the insalubrity of private springs, and charge upon
the fluid they breathe the mischief they derive
from the fluid they drink. The localities of the
place afford almost every variety of aspect and
temperature that invalids require; and a constant
sufficiency of wholesome water might be easily
obtained by a few simple arrangements." It may
be well to add, however, that the want of good
water is not among the requirements of Hampstead
at the present day; and also that what Lord
Loughborough was unable to effect in the way of
stopping the supply of water from this spring, was
partially accomplished about the years 1860–70,
through the excavation of tunnels under the hill
on the side of which it stands, when the spring
became almost dried up.
The fields which we have now before us are
those over which Leigh Hunt so much delighted
to ramble, and which, no doubt, he found far more
pleasant than the interior of Newgate, in which he
had been immured for calling the Prince of Wales
"a fat Adonis." In these fields Hunt would often
meet with the genial company of his fellow-poets.
Shelley would walk hither from his lodgings in
Pond Street, and Keats would turn up from Well
Walk. Here the three friends once frightened an
old lady terribly: they thought themselves quite
alone, and Shelley, throwing himself into attitude,
began to spout the lines—
"Come, brothers, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings."
The old lady made off as quick as her feet could
carry her, and told her friends that she had met in
the fields three dangerous characters, who, she was
quite sure, were either madmen, or republicans, or
actors! It was the view of Hampstead from these
fields that suggested to the mind of Leigh Hunt
the following lines, descriptive of their beauties,
and which are well worthy to appear among his
various poems on the scenery of this neighbourhood:—
"A turret looking o'er a leafy vine,
With hedgerow styles in front, and sloping green,
Sweet Hampstead, is thy southward look serene;
And such thou welcomest approaching eyes.
To me a double charm is in thy skies
From her meek spirit, oft in fancy seen
Blessing the twilight with her placid mien."
In 1874–5 it was proposed by some of the inhabitants of Hampstead to purchase a portion of
these grassy slopes, and to devote them to public
use, in the shape of a "park" for the working
classes of the neighbourhood; but the plan was
brought to an abrupt termination by some speculative builders, by whom the greater part of the
ground was bought and laid out for building purposes, a broad roadway, called Fitzjohn's Avenue,
being made at the same time across their centre,
thus connecting the town of Hampstead with St.
John's Wood, Kilburn, and the west end of
London. It is not a little singular that just a
hundred years previously—namely, in 1776—the
construction of a new road was proposed from
Portman Square to Alsopp's Farm, across the
fields, and on through a part of Belsize, to the foot
of Hampstead Town.
In these fields and in those lying between the
southern terrace of the churchyard and the lower
portions of Frognal, rise two or three springs,
which form the sources of the brook which we
have already seen trickling through Kilburn, and
by Westbourne Green down to Bayswater, where
it forms the head of the Serpentine river.
Leaving the Conduit Fields and Fitzjohn's
Avenue on our right, and making our way down
College Lane by some neat school-buildings, which
have been lately erected there, we emerge upon
the Finchley Road, close by the "North Star"
tavern, whence a short walk along the road, with
pleasant fields and hedgerows on either hand,
brings us to the western part of the village of
Hampstead. On our way along the Finchley Road
we pass, on our right, the large, new, and handsome church of the Holy Trinity; and on our left,
the Finchley Road stations on the Midland and
North London Railways, which here again emerge
into daylight, after passing through tunnels, as
already stated, under the Belsize and Rosslyn
estates. A footpath, cut diagonally across a
sloping meadow, between some venerable oaks,
takes us from the main road, behind Frognal
Priory, to West End Lane, a narrow carriage-way
connecting the Finchley Road with the village of
Hampstead. This lane is in parts overhung at
the sides by tall elms and quickset hedges, and
has about it altogether that quiet air of rusticity
which Constable so delighted in painting.
Frognal, as the neighbourhood of the western
slope of Hampstead is called, is still, happily, a
"beautiful and suburban village," just as it is
described by the Rev. J. Richardson in his amusing
"Recollections." He writes: "The view from
the upper part of this locality is one of the finest
in England [he should have said in the neighbourhood of London]. The late Dr. White, who
held some years back the living of Hampstead,
and also that of Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire, used to
affirm that on a clear day, with the aid of a good
telescope, he could discern the windmill at Nettlebed from his garden at Frognal, the distance
between the two places being about thirty-five
miles in a direct line."
This neighbourhood is full of gentlemen's seats
and villas, standing in their own grounds. On
our right, as we ascend the hill, we pass the site
on which, from the close of the last century down
to the year 1876, stood a curious building—an
absurd specimen of modern antiquity—in the
gingerbread Gothic style, a not very successful
imitation of Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill,
pretentiously styled Frognal Priory. Mr. Howitt,
in his "Northern Heights," published in 1869,
gives the following particulars of the eccentric
house, and its still more eccentric owner:—"This
house, now hastening fast to ruin, was built by
a Mr. Thompson, best known by the name of
'Memory Thompson,' or, as stated by others, as
'Memory-Corner Thompson.' This Mr. Thompson built the house on a lease of twenty years,
subject to a fine to the lord of the manor. He
appears to have been an auctioneer and publichouse broker, who grew rich, and, having a peculiar
taste in architecture and old furniture, built this
house in an old English style, approaching the
Elizabethan. That the house, though now ruinous,
is of modern date, is also witnessed by the trees
around it being common poplar, evidently planted
to run up quickly. Thompson is said to have
belonged to a club of auctioneers or brokers, which
met once a week; and at one of these meetings,
boasting that he had a better memory than any
man living, he offered to prove it by stating the
name and business of every person who kept a
corner shop in the City, or, as others have it, the
name, number, and business of every person who
kept a shop in Cheapside. The former statement
is the one most received, and is the more probable,
because Thompson, being a public-house broker,
was no doubt familiar with all these corner-haunting
drink-houses. Having maintained his boast, he
was thence called 'Memory,' or 'Memory-Corner
Thompson;' but his general cognomen was the
first. Thompson not only asserted that he built
his house on the site of an ancient priory, continuing down to the Dissolution, and inhabited as
a suburban house by Cardinal Wolsey, but, as an
auctioneer, he had the opportunity of collecting
old furniture, pieces of carving in wood, ebony,
ivory, &c. With these he filled his house, dignifying his furniture (some of which had been
made up from fragments) as having belonged to
Cardinal Wolsey, to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen
of Scots, and other historical magnates. On the
marriage of Queen Victoria, he offered for sale
a huge old bedstead, as Queen Elizabeth's, with
chairs to match, to Her Majesty, but the queen
declined it. It is said, however, to have been
purchased by Government, and to be somewhere
in one of the palaces. This bedstead, and the
chairs possibly, had some authentic character, as
he built a wing of his house especially for their
reception. Thompson had an ostensibly magnificent library, containing, to all appearance, most
valuable works of all kinds; but, on examination,
they proved to be only pasteboard bound up and
labelled as books. The windows of the chief
room were of stained glass, casting 'a dim, religious light.' And this great warehouse of articles
of furniture, of real and manufactured antiquity,
of coins, china, and articles of vertu, became so
great a show place, that people flocked far and
near to see it. This greatly flattered Thompson,
who excluded no one of tolerable appearance, nor
restricted visitors to stated hours. It is said that,
in his ostentation, he used to leave five-guinea gold
pieces about on the window seats." But this last
statement is mythical. The best, and indeed the
only good portion of the house, was the porch, a
handsome and massive structure, in the ornamented
Jacobean style, and which had formed the entrance
of some one of the many timber mansions still to
be found in Cheshire and in other remote counties,
and which Thompson had "picked up" as a
bargain in one of his business tours. It was surmounted with the armorial bearings of the family
to whom it had belonged, and was often sketched
by artists. After his death, at the age of eighty
years, a sale of his goods and chattels took place;
but the principal part of his wealth descended to
his niece, who married Barnard Gregory, the proprietor of the notorious Satirist. Gregory, it
seems, on the death of his wife, did not pay the
customary fine to the lord of the manor, and Sir
Thomas Wilson recovered possession by an injunction, intending to remove the offices of the manor
thither. From a fear, however, of the appearance
of some heir of Thompson after he had repaired
it, which was at one time a possibility, Sir Thomas
left it in statu quo ante; and the house having gone
rapidly to decay and ruin, was, in the end, wholly
demolished. A few trees, forming a sort of grove,
and the remains of a small lodge-house, now profusely overgrown with ivy, are all that is left to
mark the site of the singular edifice heretofore
known as Frognal Priory.
In a cottage close by the entrance to the Priory,
as we have stated in a previous chapter, Dr. Johnson stayed for a time as a visitor; and here Boswell
tells us that he wrote his "Town," and busied
himself during a summer with his essay on the
"Vanity of Human Riches." It is not a little
singular, however, that neither of these poems bear
much trace of the inspiration of the Hampstead
Muses. The fact is that the burly doctor preferred
society to scenery, and with the winter returned to
Fleet Street, and presented himself once more
amongst his friends, in whose company he felt, we
may be sure, much more at home than amidst the
breezes of Hampstead, and in whose conversation
more gratification than in the songs of all her
nightingales. Park says the house at which Dr.
Johnson used to lodge was "the last in Frognal
southward, occupied in his (Park's) time by Benjamin Charles Stephenson, Esq., F.S.A." The
house has been rebuilt, or, at all events, remodelled
since that date.
At Frognal lived also Mr. Thomas William Carr,
some time solicitor of the Excise, whose house was
the centre of literary réunions. Here, Crabb
Robinson tells us in his "Diary," he met Wordsworth, Sir Humphrey Davy, Joanna Baillie, and
some other persons of note. One of Mr. Carr's
daughters married Sir Robert M. Rolfe, afterwards
Lord Chancellor Cranworth.
Frognal Hall, standing close to the western end
of the church, was formerly the residence of Mr.
Isaac Ware, (fn. 2) the architect, and author of "A
Complete Body of Architecture," and of a translation of "Palladio on the Fine Arts," &c. Although
Mr. Ware found a patron in the great Lord Burlington, he is stated to have died at his house near
Kensington Gravel Pits in "depressed circumstances." A French family, named Guyons, occupied the hall after Ware quitted it; and it was
subsequently the residence of Lord Alvanley,
Master of the Rolls, and some time Chief Justice
of the Court of Common Pleas. After passing
through one or two other hands, Frognal Hall
became the residence of Mr. Julius Talbot Airey,
a Master in the Court of Common Pleas, and
brother of General Lord Airey. The adjoining
seat, that of Miss Sulivan, is known as Frognal
Mansion, and was originally the manor house of
this district. A part of the manorial rights attached
to this property consists of a private road leading
past the north side of the parish church, with a
private toll-gate, which even royalty cannot pass
without payment of the customary toll. It is
nearly the only toll-gate now remaining in all the
suburbs of London.
It was probably in the upper part of Frognal
that Cyrus Redding for some time resided; at all
events, it was in a lodging on the western slope of
the hill, as he tells us himself, that he began in
1858 his "Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and
Personal." His windows commanded a charming
and extensive view. He writes picturesquely:—"Before me palatial Windsor is seen rising proudly
in the distance. The spire of Harrow, like a burial
obelisk, ascending in another direction, brings
before the glass of memory eminent names with
which it is associated—Parr, Byron, Peel, and
others, no longer of the quick, but the dead. The
hills of Surrey southward blend their faint grey
outline with the remoter heaven. The middle
landscape slumbers in beauty; clouds roll heavily
and sluggishly along, with here and there a break
permitting the glory of the superior region to shine
obliquely through, in strong contrast to the shadowy
face of things beneath."
To the west of Frognal there is some rising
ground, which the late Mr. Sheffield Neave laid
out for the erection of about twelve handsome
houses, called Oak Hill Park. One of these has
been frequently occupied during the summer
months by Miss Florence Nightingale. Near the
entrance of this park is a house which was occupied for many years as the Sailors' Orphan Girls'
Home, before the transfer of that institution to its
new buildings between Church Row and Greenhill,
and Prince Arthur's Road. To the north of
Frognal is the Upper Terrace, which screens this
portion of Hampstead from the bleak winds that
blow across the Heath. In this terrace a house
known as the "Priory" was the residence of the
eminent sculptor and Royal Academician, Mr. J.
H. Foley. In another house in this terrace lived
Mr. Magrath, one of the founders, and during its
earlier years the secretary, of the Athenæum
Club.
Half a mile westward, beyond Frognal, lies West
End, a group of houses surrounding an open
space which is still a village green. This used
to be the scene of a fair held annually in July;
but the fair was suppressed about the year 1820
on account of the disorderly conduct of its frequenters. There is extant in the British Museum
a curious handbill, dated 1708, and entitled "The
Hampstead Fair Rambler; or, The World's Going
quite Mad. To the tune of 'Brother Soldier, dost
hear of the News?' London, printed for J. Bland,
near Holborn, 1708." From this it is clear that,
like most rural and suburban fairs, it was remarkable chiefly for its swings, roundabouts, penny
trumpets, spiced gingerbread, and halfpenny rattles.
Occasionally, however, its proceedings were varied;
under date July 2, 1744, we read: "This is to
give notice that the Fair will be kept on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next, in a pleasant,
shady walk, in the middle of the town. On Wednesday a pig will be turned loose, and he that
takes it up by the tail and throws it over his head
shall have it. To pay twopence entrance, and no
less than twelve to enter. On Thursday, a match
will be run by two men, a hundred yards, in two
sacks, for a large sum. And to encourage the
sport, the landlord of the inn will give a pair of
gloves, to be run for by six men, the winner to
have them. And on Friday, a hat, value ten
shillings, will be run for by men twelve times
round the green; to pay one shilling entrance; no
less than four to start. As many as will may enter,
and the second man to have all the money above
four."
This, doubtless, was the locale of the scenes
mentioned in the public prints of June, 1786:—"On Whit Tuesday was celebrated, near Hendon,
in Middlesex, a burlesque imitation of the Olympic
Games. One prize was a gold-laced hat, to be
grinned for by six candidates, who were placed on
a platform with horses' collars to grin through.
Over their heads was written 'detur tetriori'—'The
ugliest grinner shall be the winner.' Each party
had to grin for five minutes by himself, and then
all the other candidates joined in a grand chorus
of distortion. The prize was carried by a porter
to a vinegar-merchant, though he was accused by
his competitors of foul play, for rinsing his mouth
with verjuice. The sports were concluded by a
hog with his tail shaved and soaped being let loose
among some ten or twelve peasants, any one of
whom that could seize him by the queue and throw
him across his own shoulders was to keep him as a
prize. The animal, after running for some miles
about the neighbourhood of the Heath, so tired his
pursuers, that they at last gave up the chase in
despair. We are told that on this occasion a
prodigious concourse of people attended, among
whom were the Tripoline Ambassador, and several
other persons of distinction and quality."
The Rev. Mr. Richardson, in his amusing
"Recollections," states that as lately as 1819 the
fair was attended by about two hundred "roughs"
from London, who assaulted the men and the
women with brutal violence, cutting their clothes
from their backs. The Hampstead magistrates
were obliged to call the aid of special constables in
order to suppress the riot. This riot, however,
had one good effect, as it helped to pave the way
for the introduction of the new police by Sir
Robert Peel. There is a tradition that the last
Maypole in the neighbourhood stood on this green.
A good sketch of a dance round a country Maypole will be found in Hone's "Every-Day Book,"
under "May-day."
West End, for the most part, lies low, and
the houses are but poor second and third-rate
cottages; and there is a public-house bearing the
sign of the "Cock and Hoop." Here is a small
Gothic structure, forming at once a village school
and a chapel of ease for the parish.
A new cemetery for the parish of Hampstead
was formed on the north of West End in 1876; it
covers twenty acres of ground, and is picturesquely
laid out; and close by is a reservoir belonging to
the Grand Junction Waterworks Company.
A little further on the road to Hendon is an
outlying district of Hampstead parish, known as
Child's Hill, consisting almost wholly of cottages,
dotted irregularly around two or three cross-roads.
Here a small district church was erected about the
year 1850; it is a Gothic edifice, consisting of a
nave and chancel, with a small bell-turret. The
road, here branching off to the right, will take the
tourist through a pleasant lane to the north-west
corner of the Heath, where the gorse and furze
bloom in all their native beauty. Following this
road, and leaving on his right Telegraph Hill—the
site of a semaphore half a century ago—he will
find himself once more at the back of "Jack
Straw's Castle," whence a short walk will take him
back into the centre of Hampstead.
Having thus far made our survey of the parish
of Hampstead, little remains to be said. The
place, as we have endeavoured to show, has long
been considered healthy and salubrious, and, therefore, has been the frequent resort of invalids for
the benefit of the air. From the annual report
of the medical officer of health for Hampstead,
issued in 1876, we learn that the death-rate for the
previous twelve months had been only 15¾ in a
thousand—a very low rate of mortality, it must be
owned, though not quite so low as it stood in the
preceding year, when Dr. Lord gave to the parish,
in allusion to its lofty and salubrious situation, the
name of Mons Salutis.
The parish extends over upwards of 2,000 acres
of land, of which, as we have stated, between 200
and 300 are waste. In 1801 there were 691 inhabited houses in the parish, and the number of
families occupying them was 953; and the total
number of the inhabitants was 4,343. In 1851 the
population had grown to 12,000. Ten years later
it had increased to 19,000; in 1865 it had reached
22,000; and at the present time (1877) its numbers
may be estimated at about 40,000.
On more than one occasion, when silly prophets
and astrologers have alarmed the inhabitants of
London by rumours of approaching earthquakes,
and tides that should swallow up its citizens, the
high ground of Hampstead and Highgate has
afforded to the crowds in their alarm a place of
refuge and safety. An amusing description of, at
all events, two such instances will be found in
Dr. Mackay's "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular
Delusions," in the chapter devoted to the subject
of "Modern Prophecies." It may sound not a
little strange when we tell our readers that one of
these unreasoning panics occurred so lately as the
first year of the reign of George III. It is only
fair to add that a slight shock of an earthquake
had been felt in London a month before, but so
slight, that it did no harm, beyond throwing down
one or two tottering stacks of chimneys.
Apropos of the gradual extension of the limits of
the metropolis, of which we have already more
than once had occasion to speak, we cannot do
better, in concluding this part of our perambulations, than to quote the following lines of Mr.
Thomas Miller, in his "Picturesque Sketches of
London." "Twelve miles," he writes, "would
scarcely exceed the almost unbroken line of buildings which extends from Blackwall to far beyond
Chelsea, where street still joins to street in apparently endless succession. And yet all around
this vast city lie miles of the most beautiful rural
scenery. Highgate, Hornsey, and Hampstead, on
the Middlesex side, hilly, wooded, and watered;
and facing these, the vast range called the Hog's
Back, which hems in the far-distant Surrey side
from beyond Norwood; . . . . whilst the valleys on
both sides of the river are filled with pleasant fields,
parks, and green, winding lanes. Were London to
extend five miles further every way, it would still
be hemmed in with some of the most beautiful
country scenery in England; and the lowness of
the fares, together with the rapidity of railway
travelling, would render as nothing this extent of
streets."