CHAPTER X.

_FINCHLEY ROAD, CHILD’S HILL, AND NEW END._

At the hand-post on Golder’s Green—a bit of the original waste in 1859—Hampstead parish ends in this direction. Here Finchley Road, running north and south, divides the road to Hendon from North End Road.

The name of Hendon reminds me that John Taylor, the ‘Water Poet,’ in his curious poetical production ‘The Fearful Summer; or, London’s Calamitie, the Countrie’s Discourtesie, and both their Miserie,’ while including the inhabitants of Hampstead with the other country people around London as ‘beastly, barbarous, cruel countrie cannibals,’ excepts those of Hendon, who did what they could for the plague-stricken Londoners.

With Finchley parish Hampstead has no other connection than that it borders it; but having taken the Finchley Road, it is scarcely fair to leave this once too-famous neighbourhood without a word. The Common had for many years been a terror to travellers, and in 1790-1, when Landmanor wrote his ‘Recollections and Adventures,’ its reputation had not improved. It was still the haunt of footpads and highwaymen, as, indeed, was Hampstead Heath also.

Half a dozen years after the above date, Lord Strathmore, then residing at Hampstead, was attacked by two men when driving over Finchley Common, who rode up to the carriage intending robbery, but his lordship, with the aid of his servants, turned the tables on them, shot one, and made the other prisoner—an evil day for these ‘gentlemen of the road.’ Yet, in spite of such incidents, some hardy householders were bold enough to purchase property and build houses in the neighbourhood; and Mrs. Barbauld tells us that at one time (about 1754), when Richardson was looking about for a country retirement, as became a fortunate bookseller who was his own novelist, he bethought him of the pretty district of Finchley.

While thinking of doing this, his friend Mr. Dunscombe wrote to him that the place would ‘affect his nerves,’ for that all the crimes in the Decalogue were of daily occurrence there, and finished by saying: ‘If you are planted so near the scene of action as to be constantly hearing of highwaymen and viewing of gibbets, in vain will Lady B. [Braidshaigh] send you her sylphs and fairies, in vain will Miss M. [Miss Mulso] terrify with dreams and visions.’[179]

The author of the ‘New and Complete British Traveller’ prosaically confirms this account: ‘A large tract of ground called Finchley Common has long been remarkable as a particular spot for the commission of robberies, and it has been usual to erect gibbets on it, where some of the most notorious malefactors have been hung in chains.’

So, though the village on the west side of the Common had some good houses on it, Richardson’s inclination for a Tusculum at Finchley was probably not very strong, or his friend’s badinage, from the proportion of truth it contained, proved convincing, for we find him settling down in the placid respectability of Parson’s Green, and the enjoyment of that delightful summer-house at the end of the garden, with room enough in it for the literary young ladies who buzzed about him like bees about a bed of borage, with their mild suggestions and criticism, all commendatory, and praises altogether saccharine, till we believe in the truth of Johnson’s remarks to Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Madame Piozzi: ‘You think I like flattery, and so I do, but a little too much disgusts me. That fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.’ An anecdote which Finchley is not concerned in, though apropos to our talk of Richardson.

If we take the Finchley Road back, we can make our way by Cricklewood to Child’s Hill Lane, and so back to the West Heath. There were in 1859 two or three good houses to the left of the road, with large, newly-enclosed grounds, but a few years later this portion of the Finchley Road was the least interesting and the most vitiated place on the skirts of Hampstead. The melancholy attempt to raise good houses on either side appeared to have been blighted by the unwholesome airs arising from the ill-drained and already-crowded suburb of Child’s Hill lying in the bottom to the right. Here various businesses the reverse of sanitary were carried on, the vile smells from which in hot weather, even at a considerable distance, made the inhaling of them dangerous, and occasioned a sort of local fever, from which it was said the neighbourhood was seldom free.

It was a relief, when leaving the sight of coal-yards covering what had been delightful meadows only a few years ago, and the useful, but certainly unpicturesque, railway-station to the right, to turn the corner by a semi-rural hostel at Cricklewood, and a row of village shops, and, mounting the slope, to enter what was quite recently a deep-hedged country lane, into which, according to the exploded theory of my antiquarian friend, the old Roman road over Hampstead Heath struck down by way of Cricklewood to Hendon. We pass the Hermitage, the temporary summer home of many well-known artists, and two or three cottages. The road, in places still fringed with trees, suggesting the shady way it must have been in olden time, ends at the spot that Platt’s Lane brought us to, within a short distance of West Heath.

Had we desired a longer walk on the Finchley Road, we might have found our way back through a field-gate a little to the east of Platt’s Lane, and of the path I have already described, leading to a gate opening into Oak Hill Fields at New West End, a region of rich grass fields, the quality of which recommended the purchase of 14 acres of meadow-land at Child’s Hill to the trustees of the Campden Charity, with which they joined the bequest of an unnamed but eccentric gentlewoman who left the parish £40 for the purpose of distributing among the inhabitants of Hampstead, _rich and poor_, halfpenny loaves (cross-buns, probably) on the morning of Good Friday annually.

If we follow the path, we find ourselves in the midst of a scene of pastoral beauty still unspoiled. Cattle, such as Sidney Cooper loves to paint, sleek and dappled, were, when I last saw it, placidly cropping mouthfuls of juicy grasses, or lying about on the slope of the upland field, lazily chewing the cud. In the hedgerows oak-trees, some of them hollow with age, and others young and verdant, appeared scattered over the face of the hill, which takes its name from the numbers of them once growing there. It was a walk for summer mornings and summer evenings—peaceful, sequestered, lovely—a walk that many a poet had trodden, and one in which many an artist besides Landseer had found inspiration and charming subjects. The hedgerows still sheltered their indigenous wild-flowers; hawthorn and elder, wild rose and woodbine, beautified the hedges in their several seasons, and though it felt and looked far away from the town, a very short walk to the gate or stile led to the main road, and past Oak Hill House, and Oak Hill Lodge, to the junction of Frognal Rise with Branch Hill.

We may either follow the latter road to the West Heath, or strike into the road past Lower Terrace, and come out between the enclosure of the Hampstead Waterworks and the walls of Mrs. Johnstone’s premises, at the angle of which, railed in, stands a fine old elm,[180] memorable as Irving’s Elm, under the shade of which some of the old inhabitants of Hampstead may remember to have seen the preacher of the ‘unknown tongue’ take his stand, and with vehement language and gesture address a crowd half curious, half eager to listen to his passionate pleadings or fierce denunciations.[181]

It is curious that Edward Irving, like Whitfield, was remarkable for a fearful squint. The _Edinburgh Review_, with a cruelty not unusual in its criticisms, attacked his appearance, actions, tones, gesticulation, and pronunciation, and stated that he thundered forth a growling falsetto, and ‘draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.’ It describes his violent contortions of countenance, and winds up by asserting that there had never been such a tossing of brawny arms, and such a lowering of bushy eyebrows performed ‘to so little purpose.’ But the critic adds that, ‘were he to dispense with his absurd, fitful, inappropriate vehemence, and eternal straining after singularity in the most minute points, he might become a rational and respectable minister of the Gospel.’

Turning back a few yards to Branch Hill, a road runs off at an angle with the main road past Lower Terrace, at No. 2 of which Constable, with his ‘placid companion’ and their little ones, had lodgings in 1821, and takes us out by the reservoir of the Hampstead Waterworks upon the Heath.

By making a little détour to the left, in front of Upper Terrace, and taking advantage of an opening between the houses, we find ourselves in the Judges’ Walk, or _Prospect Terrace_, as at one time modern Hampstead was inclined to call it, forgetting the archæological interest attached to the old name, and find ourselves face to face with a surprise of prospective beauty—a view so wide in extent, so rich in woodland scenery, rolling on over the Hertfordshire hills to the right, and all between a wide expanse of fertile country, that in all England there is scarcely a finer woodland and pastoral view. The trees and houses to the left shut out the sight of Harrow, and the glittering waters of the Kingsbury reservoir are no longer seen; but looking to the right, the view is charming, and to witness a sunset from this eminence is worth, on a fine summer’s day, a pilgrimage to Hampstead.

The Judges’ Walk was so called, it is said, because during the year of the Great Plague the judges removed their Courts from Westminster, and, returning to the normal practice of their prototypes in Saxon and Norman times, held their _Seats of Justice_ ‘under the green tree’s shade.’ Court Tree, in the Isle of Sheppey, has its name from this antique custom, and the laws are thus annually promulgated on the Tynwald Hill in the Isle of Man.

Now that we are so near the Whitestone Pond, and the half square of houses opposite, let us cross over, and, passing at the side of the last of these, walk to the end of the tree-shaded alley, the view from which is one of the many scenic surprises of the Heath. There lies—or has it, with many other charms, been swept away?—the still pond, its surface scarcely ruffled by the movements of the swans, the green Heath on this side dipping down to its margin, and beyond the wooded heights of Highgate and the church. It is a picture that requires no composing; it is perfect in its natural picturesqueness.

A path under the garden wall of a house to the left brings us out at the Holford Road, between high walls, skirted by well-grown trees, past Heathfield House to the left, and other enclosed premises to the right, with Christ Church facing us, fringed by some grand old trees (part of a grove), leading by Cannon Place to Squire’s Mount. To the left of the church is a space half surrounded by houses, in one of which the well-known popular Nonconformist minister and eloquent preacher and writer, the Rev. Newman Hall, resided. To the east of the church are the school buildings appertaining to it, and Christ Church Road, which runs down to the Willow Walk and East Heath.

Leaving the church, which stands slightly raised above the roadway, on the right hand, we pass a row of good but dully-situated houses, known as Cannon Place, which extends from Christ Church to Squire’s Mount, and takes its name from the old cannon which stand as kerb-posts, muzzles downwards, in front of the courtyard of Cannon Hall, at the north-east corner of Squire’s Mount. Unfortunately, the history of the cannon is lost, and so also is that of the man who originally placed them there. Modern Hampstead is inclined to believe it the work of Sir J. C. Melville, but the older inhabitants, whose ‘fathers have told them,’ assert that the cannon were there long before this gentleman resided at Hampstead. There are, besides these peacefully-utilized pieces, two other very curious small bronze pieces of ordnance of beautiful workmanship and great age (said to have been taken from the Dutch), one bearing the date 1640, the other inscribed 1646. These find a place in the very beautiful grounds in which the house stands, an old red-bricked, two-storied mansion of early eighteenth-century design. The views from it—especially to the south—are said to be very extensive. It possesses a garden an acre in extent, and the ornamental grounds descend from 400 feet to the level of the Thames.

At the end of Cannon Place is Squire’s Mount, with some good houses cresting it, and a row of cottages running in a straight line towards the East Heath, with the Vale of Health (not assertive in offensive ugliness, as at present) modestly nestling right opposite, the Broad Walk crossing the Heath above it. At Squire’s Mount, in the house (one of those with some fine old trees sheltering them on the north-east) distinguished by a magnificent horse-chestnut in front of it, resided the octogenarian artist, Mrs. Harrison, a fine-looking, genial old lady, whose charming transcripts of spring flowers, wild blossoms, bird-nests, and bits of hedgerow beauty, were well known to visitors at the Old Painters in Water Colours’ Exhibitions. So late as the spring of 1864-65 she had copied primroses from nature.

At the back of Squire’s Mount Cottages are a group of small houses, known as Heath Cottages, looking out on a delightful view, but one which is said to be threatened with extinction. It takes in the red viaduct and wooded neighbourhood of Caenwood Farm, with Highgate; but when these lines were written, a brickfield smouldered on one side, and the ground it covered will, it is said, be shortly in the hands of the builders.

If, instead of walking across the Heath, we desire to return to the town, we must turn back to Cannon Place, at the western end of Squire’s Mount Cottages, and, crossing the road at the bottom to the right, keep down a short lane, at the end of which is Well Walk. Keep straight past the Burgh, and Wetherall House, and, still bearing to the right, above the new districts of Gayton and Gardener’s Roads—the latter probably so called in memory of the allotments, formerly the garden, playground, and orchard of a rather celebrated school—keep on down Flask Walk to the High Street. Or return by Christ Church Road, here leading east and west; or by way of New End to Heath Street. And this reminds me that New End requires some notice.

It marked, no doubt, as its name implies, a new epoch in the growth of Hampstead, and an attempt at making a straight street, which the genius of the place appears to have resented, the outline of New End representing that of an ill-proportioned funnel, with its mouth to the east, and its narrow termination in Heath Street, where, on both sides of the way (for the place was sadly in request by tramps journeying to London), used to be posted up ‘To New End and the Workhouse.’ Park does not mention the neighbourhood, except to notice the purchase by the parish of Mrs. Leggatt’s mansion for the new workhouse. Yet in 1811 there were fifty rateable tenements, besides some untenanted, in the district; eight of them rated at £25 per annum, one at £60—the residence of a Mr. Richard Otley—were probably private residences.

These houses rose on the rim of the bowl in which Mrs. Leggatt’s handsome red-brick mansion (as we see it to-day the façade remains unaltered) was set down, a reason, no doubt, for disposing of it, and which was objected to on the part of some of the people in authority as likely to prove detrimental to the health of its future inmates. From the schedule before me of the old materials, it is possible to rehabilitate the mansion, the body of which forms the centre of the present workhouse, and relieves, with brilliant ruddiness, the added ugly gray buildings overlooking it. It had a ventilator and turret on the roof; there were bows to the parlour, dining, and drawing rooms looking to the east, a probably uninterrupted view originally.

These rooms had handsomely stuccoed ceilings, cornices, and mouldings, and marble chimney-pieces, carved, no doubt, after the lovely fashion of their day, with an old Roman triumph, or a procession of Ceres, or a vine-crowned Bacchus and Bacchantes. The great stairs, with mahogany hand-rail and banisters, sprang up from the ground-floor in the centre of the building to the two-pair story; and these, and all the marble chimney-pieces, except those left in the Master’s room, and the room over it, were to be taken at a valuation by the contractors, unless available in the work. All the offices were at the west side, or back, of the house; there was a clinker-paved stable, a laundry, and greenhouse, and what are called stewing-stoves in the kitchen—in short, all the appointments of a well-arranged establishment, the finishing touch to which is suggested in the enriched chimney caps.

Since then the character of the whole district seems to have fallen, and New End is chiefly occupied by humble shops and cheap lodging-houses. The square, an imperfect triangle, still asserts itself superior to the dingy, sordid neighbourhood, about which the less said the better.