CHAPTER VI.

_WEST END TO CHILD’S HILL AND THE WEST HEATH._

Although lying wide of Hampstead proper, West End is an integral part of the parish of St. John, and the western boundary of the original demesne lands of the manor. It is accessible from the Heath by two or three charming field-paths, and when in the neighbourhood of Frognal Priory, at the period these lines were written, the first turning to the left led straight to it. In those days not even the blank walls and close-clipped garden hedges at the entrance could deprive West End Lane of the character of rusticity.

The ground along which it undulated, the fine old trees that overhung it in places, and the grassy slopes to the left, with their old-fashioned hedgerows broken by elm and oak trees, and brightened in spring and summer with whitethorn and elder bloom, left us a glimpse, as it were, of the lovely aspect of the fields, once stretching away to what were then Kilburn meadows, but which now underlie a town.

The first house to the right at the beginning of the lane was the Ferns, noticeable as having been the residence of the late Henry Bradshaw Fearon, a wealthy wine-merchant of London, a man of ‘large mind, and liberal principles, and a leader of them in others.’ ‘In common with, if not in so prominent a degree as, Lord Brougham, Thomas Campbell, and other men of high standing and influence, he took an active part in the originating and founding of the London University, and, if only on this account, deserves the gratitude of his fellow-citizens.’[103]

Next to the Ferns was the so-called Manor House, the residence for some years of the head of the well-known publishing firm of Longman and Co.[104] A few yards further, the road dipped down into a green hollow, with meeting elm-boughs overhead, and there was a seat pleasantly placed for the comfort and rest of wayfarers. Beside it a gate and footpath led aslant over two grass fields hemmed round by hedgerows and trees, the second of them having two very aged oak-trees in it; one of them, hollow and gnarled, but still sprouting forth a green head, stood one half within and one half without the gate, which separated the fields directly in the middle of the pathway which led round it. Of these fields we find a pleasant memory in a letter of Miss Meteyard’s, published by Mr. Stephens in his ‘Life of Sir Edwin Landseer,’ whose father, in 1849-50, resided (as his family have since continued to do) at St. John’s Wood. At this period the Howitts were living in the avenue close by, and being well acquainted, William Howitt and the elder Landseer often met in their walks, or would go or return together.

‘One evening in passing along the Finchley Road towards Child’s Hill, Mr. Landseer stayed at a gate of ancient look, and said to his friend, “These two fields were Edwin’s first studios. Many a time have I lifted him over this very stile. I then lived in Foley Street, and nearly all the way between Marylebone and Hampstead was open fields. It was a favourite walk with my boys, and one day when I had accompanied them, Edwin stopped by this stile to admire some sheep and cows which were quietly grazing. At his request I lifted him over, and finding a scrap of paper and a pencil in my pocket, I made him sketch a cow. He was very young indeed then, not more than six or seven years old. After this we came on several occasions, and as he grew older, this was one of his favourite spots for sketching. He would start off alone, or with John or Charles, and remain till I fetched him in the afternoon.... Sometimes he would sketch in one field, sometimes in the other ... but generally in the one beyond the old oak we see there, as it was more pleasant and sunny.”’[105] This was the upper field, nearest West End Lane, which some of my readers will remember. Nor will it lessen their interest in this once pleasant locality, that it was while walking in these fields that William Howitt, whose name is a household word in English family literature, told the story to Miss Meteyard, who was never wearied of expatiating on the woodland beauty of this neighbourhood.

Within her own recollection it was famous for the number and beauty of its oak-trees—‘a region of them,’ she called it—and West End Lane was then a deep-hedged, tree-shaded alley all the way to Fortune Green.

In the May of 1815 (it should be 1816) we find Haydon, the disappointed, sad-lived artist, ‘sauntering,’ as he tells us, ‘to West End Lane, and so to Hampstead, with great delight.’ And no wonder, for besides the spring-dressed beauty of Nature around him, he had for his companion that lover and evangelist of it, Wordsworth, and they were bound for the Vale of Health, and Leigh Hunt’s cottage, where Cumberland joined them, and afterwards walked with Haydon on the Heath. This excerpt from the artist’s diary closes the mouths of the sceptics who doubt that Wordsworth visited the ‘pink of Poets,’ as his critics sarcastically called the author of ‘Rimini,’ in his humble retreat at Hampstead.

Park, to whom I am so much indebted, tells us that the demesne land, occupying from four to five hundred acres of the richest land in the parish, lay scattered along the western side of the hill from Child’s Hill, north, to Belsize, south, and that the name of manor was in his time appropriated to that portion of them situated south of West End Lane. He also says that the old manor-house, which some of the then living inhabitants of Hampstead remembered, was a low, ordinary building in the farmhouse style, but with a very capacious hall.

The old manor-house had stood on the north side of the lane, in Park’s time the site of a modern house, on what was called the Manor Farm, occupied by General Sir Samuel Bentham, who, ‘tired of war’s alarms,’ had settled down to a peaceful life in a lovely neighbourhood, and took pleasure in pointing out to his visitors an old pollard oak in his grounds, which he believed was the identical oak which had given its name to the manor-farm—Hall Oak Farm. This name, Park tells us, was cut upon a stone built in as the keystone of the arched doorway of a large old barn. ‘The late lessee of the manor-farm (Mr. Thomas Pool) made great alterations in the disposition of the homestall. He pulled down the old house, and built a substantial residence upon the spot. At this house the manor courts were held till Pool removed to a smaller house on the other side of the road, and the courts were removed with him.’

But the house built on the site of the old manor-house, known in Park’s time as Hall Oak Farm, has now—1899—the name of Manor Lodge. ‘The title of Manor House was in 1813 appropriated to the adjoining house, then the residence of Thomas Norton Longman, Esq.,[106] which was without doubt a part of the original homestead, and in which the manor courts have occasionally been kept.’[107]

But in spite of the respectability of its antiquity and inhabitants, West End was not without its drawbacks. The Cock and Hoop upon the edge of the green (it is there still, 1896) was by no means an overnice hostel in the matter of customers. It lay on the road to Finchley Common, and ‘first come, first served,’ liberally read, seems to have been the motto of successive landlords. It had the reputation of being a rendezvous of highwaymen and robbers. An annual fair, which had grown up no one knew how, having no legal sanction by charter or otherwise, must also have been, from the number of tramps and roughs, and other disreputable and dangerous characters it brought together, a real grievance to the respectable inhabitants. Ostensibly it was an innocent fair enough, dealing chiefly in toys and gingerbread, with the usual accompaniment of travelling shows and theatres, attractions which brought together a concourse of people, and as naturally a number of thieves and pickpockets. Yet, being regarded as a pleasure fair, and taking place in mid-summer, it appears to have been frequented during daylight by respectable persons, and when evening came by decent tradespeople, and others of a class who have made great progress in social refinement since then. A newspaper cutting subsequent to July 28, 1819, informs us, under the head of Bow Street, that in consequence of the outrageous and daring scenes of disorder, robberies, wounding and ill-treating of a number of persons at the West End Fair near Hampstead on Monday evening, and during the night, an additional number of constables from this office, as well as officers from Hatton Garden, and a number of the inhabitants of Hampstead as special constables, attended the fair on Tuesday, to detect and apprehend the various gangs who attacked defenceless individuals, if possible more brutally than on Monday night. They pushed the people down, and not only robbed them of their watches and money, but actually tore off and possessed themselves of their clothes. One woman had her earrings torn from her ears. A number of desperate characters were taken up on this occasion, several of whom were committed, and others summarily dealt with as rogues and vagabonds. Long years after this date (for West End Fair was not suppressed), attendance at it appears to have been ‘a desperate pleasure.’ Apart from the perils of the fair itself, as soon as night fell the lanes and footpaths about Hampstead—the Kilburn meadows, the hedgerows in Pancras Vale, even the highways themselves—were infested with footpads and robbers, so that in the memory of an eye-witness living in 1849 it was customary for the decent part of the company to wait till the drummer went round the fair to recall the soldiers present to their quarters, and then to fall in with them for safety’s sake, and thus escorted march back to town.

Now if silence and dulness be signs of propriety, few places can be better behaved than West End Green, or what is left of it; even the cheerful clangour of the blacksmith’s forge, which used to stand at the further end of it, where many a traveller’s tire has been mended, and many a loose shoe replaced for gentlemen of the road in their wake, has passed away, and though the Cock and Hoop stands where it did, that, too, is changed, and has taken to new ways, and ‘lives cleanly.’[108] Only the conservative old houses still set their faces against class confusion, and aim at retirement behind tall walls and taller trees. But rank upon rank of modern minor houses is rapidly approaching from the south, while New West End, on the other side of the highway, threatens to absorb the fields still stretching between the Finchley Road and Kidderpoor Hall—a mansion which is said to occupy one of the healthiest situations in Middlesex, and was at one time recommended for a royal nursery.[109] A short distance along the main-road brings us to Platt’s Lane, leading to Child’s Hill. Almost opposite to this a path takes from the Finchley Road by Fortune Green Lane back to West End.

Another and shorter way to Child’s Hill is by the footpath at New West End, which, crossing diagonally a hillside field, takes through two others, in the last of which in line, but at a distance from each other, are three trees—an elm, lime, and horse-chestnut—remarkable in summer time for their richness of foliage and fine shape. At the end of this field (to the left of which is a pretty house of modest dimensions, and on the right in a hollow a barn) there is an opening into Platt’s Lane, which takes its name from a former owner of Child’s Hill House, Thomas Platt, Esq., which house subsequent to 1811, when he resided at Upper Terrace, he altered and enlarged. Brewer gives an engraving of it in his ‘Beauties of England and Wales,’ 1813, and describes it as an unostentatious brick building, with a cottage roof, and though it has been raised a story by its recent proprietor, Joseph Hoare, Esq.,[110] it is perfectly recognisable in the engraving. The ground to the east of Platt’s Lane preserves the pastoral character it must have had two centuries ago, and which induced the trustees of the Campden Charity to invest their trust in the purchase of ‘fourteen acres of meadow land at Child’s Hill for the benefit of the poor at Hampstead.’

At the top of Platt’s Lane, where the road is crossed by Child’s Hill Lane, is a bit of waste, an unclaimed angle, where the turf grows green or sunburnt with the seasons, and which in bygone years was seldom without the ‘burnt spot’ which marks the camping-place of gipsies. Now the trees are scant about it, and the gipsies rarely seen, though till 1825-30 Hampstead Heath was seldom without some stragglers of the tawny tribe. Walking on, we pass the back of the premises of Child’s Hill House,[111] which, standing some 300 feet above the level of the Thames, commands charming and extensive views, and is surrounded by several acres of pleasure-ground and gardens. A short distance further on we enter the West Heath Road, and can either follow it to its junction with the Broad Walk, or cross the sandy margin of the Heath in any direction we please. There is a way by the bottom of Leg of Mutton Pond, or, if we prefer it, we can strike into a path higher up than the boggy ground which occupies a wide space on either side of the watercourse running into it. From the higher ground the views are delightful, and there are seats scattered here and there in the most eligible places for enjoying them. Upon the brow of the Heath, North End Hill as it is called, some of the houses in the North End Road are seen now to be facing us. There lies Cedar Lawn and the wooded grounds of Hill House, fraternally looking towards Child’s Hill; in 1856 the residence of another member of the Hoare family; and pushing out a recently-erected wall many feet beyond its original enclosure is Heath Lodge, of which there is a story to tell.

This house was built by a Mrs. Lessingham, an actress of no very good repute, on a piece of gorse-covered waste about 1775. Having wit as well as beauty, she appears to have done pretty much as she liked, for having a mind to a villa at Hampstead, no obstacle appears to have been thrown in the way of a grant of land to build on, either by the Lord of the Manor or his agent, although she was not a copyholder of the manor, upon which the copyholders, headed by one Master Folkard, asserted their common rights, and destroyed the building as fast as it was raised. In order to obviate the illegality of the transaction, Mrs. Lessingham[112] purchased an insignificant cottage, and so became a copyholder; and being supported by Mr. Justice Addington, she braved the lawsuit (by means of which the Hampstead people hoped to exorcise the witch) and won it. The accounts of the riots at Hampstead between the builder’s men and the copyholders, or the mob who represented them, afforded the newspapers a subject for some time, and engaged the satirical pen of George Steevens, who sided with the Helen of the local war. She, clever as impudent, turned her opponents and their efforts into ridicule, and published an account (metrical) of the transaction and of the actors in it, which is not to be bought at the present day. She was sufficiently popular as an actress to figure on articles of pottery of the period, and I have met with her effigy at Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinsons’ rooms, in the character of Ophelia, on one of Sadler of Liverpool’s printed tiles. Mrs. Lessingham appears to have held quiet possession of her Hampstead villa for the brief remainder of her life, dying there in 1783; she was interred in the village churchyard, where her son subsequently erected an altar-tomb to her memory.[113]

At present Heath Lodge is the residence of D. Powell, Esq.,[114] since whose occupation a pretty bosky bit of waste between his premises and those of Hill House has been enclosed, and a meagre footpath substituted.

In 1750 the hamlet of West End contained about forty houses. Abrahams, in his ‘Book of Assessments’ (1811), has unfortunately included it with Frognal, and by thus confusing the localities has deprived us of the exact information his pamphlet would otherwise have supplied.

West End Lane is now absorbed into West Hampstead. There were several good houses on both sides of the way; they were mostly hidden within high walls, and set in park-like grounds that gave them a wealthy and exclusive air like those in Frognal. At one time (1799) Josiah Boydell had a house here, from which he subsequently removed to Frognal. New West End House, the residence of Mr. John Miles, of Stationers’ Hall Court, from 1813 to December, 1856, had at the first date no house nearer than Old West End House (the Beckfords) between it and the Edgware Road. It is said that the rumbling of the cannon on the field of Waterloo was heard in Mr. Miles’s garden. Mr. Miles died in 1856, and for seventy-six years afterwards his widow continued to reside at West End House, where she died on April 18, 1889, in her ninety-ninth year.[115] The house and 13 acres of land were purchased by Colonel Frazer for £32,500. His death occurred a very short time afterwards, and in 1895 it was suggested to purchase the estate for a public park and recreation-ground for West Hampstead.

Old West End House must have been a place of considerable importance. In 1811 it was to be sold; it was then Miss Beckford’s, the after Duchess of Hamilton. The house, with gardens, pleasure-grounds, and offices, occupied an area of 21 acres.

From 1796 to 1802 this house was in the occupation of Mrs. Walpole, widow of the Hon. Richard Walpole. It was subsequently tenanted by various families.