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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."

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 intro

We have stated above that the manor of Belsize duction to the Report of the Argument before

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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

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.

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

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a pleasant pathway sloping up to the south- from the fluid they drink. The localities of the western 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

66 "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

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.

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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,

Hampstead.]

"MEMORY-CORNER THOMPSON."

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."

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On

This neighbourhood is full of gentlemen's seats and villas, standing in their own grounds. 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

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.

purchased by Government, and to be somewhere much trace of the inspiration of the Hampstead 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

Frognal Hall, standing close to the western end of the church, was formerly the residence of Mr. Isaac Ware,* 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

See ante, p. 214.

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