N. DAnvers - The Skirts of the Great City

A map of The Skirts of the Great City

HAMPTON COURT PALACE

BY

MRS. ARTHUR G. BELL

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
ARTHUR G. BELL
AND SEVENTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1907

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII. SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR

...... Frontispiece

IN MONOTONE

...... Front Cover

THE SKIRTS OF THE
GREAT CITY

In his remarkable work Les Rcits de l'Infini, the famous French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, hit upon a somewhat original device to bring vividly before his readers the fact that the heavenly bodies are seen by the dwellers upon earth, not as they are now, but as they were when the light revealing them left them countless ages ago. Having endowed an imaginary observer with immortality, he takes him from star to star, showing him all the kingdoms of the world at the various stages of their development, and finally makes him a witness of the Creation by the aid of the light that first shone upon the waters of chaos. Unfortunately, the student of history cannot hope to share the supernatural facilities of vision of Flammarion's hero, but for all that he can lay to heart some of the lessons of the astronomer's story by bringing to bear upon his task the sympathetic imagination which alone can enable him to reconstruct the past, and by remembering that that past should be judged not by the light of modern progress, but by such illumination as was available when it was still the present. No matter what the subject of study, the accumulation of facts is of little worth without the power of realising their interdependence, and this is very specially the case with the complex theme of London, in which an infinite variety of conflicting elements are welded into an unwieldy and by no means homogeneous whole, for in spite of the obliteration of landmarks and the levelling influences of modern times, each of its component parts has a psychological atmosphere of its own. Illusive, intangible, often almost indefinable, that atmosphere affects everything that is seen in it, and is a factor that must be reckoned with, if a trustworthy picture of the past or present is to be called up. The truth of this is very forcibly illustrated in the outlying suburbs of London, with which the present volume deals, for though these suburbs now appear to the cursory observer to bear the relation of branches to a parent stem, many indications prove that they were all not so very long ago independent communities, which were gradually absorbed by their aggressive neighbour, whose appetite grew with what it fed upon, and is still unsatisfied. This is very notably the case with Hampstead, which less than a century ago was still a mere village, the history of which can be traced back for more than a thousand years, and which, through all its vicissitudes, may justly be said to have been true to itself, for its inhabitants have from first to last resisted with more or less success every attempt to merge its individuality in that of the metropolis.

The name of Hampstead, originally spelt Hamstede, signifies homestead, and the first settlement on the site of the present suburb is supposed to have been a farm, situated in the district now known as Frognal, round about which a hamlet grew up that was until after the Reformation included in the parish of Hendon. The earliest historical reference to Hamstede occurs in a charter bearing date 978, in which Edward the Peaceable granted the manor to his minister Mangoda, and many theories have been hazarded to explain the difficulty arising from the fact that the king died in 975, the most plausible of which is that the copyist was guilty of a clerical error. In any case, a later charter, issued by Ethelred II. in 986, gave the same manor to the monks of Westminster, a gift confirmed by Edward the Confessor, and retained until the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century.

A touch of romance is given to the laconic description in Doomsday Book of the Hamstede Manor, by the mention of Ranulph Pevrel as holding one hide of land under the abbot, for that villein married the Conqueror's former mistress, the beautiful Ingelrica, and the fact that the lovers were in fairly prosperous circumstances is proved by Ranulph having owned nearly six times as much land as any other dweller on the estate. Incidentally, too, the effect of the Conquest on the value of property is reflected in the sudden decrease in that of the manor of Hamstede, which was worth one hundred shillings under Edward the Confessor, and only fifty under his successor.

Unfortunately, next to nothing is known of the history of the little settlement on the hill in Norman and medival times, but at the Reformation the manor was included in the newly formed see of Westminster, whose first bishop, Thomas Thirlby, appears to have lost no time in dissipating the episcopal revenues, for much of his property, including that at Hampstead, soon reverted to the Crown. The manor was given in 1550 by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Wrothe, and after changing hands many times in the succeeding centuries, it became the property about 1780 of Sir Spencer Wilson, to whose great-nephew, Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, it now (1907) belongs.

The history of the neighbouring manor of Belsize greatly resembles that of Hampstead, for it was given in the thirteenth century to the monks of Westminster by means of a grant from Sir Roger Brabazon, chief justice of the King's Bench. It remained the property of the abbey until the time of Henry VIII., when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who leased it to a member of the Wade or Waad family, whose descendants held it until 1649. Since then it has been sold many times, and the manor has been occupied by many celebrities, including Lord Wotton and his half-brother the second Earl of Chesterfield, but in 1720 it was converted into a place of amusement, and gradually sank into what was known as a 'Folly House,' the resort of gamblers and rakes. Closed in 1745, possibly on account of its evil reputation, it was restored a few years later to the dignity of a private residence, and between 1798 and 1807 it was the home of the famous but ill-fated Spencer Perceval, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the latter date, and Prime Minister two years later. Some sixty years ago, the ancient mansion with the grounds in which it stood were sold for building, with the inevitable result that the rural character of what had long been one of the most charming spots near London, was quickly destroyed. Belsize and Hampstead are now for all practical purposes one, though two hundred and forty acres of the former still belong to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, whilst the bounds of the latter as accepted by the Commission of 1885 remain precisely what they were in Anglo-Saxon times before the cataclysm of the Conquest that removed so many landmarks.