On Hampstead Heath: The West Heath, Pt. 2

We’ve discussed why the West Heath is (or, more accurately, was) a “heath.”  Today we’ll look at some of the West Heath’s history and major landmarks.

Location, Location

As the map shows, the West Heath is a rough triangle proceeding west from Whitestone Pond, bounded by West Heath Road to the south and North End Way to the north.  Golders Hill Park is adjacent along the western boundary. To the southeast of a jog in West Heath Road is the former site of Branch Hill Pond—now a mere grass-filled depression—famously painted by Constable. The southwestern edge of the West Heath is about 300 yards from our front door; we consider the West Heath to be “our” section of the Heath.

In general, the West Heath slopes gently upward from southwest to northeast, but the terrain is relatively flat in comparison to much of the rest of the heath.  (We will discuss some reasons for that at a later date.)  This relatively flat terrain was one reason why the West Heath was a popular venue for horse racing in the early 18^th Century.

 

Sandy Road



Features Galore!

Sandy Road is a wide, unpaved track that runs along the western edge of the West Heath, from Platt’s Lane to North End Way—our route to the Old Bull & Bush, in fact. One might easily assume that Sandy Road was conceived and built as a footpath, as might be found in any large park. One would be mistaken. Sandy Road was a true road—before the Heath became a public trust in 1872 and Platt’s Farm was developed into The Crofts in the 1890s, Sandy Road was the continuation of Platt’s Lane, linking Child’s Hill to North End and Spaniard’s Road. For centuries, this was probably the main route for carrying produce from the surrounding farmland (including Wyldes Farm) to market in London, via the Roman-laid Watling Street (now Kilburn High Road and Edgware Road).

 

Leg o' Mutton Pond, December 2010



About 100 yards along Sandy Road from Platt’s Lane, one finds Leg o’Mutton Pond. Like the other large ponds on the Heath, Leg o’ Mutton is man made, dug in 1816 as part of a relief program for unemployed laborers during the depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars. (Sandy Road also was raised and improved as part of the same relief effort.) The pond is naturally maintained, however, filled by two spring-fed streams that flow across the West Heath and ultimately into the Brent River, and thence to the Thames.  During the Nineteenth Century, the pond was popular for summer bathing and angling (though one wonders from whence came the fish).



The Pergola



Among the more interesting features on the West Heath are the Pergola and Hill Garden. These features are comprised of a manicured, formal garden with terraces arranged around a long, rectangular lily pond, and an elaborate 800 foot-long,  Italian Renaissance-style pergola, complete with climbing vines. When happened upon from the south or east, these features rise quite unexpectedly from the wilds of the Heath, and are a delightful surprise. Why are they here, and why are they part of the Heath?



Public Right-of-Way, The Pergola



As one might expect, the answers to these questions make an interesting tale. In 1905, the wealthy soap magnate William Lever, Lord Leverhulme, purchased an estate on North End Way called The Hill, which commanded magnificent views to the north, over the (then, still unwooded) West Heath. Lord Leverhulme loved to throw magnificent garden parties. To that end, he purchased a neighboring property called Heath Lodge, with the intent of demolishing the house and replacing it with a garden. Unfortunately for Lord Leverhulme, there was a public right-of-way—a simple footpath, really—between The Hill and Heath Lodge. Despite Lord Leverhulme’s best efforts, he could not extinguish the right of way. This meant that anyone strolling on the Heath could stop and gawk at the Lord’s garden parties.



The Hill Garden Pond



Lord Leverhulme turned to renowned landscape architect Thomas Mawson to resolve the problem. Mawson designed the Hill Garden, and the Pergola to provide private access over the right-of-way to the Hill Garden. The design and construction of the Pergola took 20 years, including a lengthy interruption during the Great War.

The Pergola, Detail

Almost immediately after the Pergola was completed in 1925, Lord Leverhulme died. The Hill was acquired by shipping magnate Baron Inverforth and renamed Inverforth House; Baron Inverforth lived there until his own death in 1955. He willed the property to Manor House Hospital, and it was used as a convalescent home. The Pergola and Hill Gardens were purchased and added to the Heath in 1960, although by then they were in poor condition. A thorough renovation was carried out in the early 1990s, and the areas were reopened to the public in 1995.  Inverforth House was subsequently sold and subdivided into flats, data from 2007 indicates that each was then valued at around £4 million.

I suppose the Gibbet Elms are no long a feature as they no longer exist, but they’re another good West Heath story. In March, 1674, a highwayman named Francis Jackson and his gang robbed two coaches in Hounslow (not far from where Heathrow Airport is now). The gang was spotted as they neared Acton (then a tiny farming village to the west of London), and they suddenly found themselves pursued by a posse of 40-to-50 men. A running battle ensued across much of Middlesex County. The gang reached Hampstead Heath­ hours later, exhausted and their powder and shot used up, where they were ambushed by 200 men. The gang held them off for nearly an hour before they were taken. During the resistance, Jackson killed one of the local Hampstead men. Jackson was hanged, and his corpse returned to the Heath and gibbeted from an elm tree, only a few feet from where the Hill Garden sits now. The corpse hung there for 18 years. The last of the Gibbet Elms blew down in 1907.

References:

A. Farmer, Hampstead Heath (1984)

C. Wade, Hampstead Past (1989)

D. McDowall & D. Wolton, The Walker’s Guide: Hampstead Heath (2006 ed.)

D. Wolton & D. McDowall, Hampstead Heath (2007)

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/B5F7A42F-FA5A-4087-A3A4-C3FFE907EB2D/0/OS_HH_pergola.pdf

On Hampstead Heath: The West Heath, Pt. 1

We have so far discussed Golders Hill Park and the Hampstead Heath Extension, both of which were relatively late additions to the Heath, added in 1898 and 1907, respectively.  In contrast, the West Heath has been a part of the Heath for all of recorded history.

Prelude: What is a ‘Heath,’ Anyway?

“Heath” is one of those peculiarly English words (like “moor” and “dale”) that most Americans have heard but never use.  I always assumed that “heath” was a posh synonym for “park.” It is not, of course; indeed, the Heath was called such for centuries before it was a public open space.



Rather, a “heath” is a type of terrain: specifically, “a large open area, usually with sandy soil and scrubby vegetation, esp heather.“[1] This is precisely what the Heath was, and why it persisted as open land when all of the surrounding land was used for agriculture. The reason for this is geological.  The top layer of soil on the Heath is a type of sand called Bagshot, deposited by a river flowing from the west of England approximately 40 million years ago. This sandy topsoil is acidic and infertile, and therefore unsuitable for agriculture.  For this reason the Heath was not farmed, but instead was used as the village “common” of the Manor of Hampstead where, under English manorial tradition, the commoners had the right to graze animals on the scrubby flora, to cut turf for fuel and building materials, and to dig sand.



Bog, West Heath



Beneath the sand is a transitional layer called the Claygate Beds, which in turn covers a deeper layer of stiff, bluish London clay. In the lower portions of the Heath, where less sand was deposited and more has eroded away,  these deeper layers have been exposed, and trees and grasses more typical of the region have sprung up.





This geology also accounts for another dominant feature of the Heath: its perpetual damp.  Rainwater—of which the Heath receives copious amounts—drains easily down through the sandy layers. When the water hits the denser layers below, it moves horizontally, eventually seeping out of the ground, creating boggy conditions or collecting into streams.  The Heath is thus the source of five rivers that empty into the Thames, although all are now channeled underground: the Fleet, the Holborn, the Tyburn, the Kilburn (Westbourne), and the Brent.

West Heath

The West Heath: Back to Nature

I’ve just told you that the West Heath is part of the original Heath, and that heathland is characterized by low scrubby vegetation such as heather. Why, then, do all of our photos of the West Heath look like they were taken in woodland? The answer lies in prehistory.

As explained by Wolton & McDowall,[2] heathland is rarely naturally occurring. Rather, it typically occurs when areas of well-draining, acidic sandy soil—such as that on the Heath—are cleared of trees and shrubbery and used to graze livestock.  Over time, the grazing alters the flora into the scrubby heather and gorse typical of heathland. The remains of a Mesolithic-period encampment on the West Heath, near Leg o’ Mutton Pond, suggest that the West Heath was cleared of its original vegetation as early as 7,000 years ago, and the land probably was used for  grazing thereafter until well into the Nineteenth Century. Indeed, John Constable’s 1821-1822 painting of the West Heath, West End Fields, Hampstead, noon, depicts a flock of sheep grazing on typically open heathland.

The grazing of livestock on the West Heath stopped, of course, when the Heath (then comprised of 220 acres of the West Heath, the Sandy Heath, and the East Heath) passed into the public trust in January 1872. In the ensuing 140 years, the West Heath has been recolonized by trees and shrubbery; birch trees, in particular, are known to thrive on open, acidic ground, and many large, mature birch trees now thrive in the West Heath.[3]

In Part 2, we look at the landmarks of the West Heath.

19th C. Jazz, West Heath

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[1] heath. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heath> (accessed: March 28, 2011).

[2] D. Wolton & D. McDowall, Hampstead Heath (2007), pp. 38-45.

[3] Ibid. at p. 38.http://rosecroftavenue.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-hampstead-heath-west-heath-pt-2.html

On Hampstead Heath: The Hampstead Heath Extension

A few blocks north of Golders Hill Park, Hampstead Heath Extension juts awkwardly from the northwestern tip of Sandy Heath into the surrounding community of Golders Green. Such strange appendages in the urban landscape usually have some sort of historical explanation, and so it is here.

In the late 19^th Century, the East London area known as Whitechapel was infamous for crime and poverty, its notoriety peaking between 1888 and 1891 due the Whitechapel Murders – the brutal murders of eleven women, including those attributed to Jack the Ripper. During this time, the vicar of St. Jude’s Church in Whitechapel was Samuel August Barnett; his wife was Dame Henrietta Octavia Weston Barnett, the daughter of a wealthy businessman.  Henrietta was a close friend of celebrated social reformer Octavia Hill, who, among other things, was instrumental in preserving the Parliament Hill area of Hampstead Heath as an open space “for the poor.” In 1889, Henrietta and Samuel took a house on Hampstead Heath, near The Spaniards Inn, as a weekend retreat.

Wyldes Farmhouse

From Henrietta’s house on the Heath, she had a magnificent view across Sandy Heath to the 340 acres of adjoining Wyldes Farm. Wyldes had been part of the estates of the Leper Hospital of St. James from medieval times; over the centuries, the hospital accumulated great wealth from the bequests of charitable Londoners. In 1440, however, Henry VI decided all of that wealth could go to a better use and, when he founded Eton College that year, he decreed that Eton should have “perpetual custody” of the hospital.  Henry VIII later decided that the site of the hospital would be better suited to a royal manor house, so he acquired the site from Eton, demolished the hospital, and built St. James’ Palace.

Heritage Plaque for Linnell and Blake at Wyldes

Eton retained Wyldes Farm, however, letting it out to farmers and collecting rents. In the early 1800s, Wyldes was let to a dairy farmer named J. Collins, who expanded the farmhouse and, in turn, let rooms to painter John Linnell.  Linnell was a great friend of and patron to poet and painter William Blake, and Blake often stayed with Linnell at Wyldes.  Wyldes was also home to Charles Dickens for a brief period in 1837; he rented the farmhouse for a few weeks while mourning the death of his sister-in-law. Now a Grade II* listed building, the farmhouse still stands across Hampstead Way from the Heath Extension.

In 1903, Henrietta was horrified to hear of plans to build an underground station at North End, near Wyldes Farm. In addition to the “ruin of the sylvan restfulness” the train line would wreak, Henrietta believed the underground would inevitably result in the development of “rows of ugly villas” such as those that “disfigure[d]” nearby Willesden. Henrietta formed the Hampstead Heath Extension Council for the purpose of raising money to purchase land from Wyldes Farm and add it to the Heath. She succeeded, and in the summer of 1904 the Council purchased for £36,000 the 80 acres of Wyldes Farm adjoining the Sandy Heath.



On the Heath Extension.  The Garden Suburb visible in the background.

But Henrietta did not stop there. She engineered the purchase of an additional 240 acres from Wyldes Farm, with the purpose of founding a planned, orderly “garden suburb” for residents all across the economic spectrum, where “houses will not be put in uniform lines nor in close relationship built regardless of each other, or without consideration for picturesque appearance. Great care will be taken that the houses shall not spoil each other’s outlook, while the avoidance of uniformity or of an institutional aspect will be obtained by the variety of the dwellings, always provided that the fundamental principle is complied with that the part should not spoil the whole, nor that individual rights be assumed to carry the power of working communal wrong.”[1]



Lovely terrace housing in the Garden Suburb

 The result of Henrietta’s labors was the founding in 1907 of Hampstead Garden Suburb, which ultimately grew to 800 acres of meticulously planned and maintained suburbia. The extent to which Henrietta’s original vision ultimately was realized, however, is open to debate. With flats currently on the market priced from £310,000 to £750,000 (and detached houses priced from £2.75 million to £14 million)[2] it’s safe to assume the lower income brackets are not well represented among the Suburb’s inhabitants.

Although among the least interesting landscapes on the Heath, the Extension remains a lovely park. Its genesis in farmland remains apparent, as the Extension is divided by hedgerows into large, gently rolling paddocks.  There is a series of small ponds near the southeastern end, among some reeds and trees, but most of the park is meadowland or, toward the northern end, playing fields for cricket, football and rugby.  The Extension is enclosed at the northwest by the Great Wall (perhaps a misnomer – the Very Good Wall or Perfectly Nice Wall might be more fitting). This is a brick wall designed by architect Charles Padget Wade and built between 1909 and 1912; Raymond Unwin, the chief planner of the Garden Suburb, intended the wall to provide a dramatic boundary between the rural Heath and the center of the Garden Suburb.



Toward the Great Wall

Reference:
A. Farmer, Hampstead Heath (1984), pp. 135-137.

[1] http://www.hgstrust.org/history/index.html (accessed 11 February 2011).

[2] See, e.g., http://www.foxtons.co.uk/properties/uk-london-hampstead-garden-suburb-98/properties-for-sale-in-hampstead-garden-suburb.html (accessed 11 February 2011).

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On Hampstead Heath: Golders Hill Park

We begin our exploration of Hampstead Heath in Golders Hill Park, 36-acres of manicured lawn and formal gardens appended to the Heath’s northwestern tip. Laid out in a rough triangle between West Heath Drive and North End Road, the Park is demarcated from the forested West Heath by a wide pedestrian path called Sandy Road. Technically, nearly all of the Park lies outside of Hampstead in the Borough of Barnet, but we don’t let that bother us too much.

History
The Park was not always part of the Heath. The Golders Hill estate was created in the 1760s by businessman Charles Dingley, an associate of William Pitt the Elder (namesake of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and father of the long-serving British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger). A later owner, John Coore, hired one of the great English landscape architects, Humphry Repton, to landscape the property.

Golders Hill Park in relation to Rosecroft Avenue (bottom right) and the West Heath



Golders Hill Mansion, c. 1905

The last owner of the estate was Queen Victoria’s surgeon, Sir Spencer Wells. After Wells died in 1897, the estate was put up for auction. No one bid the reserve price, however, and a second auction was held in 1898. A committee of prominent locals raised £35,000 to buy the estate to save it from development, but the bidding exceeded that price.  Soap magnate Thomas Barrett (who is credited or blamed, depending on one's view, for inventing modern advertising) purchased the estate for £38,000 on his own account, and then sold it to the committee at that price. The park—with its Victorian mansion still intact—was opened to the public in December 1898.

The mansion stood until 1941, when it was destroyed by a German parachute mine.

Golders Hill Park Today

Golders Hill is an exceptional children’s park. There is, of course, plenty of space for play. There is a large sloped lawn in the Park’s center, dotted with aged oak trees and perfectly graded for safe-and-sane winter sledding. Much to Heidi's delight, there are two playgrounds, one reserved for children under 5. Hopefully, we will still be living here when Jack is old enough to use it.

View from the walled garden toward the bandstand

There is also much to explore in Golders Hill. On the West Heath Drive side of the Park, a hilly path follows a brook down to a water garden, culminating in a large pond—imaginatively called Swan Pond—that serves as home to  several swans. On the North End Road side of the Park is a lovely walled garden with an arched bridge, a small pond that is home to a number of ducks and geese, and several sculptures. A café now stands on the site of the original mansion; by all accounts, it serves decent Italian food and very good own-made ice cream. There is a bandstand that, in the summertime, is a venue for live music.

Between these features are, for many, the Park’s two main attractions—a large enclosure that is home to a dozen or more deer, and a small zoo and aviary that houses a butterfly house, a huge owl and some very cute small mammals, including several  coati and four lemurs.

Here are some photos from two afternoons at the Park. Push play to enjoy the show:

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References:
A. Farmer, Hampstead Heath (1984).