Hampstead Heath Protection Fund, and the matter was taken into court. Before the case was ended Sir Thomas died, and was succeeded by his brother Sir John, who was open to a compromise. Under an Act of Parliament the Metropolitan Board of Works acquired the Heath for £55,045. The ground thus acquired comprised 220 acres. In 1889-90 Parliament Hill Fields and the Brickfields were purchased for £302,000, with money partly raised by the local Vestries, partly by public subscription, and partly by Metropolitan taxation. The land thus bought from Lord Mansfield and Sir Spencer Wilson comprised 261 acres, and was dedicated to the public as an open space for ever.

The part of the Heath known as East Heath consists of rolling grassy slopes outlined with clumps of trees and intersected by roads and footpaths. The great road known as Spaniards, which cuts across as straight as an arrow, gives the impression of having been banked up and levelled at some previous date, but this appearance is due to the excavations for sand and gravel at its sides which took place while the ground was still under the rule of the lord of the manor.

The Heath has suffered from highwaymen in common with most lonely spots in the vicinity of the Metropolis. One, Jackson, in 1673, was hung behind Jack Straw's Castle for highway murder, but no other very notorious crimes are attached to this spot as there are to Hounslow or Blackheath.

The Heath is not altogether destitute of houses; of those detached, several have had the origin of what Baines terms "Squatters' right," and have established their title by process of time. There are also several hamlets: the Vale of Health, the houses about Jack Straw's Castle, North End, and the group near the Spaniards.

The curious little cluster of buildings called the Vale of Health, situated in a basin near to one of the Hampstead ponds, has always attracted considerable attention. Here Leigh Hunt came to live in 1816; his house was on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. Thornbury quotes an old inhabitant, who writes of Leigh Hunt's cottage as having a "pretty balcony environed with creepers, and a tall arbor vitæ which almost overtops the roof." There are very few even tolerably old houses left here; the little streets are of the modern villa order, and the great square tavern, with its tea-gardens and merry-go-rounds, its shooting-galleries and penny-in-the-slot machines, has vulgarized the place. Prince Esterhazy is said to have taken a house in the Vale of Health in 1840; this has been "long since pulled down." The place is now dedicated to the sweeping tide of merry-makers which flows over it every recurring Bank Holiday.

The charming spot called North End still remains rural in appearance: small cottages with red-tiled roofs and quaint inns survive side by side with the modern red-brick school-house. The Bull and Bush is said to have been the country seat of Hogarth, and later, when it became a tavern, to have been visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Sterne, Foote, and other celebrities. The house is very picturesque: the projecting wing northward is of rusticated woodwork; the leads of the bayed-windows are covered with flowers in summer. There are still the old-fashioned tea-gardens attached.

There are many substantial and comfortable residences about North End, but the Hampstead boundary does not include them all. Wildwoods, or, as it used to be called, North End House, is the most important within the boundary. The original fabric of the house is two centuries old, but has been altered and repaired largely. The spot is named Wildwood Corner in Domesday Book. Its chief historical interest lies in its occupation by William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, who shut himself up here from all communication with his fellow-Ministers in 1767; he was then a miserable invalid, afflicted with a disorder which in modern times would have been termed "nerves"; he refused to see anyone, even his own attendant, and his food was passed to him through a panel of the door. However, he afterwards returned to public life. In Wildwood Terrace are the Home of Rest for the Aged Poor, and a Convalescent Cottage Home. Wilkie Collins was born at North End. Besides this, the names of Linnell, portrait and landscape painter, Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Craik, Eliza Meteyard, a minor author, and Sir Fowell Buxton, are more or less intimately associated with the little hamlet.

A charming path leads over the broken ground from North End to the Spaniards. The most noticeable object as the pedestrian approaches the latter is a grove of fine Scotch firs, which at one time formed an avenue to a substantial, unpretentious house on the north. A Mr. Turner, a tobacconist of Fleet Street, built the house and planted the trees in 1734. The road past the house turns to the left or north, and is bounded on the east side by the wall of the Caenwood property.

Following the road we come upon Erskine House, a stuccoed house with covered porch, chiefly remarkable for the immense size of its upper windows, which are out of all proportion to those of the ground-floor. These command a magnificent prospect, and light a room which, it is said, was designed as a banqueting-hall in which to entertain George III. The house was the residence of the great law lord, Thomas Erskine, and on that account alone is worthy of special mention. A tunnel connecting it with Lord Mansfield's grounds formerly ran under the road.

Below the house, standing at an angle to the Highgate Road, and looking down the hill, is the famous old inn called the Spaniards. Here, at least, the modern builder has not been at work. From the quaint tiled roof to the irregular windows and white-washed brick walls, all is simple and charming. A little lean-to shed of rusticated woodwork forms a bar at the back. This tavern is actually outside the boundary of Hampstead, but it is so closely connected with the parish that it cannot be overlooked. It is on the site of a lodge at the entrance to the park or grounds of the Bishop of London.

From Wroth we learn that about the middle of the eighteenth century or earlier one Staples laid out a curious pleasure-garden here, with quaint designs, which attracted much attention. It was the landlord of the Spaniards Inn who in the time of the Gordon Riots dexterously detained the rioters from proceeding to Caenwood House until the troops arrived to protect it. The tea-gardens at the back still survive; in these was the old bowling-green. Close by was another pleasure-garden, New Georgia, but this is quite beyond the parish limits.

Returning across the Heath, we come to Jack Straw's Castle, though there is no evidence to show that the riotous ringleader of 1381 had ever any connection with the hostelry named after him, but it is quite possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his time. In early times an earthwork stood on the site, which gave rise to the name "castle." The real Jack Straw's Castle was at Highgate. It is almost certain that the Hampstead hostelry was originally a private house; the wood of the gallows on which one Jackson had been hanged behind the house, in 1673, for highway murder, was built into the wall. When the place became an inn it was called Castle Inn, and the first mention of Jack Straw's Castle is in a book published in 1822 called "The Cabinet of Curiosities." The present inn was built in the early part of the eighteenth century, and is a nice-looking stuccoed old house; through the entry to the yard we get a glimpse of red-tiled, rusticated wooden outbuildings. On one side are the tea-gardens. Dickens often resorted here, as is mentioned in Forster's "Life of Dickens," and the inn is referred to