id="Page_19" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 19]"/> two old houses are on the northern side of the Walk, and one of these, a long, low, red-brick edifice called Weatherhall House, deserves special notice. It contained the Long Room where dances and assemblies were held, and even after the fame of the waters declined it still held its place. Perhaps this is the room referred to by Seymour as having been built in 1735. He describes it as "60 feet long and 30 feet wide, well adorned with chandeliers. The manner of being admitted into it is by a ticket, of which every gentleman who subscribes a guinea for the season has one for himself and two more for two ladies; all those who have not subscribers' tickets pay 2s. 6d. each at the entrance every night. And Sunday nights in the same room is an assembly where the gentlemen and ladies who lodge in the town are entertained with tea and coffee at sixpence per head, but no other amusements are allowed on these nights."

Here Mrs. Johnson came, and Mark Akenside, poet and physician of the eighteenth century; Dr. Arbuthnot, friend of Swift, a man ranked high among the wits of his day, and holding the appointment of physician to Queen Anne; Fanny Burney, and many others. The house is now a private residence. Standing further back from the road behind a quadrangle is Burgh House, also old. This was at one time used as a militia barracks, at which time (1863) the two solid wings adjoining the road were erected.

Burgh House is now a private residence, and the cells where insubordinate soldiers were confined are converted into the drying and mangling rooms of a laundry.

The Wells Tavern is on the site of the Green Man, of ancient date. In 1879 the Vestry proposed to sweep away the groves of the Well Walk and make it into a modern thoroughfare, a New Wells Street, which drew forth indignant protest from the parishioners and a pamphlet from Sir Gilbert Scott.

The renovations, accordingly, were confined to the opening of one or two new streets on the south side, and the erection of the fountain. But even this involved the destruction of part of the old Pump Room. On the site of the Pump Room is a new red-brick house called Wellside, built in 1892, which has an inscription to that effect. Besides the Pump Room, Well Walk has many associations. The famous painter Constable lived in a house which was then numbered 6. He took this house as an extra one in 1826, though still retaining the studio and a few rooms in his London house, near Fitzroy Square; he was then fifty, and was just beginning to feel the small measure of success which was all that was granted him in his lifetime. John Keats and his brothers lodged in Well Walk, next to the Wells Tavern, in 1817-18; and the seat on which Keats loved to sit under a grove of trees at the most easterly end is still called by his name. Here Hone found him "sobbing his dying breath into a handkerchief."

East Heath and South End Roads are traversed annually by millions of people, for they lead from the station and the tramway terminus to the Heath, passing some nicely laid-out ground suggestive of a watering-place, and a curious octagonal tower connected with the water companies.

To the north-east are the Hampstead ponds, which are supposed to have been made in Henry VIII.'s reign. They are certainly larger now than they were in the seventeenth century, and have probably been enlarged artificially. They are now in possession of the New River Waterworks Company. The streets on the hill beyond the ponds are all modern.

Gayton Road is composed entirely of modern villas in a continuous straight line. Many of the streets in the vicinity are in the same style, and were built over open meadows at a comparatively recent date. On Downshire Hill is an episcopal chapel with white porch and small cupola; this is dedicated to St. John.

John Street, like Downshire Hill, has detached residences on either side. Large brick flats are rising on the ground once covered by Lawn Bank and Wentworth House. In the former Keats was a welcome visitor from 1818 to 1820, and here he wrote many of his famous poems. Fanny Brawne, with her mother, occupied the adjacent house.

Rosslyn Hill was formerly called Red Lion Hill, from a public-house which stood on the site of the present police-station. On the north side are a Unitarian chapel and schools approached by handsome iron gates. The chapel is approached from Pilgrim Lane and Kemplay Road, and the schools from Willoughby Road. There stood near by until within the last twenty years an old building known as the Chicken House. This is supposed to have been once a hunting lodge of King James I., though there is little basis for the tradition. It became later a mean hovel, the rendezvous for the scum and riffraff of the neighbourhood. It stood a little back from the road just at the spot where Pilgrim Place now is, and contained some very curious stained glass in its windows. There was in one section a portrait of King James I., with an inscription on a tablet below in French to the effect that the King slept here on August 25, 1619. In another section was a corresponding portrait of the favourite, Buckingham. Further north there existed another old house known as Carlisle House. Perhaps this is the one mentioned by Park as a red-brick Elizabethan house with rubbed quoins, which had been let in tenements, and was in a ruinous state in 1777.

On the south or western side of Rosslyn Hill there is the police-station before mentioned, and adjacent an interesting Tudor house, which, though not old, is well built; this contains the Soldiers' Daughters' Home. Old Vane House previously stood here, and was the residence of Sir Harry Vane of the Commonwealth, and later of Bishop Butler, who wrote the "Analogy." The Home is on the site of the south wing of this building, and includes no part of it. Belmont House, now a private residence, was the northern wing. Baines speaks of a date, 1789, and the initials I.R.W. scored on the leads of the latter, but this gives no clue to the age of the building. He says: "The antiquity of the house is abundantly shown by the arrangement of the basements, by the thickness of the main walls, and by a curious subterranean passage from the brewhouse to the stable-yard."

The institution of the Soldiers' Daughters' Home was the outcome of the patriotic feeling aroused by the Crimean War. The house was built for the reception of the girls, who entered into possession in 1867. The Tudor feeling has been well carried out, from the deep porch which overlooks the ivy-surrounded courtyard in front to the stone staircases within. The result is delightful; instead of the hideous dreariness of an institution, we have a real home. At the back a large extent of grass playground stretches out westward, and at the end of this there is a grove of trees. On one side of the grass is a large playroom built in 1880 by means of an opportune legacy, and on the other a covered cloister which leads to the school, standing detached from the house at the other end of the playground. An old pier burdened with a mass of ivy stands up in the centre, the only remnant of this part of old Vane House. Some years ago a portion of the ground was profitably sold for the frontage to Fitz John's Avenue.

The girls are received between the ages of six and eleven years, and remain until sixteen. They are trained in every requisite for domestic service, and make all their own clothes except hats and boots. As a badge of the army, they are always dressed in scarlet.

High Street has been greatly changed within recent years, and it is within the memory of living persons that there were trees on each side. The opening of the two new roads, Prince Arthur Road and Gayton Road,