Elizabeth. Elizabethan relics have been found in the vicinity. The grounds are now cut up and let for building purposes. Woodlands, another fine large house, is also shorn of its glory, roads having been driven through its leafy gardens.

West End Ward embraces that portion of Hampstead which is limited by the Hampstead junction railway on the south and the Finchley Road on the east.

West End still preserves the character of a little hamlet, though surrounded on all sides by new streets. The name arose from its being the western terminus of the demesne lands. The small triangular bit of green at the junction of Fortune Green and Mill Lanes preserves its rural aspect, with two little tumbledown, creeper-covered cottages overlooking it, though it will probably before long suffer from the plague of red brick. To the south there is a line of buildings and shops, with a few—a very few—of older date wedged in between the new ones. West End Hall, a square red-brick house of respectable antiquity, stands back behind a rather dilapidated wooden palisade, but a row of magnificent elms lines the street before it. Beyond it are one or two other houses in their own grounds. Here a fair was formerly held annually on July 26 and two following days.

Mill Lane was formerly Shoot-up-Hill Lane, a name now absorbed by a portion of the northern road into which it runs on the west. The present name is derived from a mill which stood in the Edgware Road, and was burnt in 1861, owing to the friction caused by the high velocity of the sails in a gale of wind. A building called Kilburn Mill still marks the western end of the lane, though it is in a dilapidated condition, with the windows broken. Mill Lane was widened by the Vestry, and now runs between rows of small houses, all of modern date. At the top of Aldred Road is a big brick building, the Field Lane Boys' Industrial School. At the corner of the same road stood an unpretentious little church, built in 1871; it has been pulled down in the last few years. A little further eastward in Mill Lane is a national school looking rather like a chapel, and then we come to the Green again.

There is little in Fortune Green Lane that calls for comment. On the west side it is completely lined with small new houses. The Green at the top still remains open for the geese to hiss and cackle over at their will. The Hampstead cemetery lies on the north. This consists of about 20 acres of land, and two-thirds of it was consecrated by the Bishop of London in 1876, the remainder being left unconsecrated. A smooth drive runs down between close-shaven turf, and is lined by rows of singularly uniform monuments, of which two-thirds are in the form of marble crosses. The chapel, with its two wings for Church of England and Nonconformists, connected by a pointed spire and tower, stands across the central drive as an archway. There is a different kind of fascination in this well-kept, quiet spot from that derived from the irregularity of sloping Highgate or the monstrous tombs and overpowering vaults at Kensal Town. There are many persons buried here whose names are known to those of their own country and time, but none of any world-wide note. Maas the singer is perhaps the most important among them. We have now commented on the principal parts of the ward, except the great eastern and western roads by which it is bounded.

Finchley Road bounds the borough on the west. Beginning at Swiss Cottage, we recall the fact that Hood died in a house near the present railway-station which is now pulled down. The first building that strikes the eye is New College, for Nonconformists, a big stone edifice standing on a green lawn behind a row of small trees. On the opposite side, further northward, building operations are taking place on a large scale. On the west side again is Trinity Church, date 1872, a small church of ragstone with red-tiled roof. We travel much further on before arriving at any other feature of interest, passing Finchley Road Station and the shops gathered in the vicinity, also the Hampstead Public Library, a big building at the corner of Arkwright Road. Hampstead was comparatively slow in adopting the Public Library Act. The site for its library was acquired from Sir Maryon Wilson, and the stone was laid by Sir Henry Harben, who had given £5,000 for the erection of the building. Five branch libraries are established in connection, and the main one is chiefly for reference. This was opened in 1897. Further on, we pass on the east numerous rows of red-brick houses, and on the west the fields and meadow-lands still open.

Then we come to a huge red brick building with terra-cotta facings; this was founded in 1866, and is intended both as a college and seminary. It belongs to the Congregationalists, and their chapel attached is of the same materials, and was founded in 1894. Another well-known institution is Westfield College for ladies, which stands in Kidderpore Avenue on the rising ground to the west of Finchley Road. The front of the house, in which the entrance is, is an old building called Kidderpore Hall, and to this the large modern wing inhabited by the students was added in 1890. The work is for the London Degrees in Arts and Sciences. There are forty-five students, and each one has two rooms, a larger allowance than is made at Girton. Through the fields, beyond the cemetery, a winding footpath takes us over the railway into the Edgware Road.

The part of the road which goes by the name of Shuttup Hill or Shoot-up-Hill deserves some comment. The Knights Templars anciently held an estate here of which the origin is obscure. At the Dissolution King Henry seized it, and handed it over to the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. But their turn was to come also. In 1540 the King despoiled them, and gave Shoot-up-Hill to Sir Roger Cholmeley. At a later date we find that this and the estate at Kilburn were vested in the same holder, Sir Arthur Atye and Judith his wife.

There is very little to remark on in this hill. A few of the houses on the west are not aggressively modern, but those on the east are all startlingly new. St. Cuthbert's Church, built in 1887, stands at the end of St. Cuthbert's Road.

Howitt derives the name of Kilburn from Kule-bourne or Coal-brook. The earliest mention of this locality is when one Godwyn, a hermit, retired here in the reign of Henry I., and "built a cell near a little rivulet, called in different records Cuneburne, Keelebourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne, on a site surrounded with wood." This stream is the same which passed southward to the Serpentine, and empties itself into the Thames at Chelsea, called in its lower course the Westbourne.

Between 1128 and 1134 Godwyn granted his hermitage to the conventual church of St. Peter, Westminster. The Abbot, with the consent of the convent, gave it to three pious maidens, Emma, Gunhilda, and Cristina, who are said to have been maids of honour to Queen Matilda. They were to live here, and Godwyn was to be master warden, and on his death they were to choose some staid and senior person to fill his place. It is to be gathered that the maidens were bound to celibacy, though no particular monastic rule seems to have been enjoined. In the ensuing years there were jealousies between the Bishop of London and the Abbot of Westminster, who both claimed jurisdiction over the Priory. The Pope, in 1224, who arbitrated, gave the award in the Abbot's favour, but the Bishop appealed to the Bishops of Rochester and Prior of Dunstable, and, as they were on his side, he calmly assumed authority. The Priory was enriched by various grants and privileges, and its devotees increased in number. At the dissolution of the monasteries the King