Streets of London : Hamestede and Chalybeate

We went exploring in Hampstead, again, today. We tend to do this every time we come to London but usually spend much of our time on the Heath, ambling. Today we didn't. Though we likely will return to do that, as well. We took the underground to Swiss Cottage, came out in the sunlight to another delectable Farmer's Market, and started walking uphill, nibbling, to where my friend Gabe used to live when she was teaching in the city many long decades ago.

We searched and found Ye Olde Swiss Cottage at the bottom of the street: one of her regular haunts. We found her home, as well, which, like many along the street, is large enough, these days, for two dwellings. Other homes around, have proven spacious enough to be converted into good-sized schools, so if Gabe ever wants to return to teaching, she could simply roll out of bed and choose any classroom up or down her old street, to walk to. Saving the underground trip to ‘Wetherby’ in the city, where she used to teach. Mind you, there are likely no young royals in these Hampstead schools, but the students would, no doubt, be just as well heeled. This is one of the most sought after suburbs in London, and is forever changing. Not two doors up some big old dwellings are being pulled down and a luxury retirement complex for the over-sixties is going up. A sign of the times.

Further uphill we walked, visualising a time when this was all heath and farm land with just a single ‘hamestede’ on it: or ’home stead’ or small farm, with a value in the vicinity of around 50 shillings. Which, in the time of the Doomsday records, was the case. But, not today.

Times change, even the landscape. Windmills went up over time, and water was pumped from beneath the heath. It was then discovered that the water was rich in iron: health-giving, it was believed. So, it took no time for a well to be dug, a long room to be erected with spa taps installed, and tiles laid that encouraged dancing on any bright summer evening. People came. From afar. And even railways had to be extended for day trippers demanding access.

And of course taverns came to be built. And around the lanes little shops and markets blossomed. And folk would take a flask of chalybeate water along with a pork pie, and head off for a rousing walk across the heathlands. We ate our pork pie and cider as part of a Plowman's at The Flask, which is down one of the village lanes accessing the heath. It still displays many of the pottery flasks that were once used to collect the chalybeate. The Flask came to be the main distributor and bottler of the water sold to keen buyers elsewhere who could not make the pilgrimage to Hampstead. Good water became big business in this city once so notorious for its filthy water supply. Hampstead’s days as a spa town have now faded, but its reputation as a healthy and attractive area remained.

Artists came. Writers. Thinkers. Actors. There are blue plaques on every street and in every lane telling us who lived where. Judi Dench lived here for many a long decade. Du Maurier. And here John Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale. Robert Louis Stevenson was another. Peter Cook, the actor, and the writer, H G Wells actually lived in the same house, though at different times. Lord Alfred Douglas Jr., ’Bosie’, Oscar Wilde’s young lover, kept the gossips on the heath topped up with scandalous tales. St John’s church has a celebrated list of headstones in a well-trodden, well-visited cemetery. St Mary’s, even further up the hill, was likely Gabe’s church of choice: crowded now, with dwellings leaning in on each side, closing out the sky.

Beautiful large homes came to be built: Anna, and her husband Joshua Gee, who was a pig iron merchant in the States at the time of George Washington, had their initials forever entwined in woven iron on the front gates of Fenton, one of the larger homes in the back of the village. Fountain North, an eccentric navy lieutenant, built his Admiral’s House of white clapboard, with the top to look like a ship’s deck, from which he regularly fired shots of cannon on special occasions. Or just to annoy his neighbours. Locals say that a deep underground tunnel goes from the Admiral’s House to the Heath and that on dark and stormy nights Dick Turpin roamed the secret route.

Remnants of Victorian goodwill still survive in the old Bath and Washhouse building erected by a benevolent trust for any of Hampstead’s poor, offering them a place to have fun, and, no doubt, a place to get clean. Hampstead's individuality and eccentricity still survives.