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As late as May, 1736, it is reported in the London Post ‘that Col. de Veil had committed one of the coachmen who was driving the Hampstead coach to Newgate, for getting out of the track he was in and assaulting the Hon. the Lady Cook Winford by driving his coach upon her, whereby he threw her and her horse into a deep ditch, and she was greatly hurt and bruised.’

The Hampstead Road was not made till 1772, when George III. was King, though the summit of the hill had been previously cut down. When Ogilby, in the time of Charles II. wrote his Guide, St. Giles’ Pound lay in the open country, and the way to Holborn, like Gray’s Inn Lane, was a pleasant rustic road. Tottenham Court Road lay between fields and market-gardens, sprinkled with houses of entertainment, some of which lingered long after the making of the present road. Gay tells us that in summer ‘the Tottenham fields with roving beauty swarms,’ and thirty years later some doggerel verses in Poor Robin’s Almanack inform us under the head of the month of May: