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‘Which claims the worthiest place his own,

Since that old Watling once o’er him to pass was known.’

Defoe, too, in his ‘Tour of Great Britain,’ tells us that he ‘went to Hampstead, from whence he made an excursion to Edgware, a little market-town on the way to St. Alban’s, for it is certain that this was formerly the main-road from London to St. Alban’s, being the famous highroad called Watling Streete, which reached from London to Wales.’

No traces of such a road have been found on Hampstead Heath, though Roman relics and proofs of Roman burial have been discovered there, and accepted by our oldest antiquaries as strengthening their theory of the Watling Way having skirted or crossed it. That there was a road from St. Albans to the Heath is curiously confirmed by an old French folio, published in Paris (time of Elizabeth), which explains the reasons why the Romans built a city on the site of the present London,[20] and states that ‘subsequent to the recall of the legions in consequence of its rapid growth and absorption of the population and commerce of the other great cities, it so raised the envy and indignation of their inhabitants, that the people of St. Albans threatened to come and destroy the rising city of London, until the Londoners advanced as far as Hampstead Heath, where they entrenched themselves, and prepared to do battle in defence of their homes.’ A writer in the New Monthly Magazine, commenting on this extract, says that the remains of the entrenchments are still pointed out.[21]