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There stood St. Pancras, or ‘Pankeridge,’ as Ben Jonson calls it, the oldest church in London with the exception of old Paul’s, ‘all alone, utterly forsaken, and weather-beaten,’ while on the breezy high ground at Hampstead a windmill or two gave animation to the scene.

During the reign of Henry VIII., a predicted inundation of the city drove the inhabitants to the hills, and Hampstead Heath appeared covered with hundreds of little huts and tents in which the credulous people sheltered themselves. The prediction, of course, failed, and the prophets only escaped the indignation of their dupes on finding their fears disappointed by avowing a mistake of a hundred years in their calculations.

During the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, Hampstead Woods continued to flourish, coming down on the east to the village of Cantleowes, or Kentish Town, while on the west they spread by Belsize, and what is now the Adelaide Road, to St. John’s Wood, where at the Domesday the Abbess of Barking held wood and pasture of the King for fifty swine.