Читать книгу Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations онлайн

67 страница из 97

On the left lies Belsize Lane, and immediately past the church to the right the road leading to Pond Street, with Belsize Grove and Lyndhurst Road opposite.

Amongst the many notable men associated with Hampstead, Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, K.C.B., must not be overlooked. ‘My earliest recollections,’ he writes, ‘are of Rosslyn Lodge, an old-fashioned two-storied house, in the then quiet and charming suburban village of Hampstead.’ Rosslyn Lodge stood in the grove opposite Pond Street, facing some shady fields which led on towards the town, about a quarter of a mile distant.

At the top of the grove, which consisted of fine old Spanish chestnut-trees, stood the residence of Lord Galloway (Rosslyn House), and a path led up to the Conduit Fields. These extracts from his ‘Life’ decide the whereabouts of Sir Arthur’s boyhood’s home, which one writer, at least, has placed at Frognal.

Fields near Pond Street, 1840.

At this point Rosslyn Street opens straight ahead, dominated by the ugly tower of Trinity Presbyterian Church, and a little beyond Pond Street, on the same side of the way, a new bit of road marked ‘Hampstead Gardens’ affords another charming view of Highgate. To the right Downshire Hill leads to the lower Heath and North London railway-station, with Thurlow Road to the left, and a little further on the same side of the way the lane leading to the Conduit Fields and Shepherd’s Well, which till quite modern times supplied Hampstead with water, employing a body of local water-carriers, who made a living by vending tall pails full to the householders at a penny a pail. The last of these old water-carriers died an inmate of the workhouse at New End about 1868.