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Church Row was then the private and superior part of the old town of Hampstead, which, lying under the shadow of the church, still preserves an air of old-fashioned gentility and retirement.

The houses of red brick, with a string-course of the same material along their fronts, with narrow windows, dormers in the roofs, and fan-lighted hall doors, exhibit a style of domestic architecture common from James II.’s time to that of the Georges.

They remind one of the houses in Bush Lane, City, rebuilt after the Great Fire. We gather the meaning of the word ‘row’ from the fact that the houses on the north side of the way are much older than those on the left; these date no further back than the rebuilding of the church in 1745.

The door and gateway of No. 8, on the right, are clearly of an early date, as is also the weather-boarded, bow-fronted house on the same side of the way, and the double-gabled house nearest the church.

Several of these houses had originally very fine gardens, with stables and coach-house in the rear, and were occupied by rich City men, Riga, Turkey, and Spanish merchants, some of whose names may still be found under the moss of the churchyard stones and in the obituary columns of the magazines of the day. Others of these houses were of less pretension, as we find from Mr. Abraham’s ‘Book of Assessments,’ some being rated at £50 and £60 per annum, and others at £14, £15, and even less.