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‘The tower, being placed at the eastern end of the church, would be a considerable saving of expense.’ As a result of this saving, the church appears the wrong side before, with the tower and belfry at the east end, and the chancel at the west. You pass the altar on entering, and the font is at the further end. There is an altar-piece, but no east window, and the whole is further darkened by galleries north and south. Park says it is a neat but ill-designed church, and we can only repeat what Park says.

An engraving of the old church (said to be from an oil painting by Grisoni) in Park’s ‘History of Hampstead’ represents a picturesquely irregular rustic building, with low walls, rather high-pitched roofs, sharply-pointed gables, and a small open timber bell-tower. It has dormers in the roof, a square mullioned window in one gable, a different sized one in another, and other lights thrown in anywhere. A transverse addition forms the whole into an irregular cruciform structure.

Trees crowd around it at the west end, as they do at the present day, and in the graveyard are several recognisable monuments, notably that above the burial-place of the Delamere family; of Daniel Bedingfield, Clerk of the Parliament, 1637; of —— Popple, Esq., Secretary of the Board of Trade, 1722. A flat stone (recut since its discovery), beside the second pathway to the left on entering, bears the date of the Great Fire, 1666. There is also that of John Harrison, the inventor of the chronometer, who died March 24, 1776, after sixty years’ application to the improvement of watches and clocks, and of whom Mrs. Montague, writing to her brother, Mr. Robinson, from London, May 28, 1762, observes: ‘Mr. Harrison’s watch’ (the fourth, Dr. Doran says), ‘and most perfect timekeeper for ascertaining the longitude at sea’ (and for which he ultimately received £2,400), ‘has succeeded beyond expectation. Navigation will be improved by it, which all who have the spirit of travelling shall rejoice at.’[69]