The Skirts of the Great City. D'Anvers N.
the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived as the paying-guest of a surgeon named Gilman for nineteen years. There he was often visited by Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Henry Crabb Robinson, Edward Irving, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden Clarke—the latter of whom has eloquently described her stay with the poet in her charming book, My Long Life—and Thomas Carlyle, who dwelt enthusiastically on the glorious view from the windows of the house, that is still, by the way, much what it was in Coleridge's time.
The parish church of Highgate, in which there is a tablet with a long inscription to the memory of Coleridge, and part of the cemetery occupy the site of the mansion-house built in 1694 by Sir William Ashurst, then Lord Mayor of London, and the villas of the present Fitzroy Park replace a fine old house erected in 1780 by Lord Southampton, and named after him. In one of the new houses on this beautiful estate lived the well-known sanitary reformer Dr. Southwood Smith, and near to the Park is Dufferin Lodge, the seat of Lord Dufferin, that was the maiden home of the eloquent writer, the Honourable Mrs. Norton, grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
In a little house known as the Hermitage, on West Hill, where a modern terrace now stands, and opposite to which there used to be an ash-tree popularly supposed to have been planted by Nelson when he was a boy, dwelt the notorious gambler Sir Wallis Porter, who was often joined there by the Prince Regent; and it was in it that the forger Henry Fauntleroy is said to have long lain hidden from the officers of the law in search of him. In Millfield Lane, and in the charming little Ivy Cottage, now enlarged and known as Brookfield House, the famous comedian, Charles Mathews, dwelt for many years. Millfield Cottage, next door to it, was for a time a favourite retreat of John Ruskin, and in the same lane, as related by Leigh Hunt in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, John Keats presented his brother poet with a volume of his poems, the first of many generous gifts.
West Hill, Highgate, is associated with several interesting memories. It was on it that Queen Victoria, in the year after her accession, was saved from what might have been a very serious accident by the landlord of the neighbouring Fox and Crown Inn, who arrested the frightened horses of the royal carriage, at the risk of his own life, as they were dashing down the steep descent. In West Hill Lodge the poets William and Mary Howitt lived and worked for several years, and not far from their old home is Holly Lodge, once the residence of the Duchess of St. Albans, and long the home of the generous and hospitable Baroness Burdett-Coutts, a worthy successor of her aristocratic predecessor, who built in Swain's Lane hard by a group of model cottages known as Holly Village.
In the picturesque cottage opposite to the chief entrance to the grounds of Holly Lodge the philanthropist Judge Payne died in 1870; David Williams, founder of the Royal Literary Fund, and Dr. Rochemond Barbauld, husband of the authoress, were at different times ministers of the Presbyterian chapel in Southwood Lane; and on the site of the once notorious Black Dog Tavern, on the hill going down to Holloway, are the chapel and home of the Passionist Fathers, from which, instead of the ribald songs of drunken revellers, perpetual prayers now go up for the restoration of England to the mother church of Rome.
Hornsey
Little now remains of the beautiful forests which were for many centuries one of the most distinctive characteristics of the northern heights of London, though there are still some unenclosed portions of the vast estate that belonged to the Bishop of London, such as Highgate and Caen Woods, where it is possible to forget for a time the near neighbourhood of the ever-growing towns of Hampstead and Highgate. Equally rapid has been the transformation of the two mother parishes of Hendon and of Hornsey, that from isolated picturesque villages have grown into suburbs of the great metropolis. The latter especially retains scarcely anything to recall the days when it was a favourite summer retreat of the Bishop of London, who had a palace in the park of Haringay, as it was called, until the time of Elizabeth, on Lodge Hill, on the outskirts of what later became the property of Lord Mansfield. The little forest hamlet of Haringay, in which the bishop's retainers used to live, was probably situated in the heart of the wood, now replaced by Finsbury Park, and its one inn, pulled down so recently as 1866, became in course of time first a noted tea-house, and later a place of resort of the aristocracy, who used to practise pigeon-shooting in its garden.
With Hornsey Park are associated many interesting historic memories. It was, for instance, in it that the discontented nobles used to meet to concert measures against the hated favourite of Richard II., Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. In its palace the Duchess of Gloucester and her confederates, the astrologer Richard Bolingbroke and the Rev. Canon Southwell, concocted the plot against the life of Henry VI., and it was there that the last-named was accused of invoking at the celebration of mass the blessing of God on the evil enterprise, an incident turned to account by Shakespeare in his play of Henry VI. Through Hornsey and Highgate rode Richard III. when still Duke of Gloucester, after the sudden death of Edward IV., accompanied by the doomed boy-king Edward V., and it was in the outskirts of the park that the royal procession was met by the mayor and corporation of London. Almost on the same spot Henry VII. was later welcomed by the loyal citizens of his capital on his way back from a successful expedition against Scotland, and there is a tradition that after the execution at Smithfield, in 1305, of the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace, his dismembered remains were allowed to rest for a night, on their way north, in the bishop's chapel.
The ivy-clad tower, bearing the arms of Bishops Savage and Warham, who occupied the see of London, the former from 1497 to 1500, the latter from 1500 to 1504, is all that now remains of the ancient church of Hornsey that was founded at the end of the fifteenth century. The new building that was skilfully added on to the tower was begun in 1832, and is said to have been constructed of the materials of the bishop's palace. It contains little of interest except a kneeling effigy of a certain Francis Masters, a boy of about sixteen, and the monument to the Rev. Dr. Atterbury, removed from Highgate Chapel on its demolition, but in the churchyard is the tomb of the poet Samuel Rogers, who died in London in 1855.
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