Hampstead Heath extension – Part 1….

The story of the extension starts with Wylde’s Farm (which still sort of exists and I will track down for another blog). To quote from Wikipedia:

Built in about 1600, Wylde’s Farm was the farmhouse for one of two estates acquired by Eton College in 1449, soon after its foundation.

The Eton College estate originated in grants of land by Bela, widow of Austin the mercer, in 1259 and by William de Pavely and Millicent his wife in 1273 to the hospital of St James, Westminster, which in 1321 held 124 acres of land and wood in the parish. After 1449, when custody of the hospital was granted to Eton College (in order to provide accommodation for officers of the college on business trips to London), the college took possession of the Hendon estate, which was called “the Wylde” in 1480-1 and retained until 1907, when it was sold to the London County Council

That makes the transaction sound very simple but, like everything to do with the heath, that was far from the case. So let us turn to the trusty Helen Lawrence ‘s How Hampstead Heath Was Saved.

Eton College was happy to hold onto its Wylde’s Farm lands until the coming of the underground railway in the early 1900s when a line was proposed (and eventually built) running from Hampstead (with a station in the village) to Golders Green. It was to have an intermediate station at North End – which you will see on yesterday’s map is at the corner of Sandy Heath and the Heath Extension. Eton College saw this as a great opportunity to swell its coffers by selling its Wylde’s Farm lands to developers keen to cash in on the new railway line.

Step in Dame Henrietta Barnet (she of the Hampstead Garden suburb, a topic for yet another blog…) and the Heath Protection Society. Dame Henrietta had a country retreat at Spaniards End, at the top of Sandy Heath and had no desire to see the Wylde’s Farm lands over which her house looked, turn into a surburban housing estate. A campaigner of no mean order, she rallied not only the local troops but a prodigious group of notables headed by the Princess of Wales and including four bishops, twelve peers and dozens of other influential friends and acquaintances. She bludgeoned not only Eton College into reducing the sale price of the land, but all of the local councils and residents into contributing. After several years of complex negotiations, in 1907 the 80 acres of Wylde’s Farm was bought by the London County Council  (the authority at that point in charge of the heath) for £43,995 to become part of Hampstead Heath.

The first section of the extension, after you cross Hampstead Way at the bottom of Sandy heath, where we stopped yesterday, is fairly rough meadow land – a series of small ponds runs along one side. So the following video walks us down through these field to the Walter Field  memorial. (I have just asked Google about Walter Field and been told that he was a Victorian watercolourist who exhibited at the Royal Academy but, more importantly for us, was untiring in his efforts for the preservation of the natural beauties of Hampstead Heath and the main founder of the Hampstead Heath Protection Society. 

(If you want to see the video you will need to click onto the blog as the email notification does not include the video.)

Once we pass Walter Field we walk on until the hedges fall away and we are onto broad meadow land which is primarily used for games of football and picnics.

Below is a short video looking down the meadows towards St Jude’s church and Hampstead Garden suburb at the the very bottom of the extension.

Tomorrow a quick look at the ‘Great Wall’ and back up by the ponds.

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