5i HAMPSTEAD HEATH. 



the public, not unnaturally directed public attention 

 before long to the expediency of enlarging its area. 

 The immense growth of population at Hampstead, and 

 still more in the neighbouring London suburbs of St. 

 Pancras and Paddington, and the continually increas- 

 ing popularity of the Heath as a place of recreation 

 on holidays to people from every part of London, 

 made it clear that the area of the Heath was quite 

 insufficient. The Common was a straggling one, inter- 

 sected at more than one point by private property, 

 and was in danger of being seriously injured by the 

 extension of building on the fields adjoining it. It 

 owed much of its beauty and value to the fact that a 

 property to the north-east of it, known as Parliament 

 Hill and Ken Wood,* belonging to the Earl of Mans- 

 field, and a small intervening property of Sir Spencer 

 Wilson, were still unbuilt on. 



The Hampstead people, and to a less degree only, 

 the whole of London, looked with the greatest alarm 

 at the rapid approach of building operations to these 

 fields so necessary to their Common. Were these two 

 estates to be covered with houses, there could be no 

 doubt the value of the Heath would be seriously 

 diminished, and the beauty of the prospect in one 

 direction entirely destroyed. 



* It was to Ken Wood that the poet Keats alluded in his 

 beautiful poem, "I stood tiptoe upon a little Hill." Keats spent 

 the two happiest years of his brief life at Hampstead, and wrote 

 there the greater part of " Endymion " and others of his best 

 works. It is said that these were inspired while wandering over 

 the Heath, which was then more secluded than now. 



