THE ANNUAL REPORT 
125 
V. — Places of Antiquarian Interest and Natural Beauty. 
Whitgift Hospital. — For the present the danger to this most 
interesting Elizabethan building has passed, but possibly the 
Corporation of Croydon may again take up their project of 
street widening in the next session of Parliament. The Croydon 
Antiquities Protection Committee, therefore, is not relaxing its 
efforts to bring before the public the value of the building as a 
piece of architectural history. Your Council as a body and its 
individual members have afforded sympathy and help to the 
Committee, and the latter, it may be mentioned, has published 
an illustrated pamphlet, by Dr. Hobson, which is sold at the 
trifling cost of threepence. 
Hampstead Heath. — During the year Hampstead Heath has 
been extended by the addition of the eighty acres of Wylde’s 
Farm, which have been practically secured in accordance with 
the proposal to which allusion was made in last year s Report. 
The Pryors, Hampstead. — Last year mention was made of the 
regrettable fact that this small, well-wooded estate had fallen 
into the builder’s hands. The Parks Committee of the London 
County Council had listened to the request of the Hampstead 
Branch that, if possible, something should be done to counter- 
act the assertiveness of the huge block of flats erected, and 
had caused the planting of a number of small though quick- 
growing trees, which, it was hoped, would in due course serve as 
a screen. This was a step in the right direction, and the County 
Council thus seemed to accept the principle of protecting the 
picturesque which the Society had urged. Near by the flats, on 
the public part of the Heath, however, had stood for many years 
a row of very fine trees. To the great surprise of all, early in 
June last year, one was felled and a vigorous onslaught on the 
others was begun. This reversal of policy received the imme- 
diate attention of the Hampstead Branch, and letters from mem- 
bers of the Committee protesting against the spoliation were 
printed in the Times and the local Press, while communications 
were also addressed to officials of the County and Borough 
Councils. The first of these bodies replied, after some delay, 
defending the cutting, on the ground of an overlap, and saying 
that it was better for the Council to do judiciously what the owner 
of the flats had a right to do himself and might hav'e done badly. 
That the trees were lopped far beyond the needs of the case is 
now obvious to all who take the trouble to look at them, and the 
result is that what was formerly a row of widespreading elms is 
now practically a series of one-sided deformities. 
Golder's Hill. — In the spring of 1904 a suggestion which 
attracted considerable local attention was made by Mr. James E. 
Whiting, namely, that squirrels should be introduced into this 
pleasaunce. His suggestion was conveyed to the London County 
Council by the Hampstead Branch and an answer was received 
