no other very
notorious crimes are attached to this spot as there are to Hounslow or
Blackheath.

The Heath is not altogether destitute of houses; of those detached,
several have had the origin of what Baines terms "Squatters' right," and
have established their title by process of time. There are also several
hamlets: the Vale of Health, the houses about Jack Straw's Castle, North
End, and the group near the Spaniards.

The curious little cluster of buildings called the Vale of Health,
situated in a basin near to one of the Hampstead ponds, has always
attracted considerable attention. Here Leigh Hunt came to live in 1816;
his house was on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. Thornbury quotes
an old inhabitant, who writes of Leigh Hunt's cottage as having a
"pretty balcony environed with creepers, and a tall arbor vitae which
almost overtops the roof." There are very few even tolerably old houses
left here; the little streets are of the modern villa order, and the
great square tavern, with its tea-gardens and merry-go-rounds, its
shooting-galleries and penny-in-the-slot machines, has vulgarized the
place. Prince Esterhazy is said to have taken a house in the Vale of
Health in 1840; this has been "long since pulled down." The place is now
dedicated to the sweeping tide of merry-makers which flows over it every
recurring Bank Holiday.

The charming spot called North End still remains rural in appearance:
small cottages with red-tiled roofs and quaint inns survive side by side
with the modern red-brick school-house. The Bull and Bush is said to
have been the country seat of Hogarth, and later, when it became a
tavern, to have been visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Sterne,
Foote, and other celebrities. The house is very picturesque: the
projecting wing northward is of rusticated woodwork; the leads of the
bayed-windows are covered with flowers in summer. There are still the
old-fashioned tea-gardens attached.

There are many substantial and comfortable residences about North End,
but the Hampstead boundary does not include them all. Wildwoods, or, as
it used to be called, North End House, is the most important within the
boundary. The original fabric of the house is two centuries old, but has
been altered and repaired largely. The spot is named Wildwood Corner in
Domesday Book. Its chief historical interest lies in its occupation by
William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, who shut himself up here from all
communica