inally called Shelford
House, but changed its name when it became the property of Alexander
Wedderburn, first Earl of Rosslyn, Lord High Chancellor of Great
Britain, 1793. It was noted for its magnificent avenue of Spanish
chestnuts said to have been planted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Elizabethan relics have been found in the vicinity. The grounds are now
cut up and let for building purposes. Woodlands, another fine large
house, is also shorn of its glory, roads having been driven through its
leafy gardens.

West End Ward embraces that portion of Hampstead which is limited by the
Hampstead junction railway on the south and the Finchley Road on the
east.

West End still preserves the character of a little hamlet, though
surrounded on all sides by new streets. The name arose from its being
the western terminus of the demesne lands. The small triangular bit of
green at the junction of Fortune Green and Mill Lanes preserves its
rural aspect, with two little tumbledown, creeper-covered cottages
overlooking it, though it will probably before long suffer from the
plague of red brick. To the south there is a line of buildings and
shops, with a few--a very few--of older date wedged in between the new
ones. West End Hall, a square red-brick house of respectable antiquity,
stands back behind a rather dilapidated wooden palisade, but a row of
magnificent elms lines the street before it. Beyond it are one or two
other houses in their own grounds. Here a fair was formerly held
annually on July 26 and two following days.

Mill Lane was formerly Shoot-up-Hill Lane, a name now absorbed by a
portion of the northern road into which it runs on the west. The present
name is derived from a mill which stood in the Edgware Road, and was
burnt in 1861, owing to the friction caused by the high velocity of the
sails in a gale of wind. A building called Kilburn Mill still marks the
western end of the lane, though it is in a dilapidated condition, with
the windows broken. Mill Lane was widened by the Vestry, and now runs
between rows of small houses, all of modern date. At the top of Aldred
Road is a big brick building, the Field Lane Boys' Industrial School. At
the corner of the same road stood an unpretentious little church, built
in 1871; it has been pulled down in the last few years. A little further
eastward in Mill Lane is a national school looking rather like a
chapel, and then we come to the Green again.

There is little in Fortu