As only one side of this hamlet is in Hampstead parish, there is not much to be said of it here. It was rapidly increasing when Park wrote his description of it; but that was nothing to the proportion of its increase during the last ten years, when it has grown to the dimensions of a town. Its name comes from two Saxon words, kele, cold, and bourn, a rivulet.

By this cool stream,[298] which rose on the southern slope of Hampstead, hard by the forest-side, one Godwyn, in the time of Henry I., built himself a cell, and for a time at least led a hermit’s life.

There can be little doubt, from the fact of his ultimately making over this nucleus of the future nunnery, with the grounds belonging to it, to the Church of St. Peter of Westminster, in trust to the Abbot for the use and abode of three retired Maids of Honour to Queen Matilda (herself a Benedictine nun), that Godwyn was a penitent courtier or nobleman. Eventually he himself was made Warden of the abode and guardian of the maidens, Emma, Christiana, and Gunilda, who took upon themselves a holy life, though no particular monastic rule is mentioned, nor does it appear in the foundation deed that they were vowed to celibacy.

On the death of Godwyn some other person was to be chosen to his office, with the advice of the Abbot of Westminster, and with the consent of the nuns themselves; no one could be appointed without their approval, nor was to interfere with matters relative to their temporal affairs, nor with the affairs of the church, except at their desire.

The Abbot, Osbert de Clair, Prior of Westminster, augmented the grant to the cell of Kilburne by a rent of thirty shillings and land at Knightsbridge, after which it became a nunnery of the Benedictine Order, dedicated to the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. At the dissolution of the monasteries the lands of Kilburn nunnery at Hampstead and Kilburn were given by Henry VIII., in exchange for Paris Garden and other estates, to the Knights of Jerusalem, whose Order he soon after dissolved (1540).

Subsequent to the dissolution of the Knights of St. John it became the property of John, Earl of Warwick, who lost no time in alienating it to Richard Taverner, Esq. In 1604 Sir Arthur Atye died seized of Kilburn and Shuttop Hill. It was recently in the family of the Powells, an old name at Hampstead.

At no time does it appear to have been a religious house of any importance, though dignified with the name of Priory. Park states its revenue at the time of the Dissolution to have been under £200 per annum. Dugdale sets it down at £74 7s. 11d. per annum, and the whole building, inclusive of kitchen, larder, bakehouse, and brewhouse, beside the church, contained only twelve rooms.

From a rude but interesting etching in Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ of some parts of the domestic buildings, the only relics of it remaining, and which were standing in 1722, no idea can be formed of the appearance of the conventual structure, the site of which was distinguishable at the beginning of the present century by a rising bank in what was called the Abbey Fields, near the Tea Gardens.

No doubt the Kilburn well, a mild chalybeate, was one of the so-called holy wells with which the vicinity of London abounded in Catholic times. But it was not until 1714 that some speculator bethought him of converting the slightly-medicated waters to use.

The spring or well is situated at the south-western extremity of the parish of Hampstead. It rises about 12 feet below the surface, and is enclosed in a large brick reservoir, with the date cut in the keystone of the arch over the door. It is a simple saline water with too little iron to give it the character of a true chalybeate, as may be easily imagined when we read that in 1813 it was used chiefly for the domestic purposes of the adjoining tavern. In 1773 the Kilburn wells were attached to a tea-drinking house, ‘well known to the holiday folk of London,’ the advertisement of which, transcribed by Park from the Public Advertiser in the July of that year, is amusing:

Brewer tells us that this house was much frequented by holiday people from London.

We have noted elsewhere that Oliver Goldsmith had lodgings in a cottage near a place called The Priory at Kilburn. Poor Goldy had retired thither with the intention of practically studying the habits of some of the animals he was writing of in his ‘Animated Nature.’ His range of subjects must have been necessarily restricted, for, beyond the humble farmyard of his landlord, the rusticity of Kilburn appears at that point of time to have been limited to cow-keepers and market-gardens. It had an evil fame for dog-fights and pugilistic encounters, at which Hogarth is said to have been a frequent spectator—not from a love of such sights, but with a view to the work of humanity he was then doing, in displaying the coarse brutality and repulsively cruel features of those so-called sports with all the realism of his caustic pencil.

Many years later Kilburn lay heavy on the minds of the Middlesex magistrates, and during the first half of the present century its reputation was decidedly low, and its inhabitants, or the additional ones they sheltered, a frequent trouble to the constables of those days.

Time and the builders have amended all that, and the village of Kilburn is (1860) partly a suburb of genteel villas, and a struggling ground for newly-started professional men and tradesmen of large hope and small capital, with ultimate success as the prize for those who can play a losing game longest.

Before leaving Kilburn I may add that, in the spring of 1878, when the work of widening the London and North-Eastern Railway was going on at Kilburn, the workmen came upon a curious brass coffin-plate, bearing an effigy supposed to be that of an Abbess of Kilburn Nunnery. The nuns gave a touching reason for the dilapidated condition of their house (which lay close to the highway for wayfarers and pilgrims to the shrine of St. Alban’s) in the daily charity of the poor sisters to those of the poorer sort, a charge they were ill able to bear; and this fact, in connection with the well-known poverty of their house, exempted them from taxes to the Crown, which recompensed itself at the dissolution of the religious houses by taking the whole of the little they possessed. At this time the buildings of the priory consisted of the hall, the chamber next the church, the middle chamber between that and the Prioress’s chamber; the buttery, pantry, and cellar; the inner chamber to the Prioress’s room, the chamber between the latter and the hall, the kitchen, the larder-house, the brewhouse and bakehouse, the three chambers for the chaplain and the hinds or husbandmen, the confessor’s chamber, and the church. The orchard and cemetery, valued at ‘xxs. by the yere, and one horse of the coller of black at vs. For all these chambers 2 bedsteads of bordes, 1 featherbed, 2 matteres, 2 old coverlettes, 3 wollen blanketts, a syller of old stained work, and 2 pieces of old hangings paynted,’ appear a sparse allowance of comfort. They were better off in the matter of church furniture and vestments, as not only altar-cloths, curtains, hangings, copes, which were nuns’ work, and very likely made by them, but chalices are enumerated; and they also possessed, closed in silver, and set with counterfeit stones and pearls, a relique of the Holy Cross, and a cross with certain other reliques, ‘wt silver gilded. Item, a case to keepe in reliques, plated and gilt ... and a clocke.’ These were the nuns’ small treasures, and all were confiscated.

In the ‘Romance of London,’ by the late industrious Mr. Timbs, there is a legend, quoted by Mr. Walford, of Kilburn Priory. He calls it traditionary, and says that Mr. Timbs could not trace it to any authentic source; yet it appears to have been well known to that enthusiastic collector of ancient ballads and legendary lore, Sir Walter Scott, who had written a lyrical version of the story long before Mr. Timbs produced his ‘Romance of London,’ though without publishing it. Here is the tale of its origin, according to Mr. H. G. Atkinson, who tells us the verses (which I give further on) remained unpublished till their appearance in the columns of the Athenæum, September 17, 1881:

‘My father, an architect, was a friend of Scott’s, and helped him, as a friend, in the decoration and finishings of Abbotsford. Scott would often dine with my father when in London, and was greatly interested in the garden. In one corner there was some rockwork, in which were inserted some fragments of stone ornaments of Kilburn Priory, and crowning all was an irregularly-shaped stone, having a deep red stain, no doubt of ferruginous origin. This stone was sent to my father by Lord Mulgrave in one of his cement vessels, my father having been struck with its appearance on the shore at Whitby, and from these simple, really unconnected facts Scott made out the following story in verse, which might be regarded as a kind of friendly offering in return for services rendered. Here are the lines; I had supposed them lost, but my sister, in turning over some old papers, found a copy.’

This I have taken the liberty to reproduce:

Mr. Timbs’ prose variant of the story, briefly told, is as follows:

At a place called Kilburn Priory, near St. John’s Wood, there was a stone of a blood colour, which stain was caused by the blood of Sir Gervase de Morton, or de Mortonne, who was slain by his brother centuries ago. The latter, Stephen de Morton, had sinfully fallen in love with the beautiful wife of Sir Gervase, whom he persecuted with his illicit passion, till at length she threatened to inform her husband. To prevent this, and enraged by hate and jealousy, the wicked brother lay in wait in a narrow lane through which Sir Gervase had to pass on his way home, and on one side of which was a quarry with some rocks projecting. Here Stephen de Morton lay in ambush, and, as soon as his brother passed, stepped from his concealment, and stabbed him in the back. Sir Gervase fell forward upon a part of the rock mortally wounded, and in dying recognised his brother in his murderer, who he solemnly predicted should also die upon that stone.

Stephen appears to have thought but lightly of his crime, and less of his murdered brother’s denunciation. He returned immediately to the prosecution of his design; but the lady was obdurate, and resented his insulting proposals with indignant scorn, upon which his base passion turned to hate, and he pitilessly consigned her to a dungeon.

Subsequently he strove to forget his crime, and the innocent cause of it, by riotous living, but all to no purpose; his conscience would not rest, and he suffered such an access of remorse that at length he caused the remains of his brother to be brought to Kilburn Priory, and ordered a handsome tomb to be erected to his memory. The stones used in building it were brought from the neighbourhood of the place where the murder was committed, and amongst them was the one on which the blood of Sir Gervase had flowed, and which, as soon as the wretched Stephen approached it, oozed out blood. Upon this the horrified man confessed his crime to the Bishop of London, submitted himself to severe penance, and bequeathed all his worldly possessions to Kilburn Priory. But all in vain; he soon after pined away and died, breathing his last upon the stone stained with the blood of his brother, and this miraculous stain was the ‘Bleeding Stone’ of Kilburn Priory. Not a word is said of the unfortunate lady’s release from her undeserved dungeon, from which we can only hope she was freed to find a place amongst the nuns, and be near the resting-place of her husband.

Mr. Atkinson, in writing of Sir Walter Scott’s verses, thinks their origin interesting, equally in an artistic, literary, and psychological point of view; but looking at Mr. Timbs’ independent presentation of the same story, the inference is that, the legend being known to Sir Walter, the juxtaposition of the red stone and the fragmentary relics from Kilburn Priory quickened the imagination of the poet, and helped him to produce the lines. In some place or other the tradition must have had an independent existence, or it could not have appeared in Timbs’ ‘Romance of London’ previous to its publication in the Athenæum.