The part of the Heath known as East Heath consists of rolling grassy slopes outlined with clumps of trees and intersected by roads and footpaths. The great road known as Spaniards, which cuts across as straight as an arrow, gives the impression of having been banked up and levelled at some previous date, but this appearance is due to the excavations for sand and gravel at its sides which took place while the ground was still under the rule of the lord of the manor. The Heath has suffered from highwaymen in common with most lonely spots in the vicinity of the Metropolis. One, Jackson, in 1673, was hung behind Jack Straw's Castle for highway murder, but 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.