The addition of Castle to the name is from the fact, that there was some sort of fortress or earthworks on this commanding point. The inn on the site was known as the Castle Inn, and not until 1822 is there any mention of it as Jack Straw’s Castle. The wood of the gallows on which a famous highwayman was hung behind the house in 1673 was built into the wall. Jack Straw’s Castle is now quite modernised, but the view from it, on all sides, is still as lovely as ever. The Whitestone Pond in front is really a reservoir, and to the south of that lies the Grove, with fine trees and some old-fashioned houses. The most picturesque walk is that known as the Judges’ or King’s Bench Walk, from a tradition that justice was administered under the trees there, when the judges fled from London at the time of the Great Plague. This walk is on the south-west side of the Heath, the Well Walk on the south-east. To the east of the highest point with Jack Straw’s Castle and the road which runs northwards towards the “Spaniards” is the Vale of Health, and below are a series of ponds. Hampstead has always furnished a water-supply for the city at its feet. When more water was required, in the sixteenth century, the Lord Mayor proposed to utilise the springs there, and convey the water to London by conduits. A pound of pepper at the Feast of St. Michael annually to the “Bishop of Westminster,” was the tribute for the use of the water, as the land belonged to the Abbey of Westminster, having been granted to it by King Ethelred in 986. The managers of water-supply in 1692 were a company known as the Hampstead Water Company, which became absorbed in the New River Company. The lakes are very deep, and dangerous for boating, bathing, and skating, although used for all those purposes.