Upon the decline of the wells in public estimation, and the consequent falling-off in the number of visitors, many of these easily-run-up habitations (mostly weather-boarded cottages) disappeared. But of the few that survived till quite modern times, some of them, as we shall see, have had remarkable tenants. The little cluster of cottages upon the margin of the pool in the bottom of the Vale constituted the headquarters of the craft which made the greater part of the population of Hampstead in Tudor times—the laundresses, who washed the linen of the Court and gentry and of the chief City merchants and citizens, abundance of water, dry breezy air, and unlimited bleaching and drying ground, making a very paradise for the suddy sisterhood. These privileges were possessed by their successors for many years after I first knew Hampstead, who made it appear in the early half of each week as if the grassy spaces between the turf-grown gravel ‘hills and holes,’ as children called them, and all the level growing beds of whortleberry, and coverts of furze, belonged to them. It was not unpleasing to an idle observer to watch the bringing up from the Vale of the great bucking-baskets of fresh-washed linen by the youngest and strongest of the _lavandières_, to give them their prettiest appellation, fresh-cheeked, full-chested, large-armed lassies, with elf-locks blowing about their faces, who soon made a wide part of the Heath appear as if an army were about to picnic there. As time went on, the proprietors of these cottages (marked on the map of the Ordnance Survey as ‘Grottoes and arbours’) developed the sensible idea of providing in a humble way for the refreshment of the many summer-afternoon visitors to the lovely village, and preserved in my time the tradition of the tea and bun houses with which Hampstead had formerly been too abundantly provided. A humble guild, with no better properties than deal tables and benches, coarse white or coloured ware, of which there used to be great piles, and clean tablecloths for the first comers. The knives, when required, were bone-handled, and blunt; and the spoons—well, sensitive persons used to wash them in the slop-basin, and dry them surreptitiously on the edge of the tablecloth. It was not exactly Frascati’s,[182] but it was a pleasant picture in its way of homely, hearty enjoyment, and the crowning joy of many a girl and boy’s afternoon holiday on Hampstead Heath.