These works were carried on in 1589-90 by Sir John Hart, and about the same time the course of the ancient river Fleet, which rose on the south slope of Hampstead Hill, and fell into the Thames at Blackfriars, being much choked and decayed, it was undertaken that by draining divers springs about Hampstead Heath into one head and course (for which £666 17s. 4d. were collected by order of the Common Council), and connecting the rivulets with Turnmill Brook, or the river of Wells[227] and the Old Bourne, which rose in a clear stream near Holborn Bar, that both the city should be served of fresh water in all places of want, and also that by such a follower (as men call it) the channel of this brook should be scoured into the river. But by continual encroachment on its banks, and casting of refuse into the stream, after much money had been spent to little purpose, the Fleet became more ‘choaken’ than before. Subsequently the springs were leased out by the City of London (1692), and the Hampstead Water Company was formed, whose office, Maitland tells us, was in his time in Denmark Street, St. Giles’s, to which belonged two main pipes of 7-inch bore, which brought water from the ponds at Highgate and Hampstead. In a terrier of the Manor of Hampstead, taken about the end of the seventeenth century, to which Park had access, he found among the copyholds ‘the Upper Pond on the Heath, stated to contain three roods thirty perches. The Lower Pond on ditto, one acre one rood thirty-four perches.’ In Park’s time the Hampstead Water Company still supplied some parts of the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court. As a result of this speculation, it may not be uninteresting to subjoin the following paragraph, which appeared in the _Times_ of August 4, 1859: ‘Yesterday at the Auction Mart, Mr. Marsh offered to public sale twenty-five shares in the property of this company (the Hampstead Water-Works), which was formed in 1692, having for its object to raise a capital for the supply of water from springs within the parishes of St. Pancras, Hampstead and Hornsey, the right to which had become vested in the promoters under the lease from the City of London, the lease being renewed from time to time. By an arrangement recently effected with the New River Company, the renewed lease and the property have been transferred to the New River Company for the consideration of an annuity of £3,500, payable in perpetuity by the New River Company, being at the rate of £5 16s. 6d. per share on the 600 shares of the company.’