‘These are to acquaint all persons that have occasion to drink Hampstead waters that the Wells will be opened on Monday next, being the 11th of May, with very good music for dancing, and will continue every Monday during the season for water-drinking, and there is complete accommodation for water-drinkers of both sexes with accomodation of a very good bowling-green, and very good stabling and coach-house.’[231] There is a vagueness in the phrasing of this notice that leaves a doubt whether it is the Wells or the music that will continue every Monday, but from other sources we learn that ‘very good music for dancing went on all day long every Monday during the season.’ Dr. Gibbons, who resided at Hampstead, was the first physician who encouraged the drinking of the waters, setting a practical example himself, and continuing in it till his death (1725). Others of his profession supported the opinion of their excellence, and the sale of them in London, as well as their local use, seems to have largely increased in consequence. Instead of one or two agents, the advertisements set forth that, being approved by the most eminent physicians, the said mineral water continues to be brought fresh from Hampstead Wells every day to Mr. Adams, Glass-seller, near Holborn Bars; to Mr. Cresset’s at the Sugar-loaf at Charing Cross; to Nando’s Coffee-house,[232] near Temple Bar; to Sam’s Coffee-house, near Ludgate; to the Salmon in Stock’s Market; and by Mr. Pratt to the Greyhound in King Street, Bloomsbury; to Howe’s Coffee-house in Cheapside by the Half-moon Tavern, and to the Black Posts, Fleet Street. At this time there was no lack of small but pleasant lodgings to be had in South End, and on the Lower and Upper Heath, weather-boarded structures for the most part of the cottage species, some of which survived till our own time in the Vale of Health and about Squire’s Mount; one of the ancient customs of the Manor of Hampstead being that the tenants of their own free will might ‘let, sell, take down, or remove any of their tenements without any fine or forfeiture to or for the same to the lord,’ a custom that greatly facilitated the raising of inexpensive removable dwellings. A few of the houses in Well Walk in the early part of the century were probably of this description, and, I suspect, of an earlier date than the flat-faced, narrow-windowed brick edifices with fan-lighted hall doors that faced the Walk in the fifties. Instead of that decorous straight line, I imagine irregularity in the appearance, as well as in the positions, of the original structures, which followed no fixed plan, but were added to as wanted.[233]