‘Whereas I published an advertisement on Saturday last, declaring a sale of goods and toys to be held at Hampstead, which advertisement was addressed to persons usually frequenting Hampstead Fair, and occasioned great numbers of loose and disorderly people to resort to Hampstead, under the notion that the Fair suppressed two years since as illegal, would be revived, and held in the Flask Walk ... I take this publick opportunity to declare that I am extremely sorry, that I should ignorantly be engaged to act in opposition to the Magistrates of the County, in any endeavour to revive a Fair deemed illegal by authority; and I hope this public acknowledgment of my error will satisfy their worships, and declaring that I will desist from any such attempt for the future. ‘THOMAS KEATE.’ This epistle, as far as I have discovered, is final with regard to the fair in Flask Walk, though sadly out of chronological order here. Happily for the lovers of historic Hampstead, the site of the ancient Pump-house in Well Walk has been discovered, while that of the modern one is preserved by an inscription on a part of the house now occupying its place. But the situation of Sion Chapel, of which we completely lose count after the early advertisements I have transcribed, is not known. Unfortunately, the easy access to the Wells from London—a walk of only four or five miles being but an ordinary recreation to persons unaccustomed, as a rule, to any other mode of locomotion—made it impossible to maintain the exclusiveness dear to the dignity of the Ladies Betty, Moll, or Susan, who stepped so stately, ‘Alack! the little heels won’t let them haste!’ under the _then_ young limes shading the Well Walk. This ease of access bounced into their midst the City madams and pert, Fleet Street seamstresses, that furnished the fun of Baker’s comedy, a force stronger in the end than the _Bon ton_, who, after a decade of endurance, forsook the _Fons Sanitatis_ of Hampstead, and its high-priest, Dr. Gibbons. But intermediately the proprietor of the Wells had been doing a thriving business in illicit marriages and frequent wedding-dinners; and Hampstead had won for itself a quite unenviable notoriety. Play often ran so high at the gaming-tables that the Justices at the Quarter Sessions at Hicks’s Hall recommended the great room at Hampstead to the particular attention of the petty constables and head-boroughs of the parish, to prevent all unlawful gaming, riots, etc. As for the rest, Baker’s comedy, to which I have alluded (and which is still extant) offers a very graphic description. Park has quoted at considerable length from it, but Park is not often read out of the reading-room of the British Museum, or the Public Library at Hampstead.