As only one side of this hamlet is in Hampstead parish, there is not much to be said of it here. It was rapidly increasing when Park wrote his description of it; but that was nothing to the proportion of its increase during the last ten years, when it has grown to the dimensions of a town. Its name comes from two Saxon words, _kele_, cold, and _bourn_, a rivulet. By this cool stream,[298] which rose on the southern slope of Hampstead, hard by the forest-side, one Godwyn, in the time of Henry I., built himself a cell, and for a time at least led a hermit’s life. There can be little doubt, from the fact of his ultimately making over this nucleus of the future nunnery, with the grounds belonging to it, to the Church of St. Peter of Westminster, in trust to the Abbot for the use and abode of three retired Maids of Honour to Queen Matilda (herself a Benedictine nun), that Godwyn was a penitent courtier or nobleman. Eventually he himself was made Warden of the abode and guardian of the maidens, Emma, Christiana, and Gunilda, who took upon themselves a holy life, though no particular monastic rule is mentioned, nor does it appear in the foundation deed that they were vowed to celibacy. On the death of Godwyn some other person was to be chosen to his office, with the advice of the Abbot of Westminster, and with the consent of the nuns themselves; no one could be appointed without their approval, nor was to interfere with matters relative to their temporal affairs, nor with the affairs of the church, except at their desire. The Abbot, Osbert de Clair, Prior of Westminster, augmented the grant to the cell of Kilburne by a rent of thirty shillings and land at Knightsbridge, after which it became a nunnery of the Benedictine Order, dedicated to the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. At the dissolution of the monasteries the lands of Kilburn nunnery at Hampstead and Kilburn were given by Henry VIII., in exchange for Paris Garden and other estates, to the Knights of Jerusalem, whose Order he soon after dissolved (1540). Subsequent to the dissolution of the Knights of St. John it became the property of John, Earl of Warwick, who lost no time in alienating it to Richard Taverner, Esq. In 1604 Sir Arthur Atye died seized of Kilburn and Shuttop Hill. It was recently in the family of the Powells, an old name at Hampstead. At no time does it appear to have been a religious house of any importance, though dignified with the name of Priory. Park states its revenue at the time of the Dissolution to have been under £200 per annum. Dugdale sets it down at £74 7s. 11d. per annum, and the whole building, inclusive of kitchen, larder, bakehouse, and brewhouse, beside the church, contained only twelve rooms.