Besides Hayley’s account of the artist’s mansion on the Hampstead hill, we have Allan Cunningham’s memoir of Romney at hand, in which he tells us that no sooner had the idea of an ampler gallery in a quieter scene than Cavendish Square possessed Romney, than he forthwith purchased the ground, lined out the site, and began to draw his plans; and in 1797 he writes: ‘The strange new studio and dwelling-house which he (Romney) had planned and raised at Hampstead had an influence on his studies, his temper, and his health. He had expended a year, and a sum of £2,733, on an odd and whimsical structure in which there was nothing like domestic arrangements. There was a wooden arcade for a riding-house in the garden, and a very extensive picture and statue gallery.’ The former, I have no doubt, was the weather-boarded building of large size which subsequently represented to popular imagination the picture-gallery of the great painter. On the sale of this house (probably in 1803, when Romney’s pictures were sold at Hampstead), it was found, as we have said, useless as a residence, and required rebuilding to fit it for the purpose of an Assembly House, which alteration did not take place till 1807, when the premises appear to have been purchased for this speculation by certain gentlemen of Hampstead, who formed themselves into a company, one of whom was the father of the present Mr. George Holford, who possesses documents relating to this building of the above date.[150] The builder of the Assembly Room was a Mr. Greening. The fact is, I believe, accepted, that it stands where Romney’s house stood, and that some portion of his gallery remains. The whole set of apartments are now used for the Constitutional Club.[151] Romney is not the only memorable painter associated with the Holly-bush Assembly Room. In later years we find the Nature-loving, tender-hearted Constable, whose ‘fine presence and genial manners’ were long remembered at Hampstead and its vicinity, giving a series of lectures here on the ‘Origin of Landscape Painting,’ and illustrating his theme by reference to local objects. Lovers of Hampstead Heath well know the Fir-tree Avenue, or, rather, the wreck of it remaining, of which, then in its prime, he made a drawing, on seeing which Blake exclaimed: ‘Why, this is not drawing, but inspiration!’ From his lecture we learn that in his time there had stood at the entrance of the village a tall and elegant ash-tree, the likeness of which he had taken and exhibited to his audience, while he pleasantly told its story: