How far back such a beacon existed on this, or any earlier, tower-turret here must remain uncertain; but its purpose is plain enough. The light of it was intended to guide travellers benighted in the once dense and far-spreading Enfield Chase. The elevated site of the church itself was known as “Beacon Hill” in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and even then had long borne that name. There is evidence that the beacon was lighted in the troubled times of 1745, when the Scottish rebels were hourly expected to descend upon London and replace King George with a Stuart sovereign. Blown down in the great gale of January 1st, 1779, the existing one is, of course, merely a restoration. It was lighted on the night of the rejoicings over the Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and again at the Coronation of Edward the Seventh. The Battle of Barnet, in which Monken Hadley and all the surrounding district were involved, is an oft-told tale, and romantic novelists have long had their way with it. Lord Lytton was probably the last, as he was certainly the greatest, to make that great contest of 1471 the vehicle for a story; and he wrote of it so convincingly that an ancient and weatherbeaten fragment of a huge oak tree marking the border of Enfield Chase is pointed out as a legitimate historic landmark of that great contest. It is the “gaunt and leafless tree” whereon Friar Bungay hangs his hated rival, Adam Warner, whilst at its foot lay the lifeless form of his daughter Sibyll and “the shattered fragments of the mechanical ‘eureka’ on which he had spent the labours of his life.” The old trunk, long ago divested of its bark, was upset some years ago by some drunken volunteers, but it has been replaced in its original position and enclosed within a railing. Taking by preference the old road, across Hadley Green, by the obelisk, called “Hadley Highstone,” marking the site of the battle, instead of following the “new” road out of Barnet constructed by Telford in 1823, we pass Dyrham Park. The imposing stone-built entrance to this beautiful domain is sufficient to attract attention by itself, without the aid of historic association; but it has, according to oft-repeated story, the added interest of having originally been a triumphal arch erected in London to welcome Charles the Second, at his Restoration in 1660. [Illustration: THE GATEWAY, DYRHAM PARK.] The old road comes to a junction again with the new at South Mimms, and old and new proceed together from this point to St. Albans, up Ridge Hill, and so by London Colney. Here and there stretches of the old way may be found, to right or left; hollow, overshaded by trees, and solitary, save for those expertest of expert wayfarers, the gipsies and the tramps, who may often be found there, under the greenwood tree, secure from the dust and the hustling of this new century which has discovered the roads again, but has not the time nor the inclination to know them intimately, or as anything else than a race-track.