Great Stanmore, near to which are the eighteenth-century mansion known as Bentley Priory, replacing a suppressed monastery, and the beautiful Stanmore Park, the seat of Lord Wolverton, is beautifully situated on a hill commanding very extensive views, and has two churches, one now disused, containing some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century effigies, the other a somewhat uninteresting modern building. The chief charm of the old-fashioned village of Elstree, originally called Eaglestree, because it was much frequented by eagles, is the fine artificial reservoir haunted by water-fowl, which is nearly as extensive as that of Kingsbury, and it also owns a beautiful old Elizabethan mansion. [Sidenote: High Barnet] High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, is a far more important place than Edgware or the Stanmores, and is supposed to date from Anglo-Saxon times. Its site, with that of East Barnet, both once covered with the forest of Southaw, belonged to the abbots of St. Albans, to whom Henry I. granted the privilege of holding a weekly market in it, and it is still the chief cattle-mart of the district, a great fair taking place there every year in September. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, founded in the early part of the fifteenth century, and in which is a fine monument to Thomas Ravenscroft, a local worthy of the seventeenth century, was originally very characteristic of the time at which it was built, with a well-proportioned nave and aisles, and square embattled tower; but it has been added {52} to from time to time, with unsatisfactory results. To make up for this, the ancient grammar-school, now used as a dining-hall only, the charter of which was granted by Queen Elizabeth to her beloved Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is much what it was when completed in 1575, the new buildings that supplement it being quite distinct. On the common, about a mile from High Barnet, there is a spring of medicinal water that was held in high esteem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is often referred to in contemporary records. A farmhouse now occupies the site of the old spa, but the actual well, though covered over, is even now occasionally resorted to by invalids, to whom the water is supplied by means of a small pump. The chief claim to distinction of the village is, however, that it is near to the scene of the great battle of 1471 between the Lancastrians and Yorkists, at which the former were defeated, the mighty king-maker, the Earl of Warwick, was slain, and Edward IV. firmly established on the throne.