On the banks of these picturesque streams groups of pilgrims no doubt often halted to rest on their way from London _viâ_ the Roman Watling Street, to worship at the tomb of England's first martyr at St. Albans, or at the nearer forest shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, of which there is known to have been one at Willesden, one at Muswell Hill, where the Alexandra Palace now stands, and one at Gospel Oak, which is supposed to owe its quaint name, of comparatively recent origin, to the fact that portions of the Gospel used to be read beneath a spreading oak at the ceremony of beating the bounds of the parish, discontinued since 1896. It is also certain that the Highgate and Hampstead forests were a favourite hunting-ground of the civic authorities and wealthy citizens of London, but this, of course, would check rather than promote the opening out of the woodlands, and for more than a century and a half after the Conquest there was little or no building on the northern heights. {10} Gradually, however, as the population of the city increased, attention was drawn to the many advantages enjoyed by Hampstead, of which its plentiful water-supply was the chief. There were many water-mills on the upper courses of the streams, whose 'clack,' according to a Norman writer of the twelfth century, was delightful to the ear, and almost from time immemorial the Heath has been looked upon as a paradise by the washerwomen of the neighbourhood, who long enjoyed certain privileges, including that of washing the linen of the royal family. What is now called Holly Hill used to be called Cloth Hill, because it was the public drying-ground, and even now it is sometimes used for that purpose.