The WEST HEATH, with its beautiful birch-trees, lies between the mansions in North End Road and West Heath Road. It is adjoined on the north by Golders Hill Park, an estate acquired for the public in 1898, with a charming old walled garden and a few tame deer and other animals. The house (on the site of one once occupied by the poet Akenside) is used as a refreshment room. The north exit from this park debouches in North End (reached also by North End Road), a hamlet containing some quaint old cottages, several fine mansions, and the old Bull and Bush tavern, with one of the few remaining examples of the tavern-garden (dancing in summer). Just to the south of the last is a house now called Pitt House, where the Earl of Chatham spent part of 1766-67, when illness prevented him from attending to the Chaotic state of affairs that precipitated the war with the American colonies. Wilkie Collins (1824-89) was born at North End. The picturesque old house now called Wyldes was occupied for a time by John Linnell and his guest, William Blake.
To the north of North End lie the Hampstead Heath Extension (acquired in 1907) and the agreeable Hampstead Garden Suburb. On the west side of the latter, near Finchley Road, is the Golders Green Crematorium, + mile beyond Golders Green Station, on the Hampstead Tube. From the station Golders Green Road runs north-west to Hendon, while Finchley Road runs north to join the Great North Road at Tally-Ho Corner The Hampstead Tube goes on above ground via Brent, Hendon, Colindale, and Burnt Oak, to Edgware.
