From “Hampstead, its historic houses, its literary and artistic associations”
Anna Maxwell (1912)
The fine old house which stands full-face to the pond was bought in the year 1790 by Samuel Hoare, of the old Norfolk Quaker family, who had joined the firm of bankers in Lombard Street in 1772. During the residence of Mr. Hoare, this house was the scene of meetings for slave-abolition abroad, and for the improvement of the condition of the poor at home ; his drawing-room was also a rendezvous for men of letters. Among his visitors were Wilberforce, Canning, Brougham and Wellington ; Campbell, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Edward Irving and Coleridge, who drove over from Highgate in Dr. Gilman’s gig ; Hannah More, Mrs. Barbauld from Church Row, Mrs. Siddons from Judge’s Walk, and Joanna Baillie from her neighbouring house on Windmill Hill these last two ladies being respectively playwright and chief actress in the successful drama of that day. George Crabbe the poet, could not indeed be counted a visitor at the hospitable Heath House so much as a resident family friend, who was inspired no less by the sweet air of that high-walled, spacious garden than by the quiet character of the domestic benevolence within-doors. In 1825 he wrote :
Such is the state of the garden here in which I walk and read,
that in a morning like this the smell of the flowers is fragrant beyond
anything I ever perceived before … a Paradise of sweetness.
The ownership of Heath House, also of the neighbouring Hill House which Mr. Hoare presented to his son as a wedding gift, has descended to the present Sir Samuel Hoare, fourth of that name, and M.P. for Norwich. Heath House is at the present time in the occupation of Lord Iveagh ; previously it was in that of Lord Glenesk (Sir Algernon Borthwick), proprietor of the Morning Post ; and previously again in that of another proprietor of the same paper, Mr. Bockett, whose wife was a niece of Lord Chief Justice Erskine who lived for thirty years at the further end of the Heath.