Place Name
Originally called Caen Wood Lane. This was an early medieval track dividing Hampstead Manor from the Bishop of London’s park in Hornsey, which may have been used as a route to the bishop’s hunting lodge. Sometime around 1677 the Bishops started charging travellers a toll to use the track and set up two gate houses at either end to collect the money, one is now the Gatehouse Tavern in Highgate, the other continues to frustrate drivers to this day, obstructing traffic outside the Spaniards Inn. As for the name, Hampstead itself was documented even before the Norman Conquest. In the 10thCentury it was mentioned as Hemstede in AD959 and Hamstede in AD978, when King Ethelred confirmed that the manor was being given to Westminster Abbey. The name comes from the Anglo Saxon word hām-stede meaning the homestead. The spelling mutated to Hamestede by the time of the Domesday Book, and in 1258 the “intrusive” p was added to become Hampstede. It wasn’t until the late 17thCentury that the modern spelling was used when the village became a fashionable spa resort.
