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15
Hampstead, and corresponds to a wave of terrific heat which occured in
that year. Working out the average of recorded temperatures one finds
that the summit of the Heath is on the average 2 degrees less than
London on a whole.
Rainfall.—The average rainfall at Hampstead has been computed
at 26 inches, about 2 inches in excess of the London area, or approximately
8 per cent, more than London as a whole, Standing on a hill,
however, away from the river, would appear to give it considerable
immunity from thunderstorms, these being much less frequent here than
in the Thames valley where the major portion of them culminate.
Soil.—Hampstead Hill is formed by a huge elevation in the bed of
the deposit known as London clay, which forms the whole of the mass
up to about 360 feet above sea level. This great cone of earth supports
an extensive cap of sand in places 80 feet thick, known as Bagshot
sands. Down below the London clay occurs deposits of gravel and
sand known as the Woolwich and Reading beds and Thanet sands, and
below all again the chalk. Few people realise that Hampstead Heath
is really a sandy waste, and that it is to the presence of its sandy cap
that Hampstead is indebted for the Heath itself. This sandy cap is
what is known as an " outlier " of a vast sheet of sand that extends over
a large portion of Surrey, Hants, and Berkshire. The Bagshot sands
are, for the most part, unfruitful from an agricultural point of view,
and Hampstead Heath has remained a Heath probably because its
fertility was insufficient to make it worth while enclosing, or, in other
words, it possibly saved it from the land-grabber until laws were
brought into effect which made it the property of the people.
The atmosphere is dry and bracing, and the prevailing winds
south-west and mild. The effect of the climate on the health of its
citizens is reflected in its death-rate. Ilampstead's is the lowest deathrate
in London, and is lower than that of some places to which people
go in search of health. At the last Census 2,736 persons, or 3.2 per
cent, of the total population were over 70 years of age. This demonstrates
that the age of the inhabitants is high, and that we have a great
many old people, yet in spite of this our death-rate as a whole is lower
than that of any other district in London, and our infantile mortality rate
for 1914 stands at the exceedingly low figure of 72 per 1,000 births