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7
Section t.
Natural and Social Conditions of the Borough.
Area of Borough 2265 acres (including 12 acres covered by water).
Population at Census, 1921 86,153
Population estimated to middle of 1925 88,040
Number of inhabited houses, Census 1921 12,557
Number of families or separate occupiers, ditto 21,520
Rateable Value, 1st April, 1925 £1,193,034
Sum represented by a penny rate £4,826 18s. 1d.
Physical features and general character of the Borough.
In physical features and general characteristics the area of the
Borough divides itself into two distinct portions: one, the lower-lying
portions occupied by a dense population of the working class and the
big hill of Hampstead, with its Heath, where the inhabitants are almost
entirely well-to-do.
The hill of Hampstead 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 Sand. Down below the London clay occur deposits of gravel
and sand known as the Woolwich and Reading beds and Thanet sands,
and below again is 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 Berks. 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. Indeed, the
attack on the rights of the people over the Heath was not made until
it became profitable from a building site aspect.
At one time, and not so long ago, within the last fifty years, the
water that collected out of the sand at the top of the hill, formed the
beginning of several well-known streams. Thus on the west side, the
Kilbourne ran across Finchley Road over what is now West End Lane,
and took its way along where Lowfield and Kingsgate Roads now
stand, passed what is known as the old Kilburn Wells, where it turned