Hampstead Heath is a large open and public space in North London. Today it comprises over 800 acres of uncultivated, open land and yet it is only four miles from the heart of London. John Constable (1776-1837) spent his final years painting its environs and it was apparently while walking on the Heath one snowy day that C S Lewis (1898-1963) was inspired to write the first of his Chronicles of Narnia. Certainly for the last 150 years and more Londoners and other visitors of all stripes have come there to escape the city and its stresses and strains.
On a map of the Heath you will see marked Preachers Hill. Preachers Hill is on the Hampstead side of the Heath. It is off East Heath Road, opposite the top of Pryors Field. East Heath Road is a main road so the hill feels slightly separated from the rest of the Heath. Apparently, a grove once stood near Hampstead with a large green and an old village tree and it was here that George Whitfield (1714-1770) came and preached in 1739. It was that event that led to it being given its name rather than the other way round.
Having said that, Preachers Hill is not far from the community known as Gospel Oak, and it may have been nearer there that Whitefield preached. The name that appears to have come from a local oak tree that marked the boundary between the parishes of Hampstead and St Pancras. There was a mediaeval custom called 'beating the bounds', which was an annual event that involved residents walking the parish boundary and literally beating prominent boundary markers. This oak was one such marker. It is said to have been situated on the corner of what is today Mansfield Road and Southampton Road, a little way from where the Heath now is. The oak vanished some time in the nineteenth century and was last recorded on a map of the area in 1801.
As well as beating the tree there would have been singing and even readings from the Gospels under the tree. It also became a place to hear preaching. This is all when the area was still quite rural. There are stories that John Wesley (1703-1791) preached there. The small street off Highgate Road, named Wesleyan Place, was the original site of a very early Methodist chapel connected with the famous oak.
Whitefield was born in Gloucester and matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1732. While in Oxford he belonged to the "Holy Club" which included the Wesley brothers, John and Charles. After receiving his BA degree, Whitefield was ordained. He immediately began preaching but did not settle as the minister of any one parish. Rather, he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In February, 1739 he first took the controversial step of preaching in the open air. In 1740 he travelled to North America, where, as in England, he preached to large crowds. It is said that he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his autobiography C H Spurgeon (1834-1892) says of him
There is no end to the interest that attaches to such a man as George Whitefield. Often as I have read his life, I am conscious of a distinct quickening whenever I turn to it. He lived; other men seem only to be half alive; but Whitefield was all life, fire, wing, force. My own model, if I may have such a thing in due subordination to my Lord, is George Whitefield; but with unequal footsteps must I follow his glorious track.
Wherever exactly it was Whitefield stood on Hampstead Heath, it was on Thursday May 17, 1739, that the wonderful and godly evangelist preached there. At the time, Whitefield was still in his twenties and still new to open air preaching. He refers to his visit, in his journal, like this
Preached, after several invitations thither, at Hampstead Heath, about five miles from London. The audience was of the politer sort, and I preached very near the horse course, which gave me occasion to speak home to the souls concerning our spiritual race. Most were attentive, but some mocked. Thus the Word of God is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. God's Spirit bloweth when, and where it listeth.
The day before he had preached on Kennington Common and the day after would speak to over 20,000 at a large open space in Shadwell.
Horse racing appears to have been common on the Heath in the first half of the eighteenth century. In his Topography and natural history of Hampstead John James Park (1795-1833) writes
The horse course I am told was on the West side of the Heath behind the castle (Jack Straw's). The races drew together so much company that they were put down on account of mischief.
He quotes accounts of races in 1732 where four horses started for the purse of 20 guineas and when three horses ran for a 10 guinea prize.
Whitefield liked such gatherings because there were large crowds, as when he preached to racegoers on Hackney Marsh in the early days. No doubt his sermon on Hampstead Heath was similar to the one he preached many years later in Edinburgh from Hebrews 12:1, urging the people to "run the race set before them".
In a book called A History of Preaching in Britain and America published in America in 1952 the author, F R Webber (1887-1963), says this of Whitefield on that day
As he preached to an immense gathering, the skies darkened and a severe thunder storm broke forth. So great was his power over the congregation that they remained to the end of the long sermon, standing in a downpour of rain. The thunder crashed like shrapnel overhead, and between its peals Whitefield compared the lightning and thunder to the wrath of God against the unrepentant. Several of his hearers are said to have died of heart attacks on that occasion.
This appears to be based on these words from a 1903 work by Thomas Harwood Pattison (1838-1904) called The History of Christian Preaching
Under the terror which he aroused as he invoked the thunder and lightning on Hampstead Heath, near London, when he saw the storm coming, more than one of his hearers fell dead.
It is unclear where Webber and Pattison are drawing their material from. Further, it is unlikely that anyone dropped dead. It is more likely that they dropped to the ground as if dead, which was common when Whitefield preached. If they are at least partly right, however, Whitefield may have preached something like he did later in Boston on one occasion when a storm raged.
"Oh, sinners!" he exclaimed, "by all your hopes of happiness, I beseech you to repent. Let not the wrath of God be awakened. Let not the fires of eternity be kindled against you. See there!" said he, pointing to the lightning ... "'Tis a glance from the angry eye of Jehovah! Hark!" continued he, raising his finger in a listening attitude, as the distant thunder grew louder and louder, and broke in one tremendous crash ... "It was the voice of the Almighty, as he passed by in his anger!"
Whitefield had come to London on Saturday, April 25 from Oxfordshire and remained in the area for about 26 days, until Monday, May 21, when he returned north, first coming to nearby Hertfordshire. That August he returned to America, having been there previously in 1738.
His visit to Hampstead Heath is said to have led to the founding of a Congregationalist church in the area. Little is known about this chapel before 1775. Perhaps a temporary building preceded a more permanent one. In 1780 the building came briefly into the hands of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791) but was then administered by a board of trustees. We know that at some point Yorkshire man James Wraith (1734-1815) was pastor of the church. He was born in Elland, converted at 15, and ministered in Bolton (1772-1782) Wolverhampton (1782-1792) and briefly in Chorley, before coming to Hampstead around 1794.
Another church in Hampstead that claims a more tangential Whitefield connection is a proprietary chapel, St John's, Downshire Hill, built in 1813. It was owned at one point by John Wilcox (1780-1836) who was a great admirer of Whitefield. Like Whitefield, he was the son of a Gloucester inn keeper and had won a scholarship to Oxford. He saw Downshire Hill as an ideal place to carry on the sort of work Whitefield had been doing. However, he faced strong opposition from another local minister, Samuel White (1765-1841), who resented Wilcox's lowly origins and lack of commitment to the state-established Church of England. White made accusations against Wilcox in an ecclesiastical court and won his case. Local feeling was with Wilcox and local poet, John Keats (1795-1821), took Wilcox's side but to no avail.
This article first appeared in In Writing
