In the second quarter of the 19th century London was growing ever faster as a conurbation, the privately owned green space on its outskirts being sold off for housing.
The largely unregulated development of this kind and on this scale brought with it dangers to public health, and loss of amenity and open space.
So it was that public welfare campaigners, conservationists, politicians and newspapers came together to call for the saving and protection of the diminishing number of the capital s open spaces.
Some owners of these open spaces were sympathetic to the idea of preservation and cooperated to make their land public, but the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead was not one of them.