The Old Farm House in Tottenham Court Road. By Ambrose
Heal. (Heal and Son, Tottenham Court Road.)--Few people can have been aware that until quite recently a Georgian farmhouse has existed within a mile of Charing Cross. It stood just off Tottenham Court Road, at the back of the shop of Messrs. Heal, the furniture dealers, and has only been demolished this year in order to make room for an extension of their premises. Mr. Ambrose Heal has written a charming little account of the history of the house, which seems to have been built somewhere about the year 1776. There is evidence of another farm having stood upon the same spot for a hundred years earlier, and we learn that this former building belonged in the middle of the eighteenth century "to two old maiden sisters of the name of Capper. They wore riding habits and men's hats ; one used to ride with a large pair of shears after boys who were flying their kites, purposely to cut their strings, the other sister's business was to seize the clothes of the lads who trespassed on their premises to bathe." The photographs which accompany Mr. Heal's paper will help to preserve the memory of this curious survival from a time when milch cows grazed in the meadows beside Tottenham Court Road.
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