File:Hampstead Heath, East Heath Road - geograph.org.uk - 1717631.jpg

English: Hampstead Heath: East Heath Road This is the southernmost part of the Corporation of London-owned Hampstead Heath where a newly resurfaced footpath leads up from Hampstead Heath railway station through an avenue of London plane trees to the three Hampstead ponds and East Heath. The 1871 edition of the Ordnance Survey's mapping shows that this footpath runs across the site of a fourth pond which extended from the Parliament Hill road right up to the base of the dam of what is now Pond Number 1. When the London County Council acquired the pond in 1892 they filled it in to provide a grassy approach to the heath from the station, and it is not shown on the 1896 edition of the Ordnance Survey's mapping. On Easter Monday 1892 it was estimated, according to a contemporary newspaper report, that about a hundred thousand people visited Hampstead Heath, most of them travelling by train from London's East End. At the end of the day a heavy rain storm threatened and 2 women and 6 children were killed, and many more were injured, in a crush at Hampstead Heath railway station as day-trippers hurried to catch their trains. Is it possible that this disaster and the desire to have a larger space at the approach to the station were some of the reasons why the pond was filled in?