BELSIZE HOUSE
Belsize House was a large Elizabethan mansion, modified in the time of Charles II. Pepys, who visited it in 1668 (17 August) when it was the residence of Lord Wotton, describes its gardens as “wonderful fine: too good for the house the gardens are, being, indeed, the most noble that ever I saw, and brave orange and lemon trees.”[202]
The house was a private residence until 1720, when it was converted into a place of public amusement, under the management of a Welshman named Howell. At this time it was a somewhat imposing structure, with wings, and a tower in the centre. The entrance was by a door placed between the wings, and also by an external staircase at one wing.
The inaugural entertainment took place about April, 1720, and consisted of an “uncommon solemnity of music and dancing.” The place was usually open from 6 a.m. till 8 p.m., without charge for admission. The Park, Wilderness and Garden, about a mile in circumference, were advertised (about 1721?), as being wonderfully improved and filled with a variety of birds, “which compose a most melodious and delightful harmony.” Those who wished for an early stroll in the park could “breakfast on tea or coffee as cheap as at their own chambers.” As the journey from London was not unattended with risks, twelve stout fellows (afterwards increased to thirty), completely armed, were announced as “always at hand to patrol timid females or other.”
BELSIZE HOUSE AND PARK.
Belsize became a fashionable rendezvous. In July 1721 the Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by several persons of rank, dined at the house, and were entertained with hunting and other diversions. In June, 1722, on the occasion of a wild deer hunt, three or four hundred coaches brought down the “Nobility and Gentry” from town. Athletic sports were introduced, and the proprietor gave a plate of several guineas to be run for by eleven footmen (1721). Gambling and intrigue were the less wholesome results of this influx of the nobility and gentry. In May 1722 the Justices took steps to prevent the unlawful gaming, while in the same year “A serious Person of Quality” published a satire called Belsize House, in which he undertook to expose “the Fops and Beaux who daily frequent that Academy,” and also the “characters of the women who make this an exchange for assignations.”
This house, which is a nuisance to the land
Doth near a park and handsome garden stand
Fronting the road, betwixt a range of trees
Which is perfumed with a Hampstead breeze.
The Welsh Ambassador has many ways
Fool’s pence, while summer season holds, to raise.
For ’tis not only chocolate and tea,
With ratafia, bring him company.
Nor is it claret, Rhenish wine or sack
The fond and rampant Lords and Ladies lack
Or ven’son pasty for a certain dish
With several varieties of fish;
But hither they and other chubs resort
To see the Welsh Ambassador make sport,
Who in the art of hunting has the luck
To kill in fatal corner tired buck,
The which he roasts and stews and sometimes bakes,
Whereby His Excellency profit makes.
He also on another element
Does give his choused customers content
With net or angling rod, to catch a dish
Of trouts or carp or other sorts of fish.
The Welsh Ambassador was the nickname of the proprietor, James Howell, an enterprising though not very reputable person, who had once been imprisoned for some offence in Newgate.
Races[203] and similar amusements continued for several years to be provided, and music was performed every day during the season. In the spring of 1733 (31 May) a race was advertised for ponies twelve hands six inches high. The length of the race was six times round the course; “Mr. Treacle’s black pony,” which distinguished itself by winning the plate at Hampstead Heath in the previous year, being excluded.
In 1736 a fat doe was advertised to be hunted to death by small beagles, beginning at nine in the morning, and sportsmen were invited to bring their own dogs, if “not too large.” In the same year (16 September) a boys’ race was run, beginning at three o’clock, six times round the course: a prize of one guinea was given to the winner, and half a guinea to the second runner. “Each person to pay sixpence coming in, and all persons sitting on the wall or getting over will be prosecuted.”
For an afternoon in August 1737, there was announced a running match six times round the park, between “the Cobler’s Boy and John Wise the Mile-End Drover,” for twenty guineas. In 1745 there were foot-races in the park, and this is the last notice we have of Belsize as a place of amusement.
The mansion falling into a ruinous state[204] was pulled down at the close of the eighteenth century (before 1798), and a large, plainly-built house was erected in its stead. From 1798–1807 this new Belsize House was tenanted by the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval and others. In the autumn of 1853 the house was pulled down (cp. The Illustrated London News for 9th September, 1854, p. 239), and the buildings of the Belsize Estate were subsequently erected on the site of the Park.
The present Belsize Avenue (on the west side of Haverstock Hill) is the representative of a beautiful avenue of elms, which originally led up to the old Belsize House, the site of which was near the present St. Peter’s Church.
[Palmer’s St. Pancras, 227, ff.; Baines’s Hampstead; Walford v. 494, ff.; Howitt’s Northern Heights; Lambert’s London, 1806, iv. 256; Thorne’s Environs of London, s.v. “Hampstead”; Park’s Hampstead; newspaper advertisements, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. Old Belsize House. A view on a Belsize House advertisement, circ. 1721? and a view by Maurer, 1750; cp. Howitt’s Northern Heights and C. Knight’s Old England, ii. fig. 2404.
2. Belsize House in 1800 (Walford, v. 492).