Belsize and Buckland Crescents and Belsize Park Gardens are all in the same pleasant villa-like style, with trees and bushes growing beside the roadway, but their chief claim to interest lies in their association with the old manor-house.
The southern part of this ward is still more modern than the above, the greater part having been built over since 1851. Eton Avenue is lined by prettily-built, moderate-sized houses of bright red brick alternating with open spaces yet unbuilt on.
The north-eastern corner of the ward, including Eton Road, Provost Road, Oppidans Road, College Road, and Fellows Road, is made up of medium houses, many covered with rough stucco, and with a profusion of flowering trees and bushes in the small gardens. This section of the parish might well be part of some fashionable and fresh watering-place. At No. 6, Eton Road lived Robertson, author of "Caste" and other plays. St. Saviour's Church, built of ragstone, is at the corner of Eton and Provost Roads; it is in Early English style, consecrated 1856.
Fellows Road runs into Steele Road, near the end of which, on Haverstock Hill, is the Sir Richard Steele public-house. These names commemorate a real fact. Sir Richard Steele had a cottage on Haverstock Hill, of which prints are still extant. They show a funny little square, barn-like building with pent house-roof, set in the middle of fields and surrounded by trees. With a vividness of detail that does more credit to his imagination than his eye the artist has depicted St. Paul's Cathedral in the not very far distance!
England's Lane in 1839 was bounded on the south side by palings and a wall, and on the north side by low palings and a ditch full of water.
Three houses there were in it, Chalcots, North Hall, and Wychcomb. In a view of the lane in 1864 we see a leafy country road with fine timber growing over it. The lane at present is chiefly lined by shops, though there are a few private houses.
In the Upper Avenue Road stands a large brick building with stuccoed facings; it is the institution of the Society for Teaching the Blind, founded in 1838. In 1840 certain industrial occupations were added to the tuition in reading, which had been the primary object of the foundation. After moving to several localities in succession, in 1847 the present site was obtained. In 1864 the building was enlarged, and external workshops have since been added. The institution is entirely supported by voluntary contributions, though a few paying pupils are admitted. The pupils are taught any industrial trade which may support them in after-life, such as piano-tuning, knitting, chair-caning, basket-making, as well as the usual branches of a useful education. They are admitted at any age under eight, and leave at twenty-one if men, and twenty-four if women. There are day-scholars in attendance as well as those resident in the house.
In Winchester Road are a few shops and St. Paul's parochial schools. Where Eton Avenue and Adamson Road join there is the Hampstead conservatoire of music, a large brick building.
Professor Hales suggests that the word Haverstock in Haverstock Hill may come from "aver," the Low Latin averia meaning cattle. He says that, as in Rocque's map Pond is Pound Street, perhaps a cattle pound stood here. The hill is at present a toilsome ascent, but most picturesque; masses of shady trees in the grounds of Woodlands and Hillfield hang over the seats placed for wayfarers, and on the east side, in spring, bushes of flowering lilac or laburnum soften the picturesque red tiles and bricks of the well-built modern houses. Here and there a small row of shops forms a straight line, but between them the villa houses are dotted about at any angle.
Of public buildings or institutions on the hill there are not many. The Borough Hall, a red-brick building in the Italian style, stands at the corner of Belsize Avenue. It was built in 1876, and first used for the Cambridge Local Examination for Women.