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,