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).
KILBURN WELLS
The spring known as Kilburn Wells was situated in the Abbey Field near the site of the old Kilburn Priory, and in the rear of the Bell Tavern. It attracted public notice about the middle of the last century;[205] and some endeavours were made, probably by the proprietor of the Bell, to bring Kilburn Wells into vogue: at any rate, in 1752 it is referred to as a place in some respects akin to Sadler’s Wells:—
Shall you prolong the midnight ball
With costly supper at Vaux Hall,
And yet prohibit earlier suppers