As this more rakish clientele beat a path to Belsize House, the security patrol on the roads had to be increased from twelve to thirty; but the real problems were inside. On May 24th, 1722, St James’s Journal reported that magistrates had ordered the Holborn constables to prevent “unlawful gaming, riots, &c., at Bellsize House”. Howell spent a night as a guest of His Majesty at the New Prison;* but he was not detained for long,* and the park, the hunts and the races carried on.
On May 31st, 1733, a race was advertised for ponies twelve hands six inches high, so long as Mr Treacle’s black pony, winner of the Hampstead plate in 1732, did not run. In 1736, a poor doe was driven into the park and hunted to death by small beagles. In August 1737, “the Cobler’s Boy and John Wise the Mile-End Drover” raced each other for a winner’s purse of twenty guineas.*
But the heyday of Belsize was coming to an end. We hear of events at the pleasure gardens for the last time in 1745, the year that Ranelagh gardens opened.* Twenty years later Belsize House was in a sorry state, and by 1798 it had been demolished.*
Based on ‘The topography and natural history of Hampstead, in the County of Middlesex’ (1818) by John James Park (1795-1833), ‘St Pancras: Antiquarian, Topographical, and Biographical Memoranda, Relating to the Extensive Metropolitan Parish of St Pancras, Middlesex’ (1870) by Samuel Palmer (?1818-1899), and ‘The Annals of Hampstead, Vol. 1’ (1912) by Thomas J. Barratt (1841-1914), who was also chairman of soap manufacturer A. & F. Pears. Some dates have been corrected by reference to ‘Famous and Infamous Londoners’ (2004) by Peter de Loriol.
* Writing in 1814, John James Park recorded the following snippet of legal news: “On Monday last the High Constable of Holborn Division, with some petty Constables, having a Warrant sign’d by divers Justices of the Peace, went to Bellsize at Hampstead, where they took William Howell, the Proprietor, and several common Gamesters. The said Howell was kept that night in New Prison, and on Tuesday a Bill of Indictment was found against him at the Sessions held at Hick’s Hall.”
* A contemporary satirist referred to Howell being released on a plea of habeas corpus, a writ demanding that those holding a man prisoner justify their actions before a court, which suggests that the authorities could not make the indictment stick. (It was not long after this that habeas corpus became the legal instrument of choice for anti-slavery campaigners: see In the Nick of Time.)
* A guinea is a pound and a shilling. According to the National Archives’ currency converter, twenty guineas in 1730 would be roughly equivalent in purchasing power to £250 in 2023, and at the time would have been enough to pay a skilled tradesman for three weeks’ work.
* For a contemporary assessment of the new attraction, see Ranelagh Gardens.
* The house had been remodelled in 1746. After that had been demolished, a completely new house was built in 1812, which was substantially remodelled just three years later. That was in turn demolished in 1937, and nothing remains of house or park today.