Belsize House and its gardens in 1696.
A view of Belsize House and gardens in 1696, painted by Jan Siberechts (1627-1703), a Flemish painter who was encouraged to move to England by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Siberechts arrived here in about 1672. When diarist and courtier John Evelyn visited the house on June 2nd, 1676, he found the gardens ‘very large, but ill-kept’. In about 1700 a retired sea-coal merchant named Charles Povey bought the lease, but found the expense heavy and he resolved to sublet. He turned down an application worth £1000 from the French ambassador, as Mr Povey did not care for Papists. In desperation, he closed with an offer from Welsh promoter William Howell, and on Easter Monday in 1720 the house and gardens opened to the public.
Part 1 of 3
THE extensive gardens of Belsize House near Hampstead were much admired in the days of Charles II, and both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn visited them. But it was not until the reign of George I that Welshman and promoter William Howell* took over the lease from retired coal merchant Charles Povey, and Belsize became a favourite of England’s fashionable set.
On Easter Monday, April 18th, 1720,* Howell opened the gardens amid a flurry of publicity. Mist’s Journal of the previous Saturday had promised a lavish ceremony, “with an uncommon solemnity of musick and dancing”. Thereafter the gardens would be open every day from 6am to 8pm, without charge, throughout the summer season. A handbill assured the public that the park had been “wonderfully improved, and filled with variety of birds, which compose a most melodious and delightsome harmony”. A band would play from 7am, and guests “could breakfast on tea or coffee as cheap as at their own chambers”. Hampstead residents could summon a carriage at sixpence a head; those travelling from London were reassured that “there are twelve stout fellows completely armed to patrol betwixt London and Belsize, to prevent the insults of highwaymen or footpads which may infest the road”.*
* Several accounts, old and new, cautiously omit Mr Howell’s Christian name, but in his Topography and Natural History of Hampstead (1814) John James Park (1795-1833), who went on to have a short but highly successful career in the law, recorded verbatim a report of Howell’s indictment for gambling in 1722 in which he was named as William.
* Note that Mist’s Journal and the other contemporary sources mentioned here were all using the old style (OS) English calendar, which did not give way to the new style (NS) Gregorian until 1752. As a contemporary Book of Common Prayer confirms, Easter that year fell on April 17th OS. In countries using the new style Gregorian calendar, Easter was observed on March 31st. The prayer books also reminded readers that “the Supputation [counting, reckoning] of the Year of our Lord in the Church of England beginneth the Twenty Fifth Day of March,” i.e. the New Year began on March 25th, not January 1st.
* On footpads, highwaymen and cutpurses, see Karl Philipp Moritz on Three Criminal Types, written in 1782.
Précis
In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell threw the gardens at Belsize House open to the public, with free admission. The venue was advertised as a semi-rural retreat with birdsong, musical entertainments and value-for-money catering; transport was laid on for Hampstead locals, and the road from London was patrolled by armed security guards. (51 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Betting’ (1799) by Samuel William Fores and Thomas Rowlandson.
‘Betting’, a sketch by Samuel William Fores (1761–1838) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), showing riders and punters gathered around a betting post to lay their wagers. Contemporary critics of Belsize not only accused the house of attracting high-rolling gamblers and harbouring card sharps, but claimed the gardens afforded trysting places for prostitution. If these accusations were true, it is all the more remarkable that Howell’s indictment for illegal gaming and abetting public indecency fell through, and so quickly. Perhaps the satirists overstated their case. Or perhaps ‘the Welsh Ambassador’ was just too well-connected.
“Last Saturday” Read’s Journal reported on July 15th, 1721, “their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales dined at Bellsize House,* attended by several persons of quality, where they were entertained with the diversion of hunting, and such other as the place afforded.” Triumphs such as this prompted some to refer to Howell as ‘the Welsh ambassador’, not always kindly. For it was not long before the quiet walks and placid fish-ponds became a little rowdy. On June 7th, 1722, St James’s Journal reported that “On Monday last the appearance of nobility and gentry at Bellsize was so great that they reckoned between three and four hundred coaches, at which time a wild deer was hunted down and killed in the park before the company, which gave near three hours diversion”.
Worse was to come. Howell partitioned the house into areas segregated by social status, and soon word got about that Belsize welcomed ‘the meaner sort’ too. The park was not segregated. There, genteel couples who had drunk nothing stronger than chocolate shared the lawns with gamblers flushed with wine, shouting themselves hoarse on races between Galloway ponies or teams of footmen in velveteens and silk fleshings.* If they strolled into the remoter woods, they stumbled over amorous couples keeping scandalous assignations in the bushes.
* The accepted spelling today is Belsize, from French bel assis, meaning ‘well-situated’.
* Velveteens are trousers made of a cloth with a pile resembling velvet. Fleshings are close-fitting garments of a cut and colour intended to give the impression that a person is unclothed.
Précis
A year after the gardens opened, royalty paid a visit, and soon the nobility was turning up by the hundreds. Nevertheless, the proprietor wooed the wider public too, and before long the genteel atmosphere was broken by the shouts of men wagering on pony races, and there were sexual frolics in the woods. (53 / 60 words)
Part Three
Deer in Ragley Hall Park, Warwickshire.
A deer crosses a woodland path in Ragley Hall Park, Warwickshire. One of the attractions of Belsize Gardens was the artificial hunts laid on by the host, which gave customers a few hours of sport. According to one critic, who took to verse to express his indignation,
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.
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.*
* 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.
Précis
In 1722, the uptick in crime on the roads, and the gambling and public lewdness at Belsize itself, brought a rebuke from the local magistrates and a brief spell in gaol for Howell. He weathered the storm, and the pleasure gardens continued to afford sporting amusements to the public until at least 1745, when Belsize was superseded by Ranelagh, closer to London. (60 / 60 words)
