Places of Interest
Haverstock Hill
First seen on a map in 1593, Haverstock Hill was then known as Hampstead Hill or the London Road. One proposal for the change in name is that it was formed on an Anglo-Saxon word of haver, meaning oats and stock, a place. Oats were certainly grown in this area, as they constituted part of the rent Belsize Manor paid to Westminster Abbey in the sixteenth century. Haverstock Hill was finally established in the official Post Office Address in 1976 when the present numbering system was given.
Today, the wide pavements of Haverstock Hill – rare to London – give a French flavour to the high street terraces, colonised by multiple cafes and the ample opportunity to purchase wine, flowers, food and a film.
Belsize House
While little is known of the earliest versions, in 1496 Westminster Abbey made an order for 400,000 bricks, presumably for the first manor house of the estate. By 1568 the house had expanded to 24 rooms including a hall, long gallery and great chamber.
In 1663, leaseholder, Colonel Daniel O’Neill started building the historic version of Belsize House, a typical restoration mansion with projecting wings and a central tower. The most remembered and recorded memories of Belsize House came from the 1720s when the estate was sub-let to James Howell, known as the Welsh Ambassador. Belsize House was opened to the public from six in the morning until eight at night and set to rival Vauxhall in the attractions on offer, including indoor concerts and informal dancing in a lavishly furnished ballroom with dining and drinking.
The high point was a visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1721. The following year “the appearance of mobility and gentry at Belsize was so great that they reckoned between three and four hundred coaches.” Soon after, however, as Belsize House developed a reputation for doubtful social contacts, gambling crept in. This inevitably led to a police raid in which Howell was arrested along with some other “common Gamesters”.
Belsize House was demolished in the autumn of 1853 to make way for new housing. Remaining one of the oldest structures in Belsize, sections of the ancient wall survive and may be glimpsed end-on between 14 and 16 Belsize Avenue.
St Peters Church
While Belsize House was demolished to make way for new housing, St Peter’s Church was consecrated on 11th November 1859 and built on the site in Belsize Square. The land was given by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster and named after the Abbey (St Peter’s, Westminster). Built at a cost of £9,000 and seating 1,100, the first vicar Dr Francis William Tremlett paid for the nave, aisle and transepts. The architect was JR St Aubyn Mumford.
In 1913 the original vicarage was declared to be in a poor state by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and demolished. A new vicarage was built in 1915, however by 1917 extensive restorations were undertaken, principally to the fabric of the church.
The Bevington Organ was built in 1841 in another church and rebuilt in St Peter’s in 1917. According to Howard Isenberg, A Short History of St Peter’s Belsize Park, the organ was always sharp in relation to concert pitch, and although it was tuned down as far as the pipes would allow in 1963, it is still a quartertone sharp.
The Belsize Square Synagogue
In 1947 St Peter’s built a third vicarage adjoining St Peter’s Church and the old vicarage was sold to Belsize Square Synagogue for £15,000. Originally called the New Liberal Jewish Congregation, the founding members came from mainly German-speaking countries as the neighbourhood attracted many European refugees in the years before, during and after the war.
With increasing prosperity and stability within the congregation, the construction of a new Synagogue came about in 1957/58. Architect, H Walter Reifenberg having trained in Germany at the Bauhaus-inspired Berlin Architecture School, designed a building with deliberately stark interior.
Even today the Synagogue’s art and architecture are not considered flamboyant or elaborate. As Michael Brod (Belsize, 2000, p.71) phrased it, “The German phrase ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ – often translated as ‘new practicality or realism’ – sums up the building’s clean, understated, functional style. The works of art, too, are not major masterpieces, but in their own way they are significant and evocative, and a reflection of the community that has quietly evolved in Belsize Square for the past sixty years.