Stanbury Court

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History

In 1967 a resident of 36 Stanbury Court advertised ‘sea and yacht instruction to individual requirements for beginners, boat owners or those contemplating sea career’ though where the lessons were conducted is not clear.

In the 1980s Stanbury Court was owned by the Berger family group. Tenants of flats in Stanbury Court got together with Camden Council to launch a campaign in 1983 to force the Berger group to manage the block better

In 1993 the Eton Estate appealed against the refusal of permission for the erection of an additional floor at Stanbury Court to provide six residential units with necessary ‘elevational alterations’ and including the replacement of the existing windows together with the provision of an additional thirteen parking spaces at ground level’.

The Eton Estate is part of the endowment of Eton College given to Henry VI in 1448 when it was called the manor of Chalcots (now known as Chalk Farm.) Historically the Eton College estate comprised 243 acres (98 hectares) in total and covered the area between Swiss Cottage, Haverstock Hill, Avenue Road, England’s Lane, Eton Avenue, Primrose Hill, Regent Park Road and Chalk Farm station.

In 1997 conditional planning permission was given to Stanbury Court Management Limited to put up a safety railings to surround the flat roof area.

In 1998 conditional planning permission was given to Stanbury Court Management Limited to excavate a new patio area and install new windows at basement level in association with the creation of a new two bedroom flat.

In 1999 planning permission was granted on Stanbury Court to create a new pedestrian entrance and gate on the Haverstock Hill frontage.

Although no celebrities are recorded for Stanbury Court well-known people in Belsize Park include the writers, Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927), William Empson (1906-1984), Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979), and Agatha Christie (1890-1976); the composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934); and the artists, Walter Sickert (1860-1942), Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) and her second husband Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Henry Moore (1898-1986), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Paul Nash (1889-1946).

We Know Haverstock Hill

Haverstock Hill one of the earliest names in the district and so old that its origin cannot be traced. It could be Anglo Saxon for the ‘place of the oats’ (haver meaning oats and stock meaning place) and payment of oats was part of Belsize Manor’s rent to Westminster Abbey in Tudor times. Other less likely theories are that the road had associations with the Stock family of Essex whose name used to be Haverstock Hill; or that Haverstock comes from the Latin averia meaning a pasture. Early on Haverstock Hill was also called ‘Foxhangra’.

First seen on a map in 1593 the road now known as Haverstock Hill was then known as either Hampstead Hill or Hampstead Road, or the London Road according to the direction being travelled. The road was originally called ‘the great road from London to Hampstead’ or ‘the road to St Albans and the North’. The name of Haverstock Hill is first mentioned in 1745 when it was just used for the actual hill. The official Post Office address of Haverstock Hill for name for whole road was only authorised in 1876.

We Know Mansion Blocks

The first Mansion Blocks were built in the early 19th Century, providing luxurious residences for the growing urban upper middle classes. As the Industrial Revolution spread throughout Europe it brought about a population boom in the major cities, and Mansion Blocks were devised to provide luxurious housing for wealthy white collar workers. As the centre of the cities became increasingly crowded, the blocks provided this growing class with housing that boasted impressive entrances, generous elevations and balconies reminiscent of mansions. They were a particularly popular innovation in polite Parisian society.

In spite of their popularity on the continent, Londoners were initially sceptical about this new style of accommodation. In the 1850s a spacious Mansion flat would set back the buyer somewhere in the order of £50-£200 per annum, but the idea of living in such a communal manner was entirely contradictory to the dominant Victorian social ideals of the age. Firstly, and most importantly, apartment dwellings were simply not considered ‘proper’, but it was not just a case of old English snobbery; there was also widely held fear that this new type of residence would increase the risk of burglary and the spread of infection and disease.

By the 1880s London society had gradually warmed to the idea and the decade was marked by a flurry of Mansion Block construction across the city.

We Know Belsize Park

Renowned for evading the public eye, Belsize Park was a historical secret until 1317 when Edward II’s Lord Chief Justice left 57 acres of land to the monks of Westminster. During these times Belsize was a sub-division of the manor of Hampstead and the church let out parcels of land to those they saw fit to build country mansions on their glorious estate.

The first streets of Belsize were laid in the 1850s and from 1870 to 1900 many of the surviving stretches of greenery eroded as main thoroughfares developed. While Belsize Park remained an “in between area”, set between the hustling heart of the city and the smaller nucleus of Hampstead, an influx of the “comfortably-off conferred upon this area of London an indentity of a kind…” (Saint, A. 2000)

The term Belsize – first applied in the early 18th Century – was adapted from the French term Bel Assis, meaning ‘beautifully situated’. Belsize Park was coined in 1870 when property developer Daniel Tidey orchestrated an extensive construction project in the area. Two hundred years later and the name is more appropriate than ever.