Belsize Park, United Kingdom

The name Belsize Park comes from the 17th-century manor house and parkland (built by Daniel O'Neill for his wife, the Countess of Chesterfield) which once stood on the site. Rebuilt in 1663, it was sublet by 1721, when the parklands opened as pleasure gardens for those looking to escape the dirt and grime of the City of London, with concerts, singing, dancing and country sports such as fishing and racing. In 1722 magistrates were instructed to act to stop riotous behaviour, although the parkland remained open until 1745. Belsize House was rebuilt in 1746, after which additional large country houses were built on the surrounding farmlands for wealthy lawyers and merchants.

Between 1679 and 1714, the number of houses on the estate had increased from 8 to 14, and by 1808 there were still only 22 recorded. However, the formal division of the estate in 1808 into eight separate parcels of land, based on the structure of the underleases of the estate's formal houses, allowed the church to maximise its income, by allowing additional substantial houses to be built on the lands. This income allowed the church to have Belsize House rebuilt in 1812 for additional letting income. The wealthy leaseholders soon enabled themselves to purchase the freehold from the church, allowing the accelerated development of Belsize as a Victorian country urban suburb of London. One of the new landowners, George Todd, redeveloped what was known as the White House in 1815 as a substantial Georgian stucco villa with portico and two lodges. Known as Belsize House. It was later sold to Matthew Forster (1786–1869), the Whig MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, as Belsize Lodge; it was demolished in 1937.

Victorian development started along the main London to Hampstead road from 1815 through the works of Edward Bliss, a self-made man who had leased and then bought the Newman's House land, on the west side of Haverstock Hill north of England's Lane. Bliss not only built properties to lease out, but also allowed construction subleases. In 1829 Eton College advertised villa-sized plots on Haverstock Hill. The college then started developing an axis road to Finchley Road, naming it after Queen Adelaide. Development halted in the 1830s due to the proposal for the lines of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) to be built through Belsize Park, but Eton College successfully lobbied for the railway to be tunnelled underground via Primrose Hill, which was then designed and engineered by Robert Stephenson. All the 38 houses on the Newman's House land had been built by 1830.

The passing of the Ecclesiastical Leases Act 1842 allowed all church lands to be let on long term construction leases, which unlocked the accelerated urban development of Belsize Park. The opening in 1851 of Hampstead Road railway station on the L&BR prompted William Lund in 1852 to agree a 99-year construction sublease on the former Forsyth estate. He proposed developments to the west of Haverstock Hill, although his plans were curtailed by construction issues associated with building over both the Pond Street sewer and the L&BR tunnel. In 1852 Charles James Palmer, a Bloomsbury-based solicitor bought the lease of Belsize House. In 1853 he proposed demolition of the main house, with Daniel Tiley taking the lead role in constructing Belsize Square and associated properties. Palmer commissioned architect James Piers St Aubyn to design St Peter's Church. In 1864 the church bought back the lease on the undeveloped backlot of the Bliss lands. Tiley gained agreement from Palmer and Eton College to buy the construction lease from the church, and hence extend development south of Belsize Square to connect with the college's estate. Mimicking the then fashionable styles of Kensington and Bayswater, between 1851 and the late 1860s he built over 250 8-10 bedroom semi-detached stucco houses with large porticos, aimed at the middle classes. The church undertook a similar agreement in 1857, reacquiring full control over the portion of Todd's lease north of Belsize Lane in 1865, and again selling it to Tiley. With construction almost complete, fashion changed and Tiley went bankrupt in 1870.