Belsize Park history

You won’t be surpised to know that Belsize Park was a park; but no-one seems to know where the ‘Belsize’ bit of Belsize Park comes from.  The Countess of Chesterfield had a large manor house with extensive grounds built in Belsize Park in the 1660s.  A rather enterprising coal merchant bought the estate in the 1700s and ran a business on the side, offering cheap weddings in the manor house and wedding parties in the grounds, on condition that he did the catering.  Later owners found other business-making opportunities and Belsize Park was used for racing, dancing, and deer hunting.  The Belsize Park manor house became a normal private house again in the later 18th century and Spencer Percival, a prime minister, lived there.  (He may even come in as the least memorable prime minister of all time - until Gordon Brown got him off the bottom of the league table.) In 1854, as trains lines arrived along with the middle classes, the manor house was demolished and most of the grounds of Belsize Park were developed as the Belsize Park residential area of today.