Holmefield Court

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History

The architects of Holmefield Court were Tom & Partners of Park Street, Mayfair.

Holmefield Court (sometimes spelt Holmfield Court) is named after ‘Holme Field’, a property shown on a 1762 map of Belsize Park.

Built just after Gilling Court, the 104 flat development of Holmefield Court included a restaurant and a ‘covered alley way’ between Holmefield Court and Gilling Court, built in 1934. Also in 1934 plans were laid for a swimming pool located between Holmefield Court and Gilling Court, and Holmefield Court had an iron and glass shelter for its forecourt and canopy.

Residents of Holmefield Court first appeared in 1935; however it took several years for all the flats to sell, as this was during the Great Depression that followed the Stock Market Crash in 1929.

Like other areas Belsize Park suffered damage in the Second World War but according to its 1946 general meeting, Bell London and Provincial Properties Limited, including Holmefield Court, suffered only a relatively small extent from enemy actions. This may have been helped by the large and deep underground air-raid shelter built in Belsize Park during the Second World War that would have accommodated and protected the local residents.

Although no celebrities are recorded for Holmefield 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 (1903-1975) and her second husband Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Henry Moore (1898-1986), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Paul Nash (1889-1946).

We know Belsize Grove

Though Belsize Grove was officially approved as its name in 1885, Belsize Grove was formerly known as Haverstock Terrace (1901), Haverstock Gardens, and Belsize Park Gardens

Originally Belsize Grove consisted of large houses.

F W Watts (1800-1862), a landscape artist much influenced by Constable, lived in Belsize Grove and another artist, John Farleigh (1900-1965), noted for his wood engravings, also lived there. Other eminent residents of Belsize Grove in the twentieth century were the arts critic and broadcaster, Jack Lambert; the actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft; and the architect Richard Rogers, 'the high priest of hi-tech'.

In 1946 the Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital bought the Hampstead Nursing Home at 40 Belsize Grove and it was opened by Queen Mary in 1948 as the Garrett Anderson Maternity Home, a maternity unit with 27 beds. Elizabeth Garrett (1836 - 1917) was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in England. In 1872, the year after her marriage to J.G.S.Anderson, she opened the New Hospital for Women, renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital after her death in 1917. The Garrett Anderson Maternity Home in Belsize Grove has been recently replaced by town houses.

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 identity 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.