For an afternoon in August 1737, there was announced a running match six times round the park, between “the Cobler’s Boy and John Wise the Mile-End Drover,” for twenty guineas. In 1745 there were foot-races in the park, and this is the last notice we have of Belsize as a place of amusement. The mansion falling into a ruinous state[204] was pulled down at the close of the eighteenth century (before 1798), and a large, plainly-built house was erected in its stead. From 1798–1807 this new Belsize House was tenanted by the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval and others. In the autumn of 1853 the house was pulled down (cp. _The Illustrated London News_ for 9th September, 1854, p. 239), and the buildings of the Belsize Estate were subsequently erected on the site of the Park. The present Belsize Avenue (on the west side of Haverstock Hill) is the representative of a beautiful avenue of elms, which originally led up to the old Belsize House, the site of which was near the present St. Peter’s Church. [Palmer’s _St. Pancras_, 227, ff.; Baines’s _Hampstead_; Walford v. 494, ff.; Howitt’s _Northern Heights_; Lambert’s _London_, 1806, iv. 256; Thorne’s _Environs of London_, s.v. “Hampstead”; Park’s _Hampstead_; newspaper advertisements, W. Coll.] VIEWS. 1. Old Belsize House. A view on a Belsize House advertisement, _circ._ 1721? and a view by Maurer, 1750; cp. Howitt’s _Northern Heights_ and C. Knight’s _Old England_, ii. fig. 2404. 2. Belsize House in 1800 (Walford, v. 492). KILBURN WELLS The spring known as Kilburn Wells was situated in the Abbey Field near the site of the old Kilburn Priory, and in the rear of the Bell Tavern. It attracted public notice about the middle of the last century;[205] and some endeavours were made, probably by the proprietor of the Bell, to bring Kilburn Wells into vogue: at any rate, in 1752 it is referred to as a place in some respects akin to Sadler’s Wells:-- Shall you prolong the midnight ball With costly supper at Vaux Hall, And yet prohibit earlier suppers At Kilburn, Sadler’s Wells or Kupers?[206]