Belair Park *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

Belair Park was a typical 'pocket estate' created under lease from Dulwich College (q.v.). The mansion, originally called College Place, was built for John Willes in c.1785, probably designed by Robert Adam, and had landscaped grounds, including a water feature created from the River Effra, and a home farm complex. After Willes' death the property was acquired by solicitor Charles Ranken who changed the name to Belair and he lived here between 1829 and 1858. After this it was the home of Charles William Cookworthy Hutton, a Berlin Wool Manufacturer and Wholesaler; Berlin wool was popular with Victorian ladies until the 1880s. The last private occupant was Sir Evan Spicer who lived here from 1893; after his death in 1938 the estate was sold by auction. Late C18th stable buildings south-east of the house remain, now converted for residential use, as does the Lodge and entrance gates to the east dating from the early C19th; the house is approached by a curved approach drive. A conservatory added to the house in Victorian times has since been demolished.

The original estate extended west and north but was truncated to the west when the railway line was built by the London, Chatham and Dover Railways, Dulwich Estate having sold 10 acres of the estate lands in the 1860s; the northernmost meadows became playing fields. The main feature of the C18th landscaping to survive is the narrow lake running north / south, which was made by damming the River Effra and is now the only place where the River Effra is overground. Between house and lake were sloping lawns with some fine trees including oak and copper beech, and the lake is fringed with metasequoia. Poplars were planted in the late 1940s to hide the railway embankment. The central landscaped area and miniature home farm survived until WWII when house and grounds were requisitioned for wartime use, the grounds cultivated as allotments.

At the end of the war both house and grounds were in a poor state, and the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark acquired the site as a quasi-country club facility. The house was restored in 1946 and the park was almost exclusively for the use of Southwark people, although access was restricted due to fears that the grounds would suffer from overuse. Although it was actually located in the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, Camberwell residents were generally disallowed because it was argued they already had access to sufficient public parkland, which included Dulwich Park, Peckham Rye Common and Park, Sunray Gardens, and One Tree Hill (q.q.v.). The acquisition and recreational use of Belair were undertaken by a special sub-committee, and the estate was designated as a memorial to Southwark's war dead; the grounds were used as gardens and sports pitches, with the mansion used for changing rooms and social facilities. The Villa was rebuilt in 1964 by Southwark Metropolitan Borough Council.

When the new Borough of Southwark was created in 1965, amalgamating the Metropolitan Boroughs of Camberwell, Bermondsey and Southwark, controlled use of Belair ceased and it became part of the general public open space in the new borough. Community use of the mansion also ceased and it was let, for a while as an up-market restaurant, which ensured the survival of the building, although the relationship between the house and grounds from a design context is weaker. A nature reserve now obscures the lake from the house. Many mature trees were lost in the gales in 1987. The site of the home farm is now a car park. Belair House is now under new management and offers a bar, restaurant and social venue, with numerous events including music.