Trees of Belsize Park

A Neighbourhood Built on Springs

The history of water supply in Belsize Park and the surrounding Hampstead neighbourhood is one of the more revealing threads in the area's development — revealing because it connects the natural landscape of the Heath hills to the human decisions about where to settle and how to live that have shaped the neighbourhood over many centuries. The springs of Hampstead, emerging at the junction of the permeable Bagshot Sand and the impermeable London Clay, were among the most significant natural resources of the area, providing clean water in a city that struggled throughout the pre-modern period to supply its growing population with anything drinkable.

The Hampstead Water Company, established in the early eighteenth century, was one of the first commercial water supply operations in the London area. It captured the spring water emerging from the Hampstead heights, stored it in reservoirs, and piped it to subscribers in the surrounding neighbourhood. The company's operations — which continued until the Victorian reorganisation of London's water supply in the 1850s and 1860s — were among the more sophisticated examples of early water engineering in England, involving the construction of dams, sluices, and distribution pipes that allowed the spring water to be systematically managed and distributed.

The ponds of Hampstead Heath are the most visible legacy of the Hampstead Water Company's operations. The series of ponds on the eastern and western slopes of the Heath — including the famous bathing ponds that are still in use today, more than three centuries after they were first created — were formed by damming small stream valleys to create storage reservoirs. Their continued existence as recreational and ecological assets is a direct consequence of the water management infrastructure that was established in the eighteenth century to supply water to the growing settlement on the Hampstead heights.

The Victorian Water Infrastructure

The Victorian reorganisation of London's water supply — driven by the cholera epidemics of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, which demonstrated conclusively the connection between contaminated water and epidemic disease — transformed the water supply of Belsize Park and the surrounding neighbourhood. The establishment of the Metropolitan Water Board, which gradually took over the various private water companies that had served London's different neighbourhoods, created a unified infrastructure that eventually supplied clean water from reservoirs in the Thames Valley and beyond.

The installation of this Victorian water infrastructure — the mains, the service pipes, the meters, the connections to individual properties — was one of the most significant investments in the neighbourhood's development. It made possible the sanitary conditions that Victorian respectability required and that the rapidly growing population of the suburb demanded. And it transformed the relationship between the neighbourhood and its natural water sources: the springs and wells that had been essential resources in the pre-modern period became redundant as the Victorian mains supply rendered them unnecessary.

The evidence of the pre-modern water supply infrastructure survives in the landscape in several forms. The names of springs and wells are preserved in street names and local topography. The courses of small streams — now culverted beneath streets and gardens — can be traced in the pattern of property boundaries and street alignments. And the Heath ponds, maintained as public amenities rather than as water supply infrastructure, continue to demonstrate the quality of the spring water that once supplied the neighbourhood.

The Cholera Epidemics and Public Health

The cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century had a significant impact on the Belsize Park and Hampstead neighbourhood, both directly and through the changes in public health policy they provoked. The 1832 epidemic, which killed around 6,500 people in London, was followed by epidemics in 1848-49 and 1853-54, the last of which — coinciding with John Snow's famous investigation of the Broad Street pump — provided the crucial evidence for the connection between water supply and cholera transmission.

The Belsize Park area, sitting on the higher ground of the Hampstead hills, was relatively protected from the worst effects of the cholera epidemics compared to the low-lying areas of London where contaminated water was most prevalent. The spring water that supplied the Hampstead neighbourhood was considerably cleaner than the Thames water that the lower-lying areas of London were often forced to use. But the epidemics were not entirely absent from the neighbourhood, and the public health improvements they prompted — the reorganisation of water supply, the installation of sewers, the improvement of housing conditions — were as important to the development of Belsize Park as they were to the rest of London.

Water and Landscape Identity

The relationship between water and landscape identity in the Belsize Park and Hampstead neighbourhood is one that has persisted from the earliest settlement to the present day. The Heath ponds — swimming ponds, angling ponds, model boating pond, nature reserve — are among the most valued amenities of the neighbourhood, attracting swimmers, anglers, ornithologists, and casual visitors who find in the combination of water and landscape a quality of urban natural beauty that is rare in any major city.

The mixed bathing pond, the men's pond, and the ladies' pond on the eastern Heath have been in continuous use as bathing facilities for more than a century, and their users include some of the most committed swimmers in London — people who swim in the ponds throughout the year, including in winter when the water temperature drops to near-freezing, and who find in the experience of open water swimming in a natural landscape something that no indoor pool can provide. The ponds are, in this sense, living inheritances from the water management infrastructure of the eighteenth century — natural-seeming spaces that are the product of careful human engineering, maintained by the active commitment of the community that values them.

The Future of NW3's Water

The management of water in the contemporary Belsize Park neighbourhood reflects the increasing recognition of water as an environmental asset as well as a utility. The management of the Heath ponds for ecological as well as recreational purposes, the management of the stream system that drains the Heath into the lower city, the management of urban drainage to reduce the risk of surface water flooding that affects the lower-lying streets of the neighbourhood — all of these are expressions of a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between water and urban landscape than the purely utilitarian approach that characterised Victorian water engineering.

The springs of Belsize Park may no longer supply water to its residents, but they continue to flow — feeding the Heath ponds, maintaining the ecological richness of the Heath landscape, and providing a connection to the natural hydrology of the Hampstead hills that has been one of the neighbourhood's defining characteristics since before the city reached these heights.

*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London’s most remarkable neighbourhoods.*