Belhus Park

Belhus is sadly one of the historic sites that have become a victim of the modern world.  It has suffered the final indignity of being carved up by the M25, although its demise started before then with a sale of contents in 1923, then war damage and military occupation, followed by demolition of the house in 1957, and its development as a leisure complex with swimming pool and a golf club.  

Belhus, W. Wallace from Excursions in Essex, 1819, ERO.

In the late sixteenth century, however, the house was important enough to be visited by Queen Elizabeth on her ‘progress’, and by the seventeenth was one of the largest estates in Essex. In the mid eighteenth century Thomas Barrett-Lennard, later Lord Dacre (1717-1786), succeeded to the estate and made extensive improvements, remodelling the house in the gothic style with advice from the architect Sanderson Miller, and the grounds in the modern style by Capability Brown (his first commission in Essex), and then with later additions by Richard Woods.

After the death of Thomas, Belhus was inherited by his illegitimate son - also Thomas –  who continued to build on his father’s legacy as is evidenced in a later illustration in Peacock's Polite Repository for 1807 which suggests that Repton may have given him some advice.  There is no evidence of any payment to Repton, although Lennard and Repton were on friendly terms – it was in fact after a ball held at Belhus that Repton had his carriage accident that left him crippled.

Thomas and Anna Marie Barrett-Lennard with their daughter Barbara-Anne, by Pompeo Batoni, 1749-50, ERO.

There is a further compelling and poignant tale of Belhus connected to the most beautiful portrait of the earlier Thomas Barrett-Lennard and his wife Anna Maria with their daughter Barbara Anne aged 10, painted by the great portraitist Pompeo Batoni in Rome in 1749-1750. In fact, Barbara had died of tuberculosis the year before the painting was created. Her parents had travelled to the continent to try and assuage their grief, carrying with them a miniature of their daughter’s likeness to be included in the portrait. They never recovered from their loss, although Thomas continued to work on improvements to his estate and to write the history of his family, he did so as an invalid, travelling through the house in a wheelchair and being lifted onto a carriage to drive in his park; and Anna Maria carried a scrap of her daughter’s dress with her until her own death in 1806.  

This site is a Grade II Listed Park with Historic England, and is also on the ‘At Risk’ Register.