remained open until 1745. Belsize House was rebuilt in 1746, after which additional large country houses had been built on the surrounding farmlands for wealthy lawyers and merchants. Between 1679 and 1714, the number of houses on the estate had increased from 8 to 14, and by 1808 there were still only 22 recorded. However, the formal division of the state in 1808 into eight separate lands - based on the structure of the underleases pertaining to the estates formal houses - allowed the church to maximise its income, and hence to allow additional substantial houses to be built on the lands. This income allowed the church to have Belsize House rebuilt in 1812 for additional letting income. The wealthy leaseholders soon enabled themselves to purchase the freehold from the church, allowing the accelerated development of Belsize as a Victorian country urban suburb of London. One of the new land owners George Todd redeveloped what was known as the White House in 1815 as a substantial Georgian stucco-villa with portico, and two lodges. Known as Belsize House, it was later sold to Matthew Forster (1786 – 1869) the Whig MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed as Belsize Lodge - it was demolished in 1937. Victorian development started along the main London to Hampstead road from 1815 through the works of Edward Bliss, a self-made man who had leased and then bought the southeastern-located Newman's House lands, on the west side of Haverstock Hill north of England's Lane. Bliss not only built properties to lease out, but also allowed construction subleases. In 1829 Eton College advertised villa-sized plots on Haverstock Hill. The college then started developing an axis road to Finchley Road, naming it after Queen Adelaide. Development halted in the 1830s due to the proposal for the lines of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) to be built through Belsize Park, but Eton College successfully argued via parliamentary lobbying for the railway to be tunnelled underground via Primrose Hill, which was then designed and engineered by Robert Stephenson. All the 38 houses on the Newman's House lands had been built by 1830. The passing of the Ecclesiastical Leases Act 1842 allowed all church lands to be let on long term construction leases, which unlocked the accelerated urban development of Belsize Park. The opening in 1851 of Hampstead Road railway station on the L&BR prompted William Lund in 1852 to agree a 99-year construction