Kenwood House and Estate — Hampstead Heath

1700s 'Cane Wood'

1700s, First Earl of Mansfield

1740 Canewood

1781, View of Kenwood, the Seat of the Earl of Mansfield

1785 Caen Wood

1786, Highgate view, from near the southeast corner of Caen Wood

1786, a view of Lord Mansfield's House taken from the side of his park next to Hampstead

1789, Garden in the front of Kenwood

1790, Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray

Dido Elizabeth Belle lived at Kenwood House with her great aunt and uncle, the 1st Mansfields, for 31 years in the late 1700s. Dido was born into slavery - the was the illegitimate daughter of the Mansfield’s nephew Sir John Lindsay and an enslaved African woman in the West Indies. She was brought to Kenwood by her father and raised as an educated gentlewoman alongside her cousin Elizabeth, at a time of extreme racism when the slave trade was at its height. Not much is known of her life, or what happened to her mother, but her family was incredibly fond of her and her influence is thought to have played a part in key legal decisions that helped to bring about the abolition of slavery. Her great uncle, the 1st Earl of Mansfield, was Lord Chief Justice at the time and ruled in 1772 that slavery had no precedent in English common law and had never been authorised under positive law. He also ruled against slave owners in the landmark Zong massacre case.