Belmont, East Barnet

Belmont, originally known as Mount Pleasant, was a house in East Barnet, London, near Cockfosters, that dated back to the sixteenth century.

[citation needed] Under headmaster Henry Frampton Stallard in the 1920s, Heddon Court School, like many English preparatory schools, had a strong sporting ethos and when the poet John Betjeman applied for a job teaching English there, some time after Stallard had left, he had to bluff familiarity with the rules of Cricket in order to get the job.

According to John Bale and former pupils, Betjeman then began a programme of converting "athletes to aesthetes" which caused the school's sporting results to "plummet".

He found a kindred spirit in the new headmaster John Humphrey "Huffy" Hope, a Communist who had taught at Eton and also disliked sport.

[citation needed] The building was later demolished and the site used for housing after the Piccadilly line arrived in the area and Cockfosters station was opened in the 1933.