Regent's Park

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For other uses, see Regent's Park (disambiguation).

Regent's Park
Regent's Park bandstand.jpg
Regent's Park bandstand and lake
Regent's Park is located in Central London
Regent's Park
Location within central London
TypePublic park
LocationLondon
Coordinates51°31′56″N 0°09′24″W / 51.532222°N 0.156667°W / 51.532222; -0.156667Coordinates: 51°31′56″N 0°09′24″W / 51.532222°N 0.156667°W / 51.532222; -0.156667
Area410 acres (170 ha) (1.6 km²)
StatusOpen year round
Websitewww.royalparks.org.uk/parks/the-regents-park

Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. It lies within north-west London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden.[1] It contains Regent's University London and the London Zoo.

The Park was designed by John Nash, James Burton, and Decimus Burton, while its construction was financed privately by James Burton after the Crown Estate rescinded its pledge to finance the construction. The park is Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.[2]

Description[edit]

The park has an outer ring road called the Outer Circle (4.45 km) and an inner ring road called the Inner Circle (1 km), which surrounds the most carefully tended section of the park, Queen Mary's Gardens. Apart from two link roads between these two, the park is reserved for pedestrians (with the exception of The Broad Walk between Chester Road and the Outer Circle, which is a shared use path). The south, east and most of the west side of the park are lined with elegant white stucco terraces of houses designed by John Nash and Decimus Burton. Running through the northern end of the park is Regent's Canal, which connects the Grand Union Canal to London's historic docks.

Regent's Park Lake

The 166 hectares (410 acres) park[3] is mainly open parkland with a wide range of facilities and amenities, including gardens; a lake with a heronry, waterfowl and a boating area; sports pitches; and children's playgrounds. The northern side of the park is the home of London Zoo and the headquarters of the Zoological Society of London. There are several public gardens with flowers and specimen plants, including Queen Mary's Gardens in the Inner Circle, in which the Open Air Theatre is located; the formal Italian Gardens and adjacent informal English Gardens in the south-east corner of the park; and the gardens of St John's Lodge. Winfield House, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, stands in private grounds in the western section of the park. Nearby is the domed London Central Mosque, better known as Regent's Park mosque, a highly visible landmark.

Located to the south of the Inner Circle is Regent's University London, home of the European Business School London, Regent's American College London (RACL) and Webster Graduate School among others.

Abutting the northern side of Regent's Park is Primrose Hill, another open space which, with a height of 256 feet (78 m)[4], has a clear view of central London to the south-east, as well as Belsize Park and Hampstead to the north. Primrose Hill is also the name given to the immediately surrounding district.

Management[edit]

The public areas of Regent's Park are managed by The Royal Parks, a government agency. The Crown Estate Paving Commission is responsible for managing certain aspects of the built environment of Regent's Park. The park lies within the boundaries of the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Camden, but those authorities have only peripheral input to the management of the park. The Crown Estate owns the freehold of Regent's Park.

History[edit]

Regent's Park c.1833
Memorial to the soldiers killed in Regent's Park in the 1982 Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings

In the Middle Ages the land was part of the manor of Tyburn, the property of Barking Abbey. In the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII appropriated the land, and it has been Crown property ever since, except for the period between 1649 and 1660. It was set aside as a hunting park, known as Marylebone Park, until 1649. It was then let out in small holdings for hay and dairy produce.[5]

Development by John Nash, James Burton, and Decimus Burton[edit]

James Burton, the pre-eminent London property developer was responsible for the social and financial patronage of the majority of John Nash's London designs,[6] in addition to for their construction.[7] Architectural scholar Guy Williams has written, 'John Nash relied on James Burton for moral and financial support in his great enterprises. Decimus had showed precocious talent as a draughtsman and as an exponent of the classical style... John Nash needed the son's aid, as well as the father's'.[6] Subsequent to the Crown Estate's refusal to finance them, James Burton agreed to personally finance the construction projects of John Nash at Regent’s Park, which he had already been commissioned to construct:[8][7] consequently, in 1816, Burton purchased many of the leases of the proposed terraces around, and proposed villas within Regent's Park,[8] and, in 1817, Burton purchased the leases of five of the largest blocks on Regent Street.[8] The first property to be constructed in or around Regent's Park by Burton was his own mansion: The Holme, which was designed by his son, Decimus Burton, and completed in 1818.[8] Burton's extensive financial involvement 'effectively guaranteed the success of the project'.[8] In return, Nash agreed to promote the career of Decimus Burton.[8] Such were James Burton’s contributions to the project that the Commissioners of Woods described James, not Nash, as ‘the architect of Regent’s Park’.[9] Contrary to popular belief, the dominant architectural influence in many of the Regent's Park projects - including Cornwall Terrace, York Terrace, Chester Terrace, Clarence Terrace, and the villas of the Inner Circle, all of which were constructed by James Burton's company[8] - was Decimus Burton, not John Nash, who was appointed architectural 'overseer' for Decimus's projects.[9] To the chagrin of Nash, Decimus largely disregarded his advice and developed the Terraces according to his own style, to the extent that Nash sought the demolition and complete rebuilding of Chester Terrace, but in vain.[10] Decimus's terraces were built by his father, James Burton (property developer).[11][8]

The Regent Park scheme was integrated with other schemes built for the Prince Regent by the triplet of Nash, James Burton, and Decimus Burton: these included Regent Street and Carlton House Terrace in a grand sweep of town planning stretching from St. James's Park to Parliament Hill. The scheme is considered one of the first examples of a garden suburb and continues to influence the design of suburbs.[12] The park was first opened to the general public in 1835, initially two days a week. The 1831 diary of William Copeland Astbury describes in detail his daily walks in and around the park, with references to the Zoo, the canal, and surrounding streets, as well as features of daily life in the area.[13]

Subsequent history[edit]

On 15 January 1867, forty people died when the ice cover on the boating lake collapsed and over 200 people plunged into the lake.[14] The lake was subsequently drained and its depth reduced to four feet before being reopened to the public.[15]

Late in 1916, the Home Postal Depot, Royal Engineers moved to a purpose built wooden building (200,000 sq ft) on Chester Road, Regent’s Park. This new facility contained the depot's administration offices, a large parcel office and a letter office, these last two previously being at the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre. HM King George V and HM Queen Mary visited the depot on 11 December 1916. The depot vacated the premises in early 1920.[16]

Queen Mary's Gardens, in the Inner Circle, were created in the 1930s, bringing that part of the park into use by the general public for the first time. The site had originally been used as a plant nursery and had later been leased to the Royal Botanic Society.

In 1982 an IRA bomb was detonated at the bandstand, killing seven soldiers.

The sports pitches, which had been relaid with inadequate drainage after the Second World War, were relaid between 2002 and 2004, and in 2005 a new sports pavilion was constructed.

On 7 July 2006 the Park held an event for people to remember the events of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Members of the public placed mosaic tiles on to seven purple petals. Later bereaved family members laid yellow tiles in the centre to finish the mosaic.

Sport[edit]

Sports are played in the park including Cycling, Tennis, Netball, Athletics, Cricket, Softball, Rounders, Football, Hockey, Australian Rules Football, Rugby, Ultimate Frisbee and Running. Belsize Park Rugby Football Club play their home games in the park.

There are three playgrounds and there is boating on the lake.

Sports take place in an area called the Northern Parkland, and are centred on the Hub. This pavilion and underground changing rooms was designed by David Morley Architects and Price & Myers engineers, and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.[citation needed] It won the IStructE Award for Community or Residential Structures in 2006.

The Outer Circle is used by road cyclists. One circuit is 4.45 km. A number of amateur cycling clubs that meet regularly to complete laps of the Outer Circle for exercise and leisure. Prominent clubs include: Regent's Park Rouleurs (RPR), Cycle Club London (CCL), Rapha Cycle Club (RCC). Many cyclists track & log their rides using the online social network site Strava. As at January, 2018 – some 22,000 cyclists had completed & logged 1.6mn laps of the park using the Strava app. [17] In 2015, Regent's Park Cyclists was formed to represent the interest of cyclists and cycling clubs that use the Inner & Outer Circle. [18]

The park was scheduled to play a role in the 2012 Summer Olympics, hosting the baseball and softball, but these sports were dropped from the Olympic programme with effect from 2012. The Olympic cycling road race was supposed to go through Regent's Park, as was the cycling road race in the 2012 Summer Paralympics, but the routes were changed.[19][20] The Park also plays host to London Camanachd who have regular shinty scrimmages there.[citation needed]

The terraces[edit]

Gloucester Gate
Sussex Place

Clockwise from the north, the terraces are:

Immediately south of the park are Park Square and Park Crescent, also designed by Nash.

See also: Street names of Regent's Park

The villas[edit]

Nine villas were built in the park. There follows a list of their names as shown on Christopher and John Greenwood's map of London (second edition, 1830), with details of their subsequent fates:

Close to the western and northern edges of the park[edit]

Winfield House
  • Hertford Villa (later known as St Dunstan's): Rebuilt as Winfield House in the 1930s and now the American Ambassador's residence, with the second-largest private garden in London after the Queen's garden at Buckingham Palace.
  • Nuffield Lodge: A private residence (Oman royal family) but previously owned by Robert Holmes à Court. Nuffield Lodge is said to have one of the largest gardens in central London after Buckingham Palace. The garden runs along the edge of Regent's Canal.
  • Hanover Lodge: A private residence recently (2007) the subject of a Court Case (won by Westminster City Council against the architect, Quinlan Terry, and contractor, Walter Lilly & Co) that ruled that two Grade II listed buildings had been illegally demolished while the property was leased to Conservative peer Lord Bagri.
  • Albany Cottage: Demolished. Site now occupied by London Central Mosque.
  • Holford House (Stanford's map of 1862): Built in 1832 north of Hertford House, it was the largest of the villas at that time. From 1856 it was occupied by Regent's Park College (which subsequently moved to Oxford in 1927). In 1944 Holford House was destroyed when a bomb was dropped on it during World War II. Demolished in 1948.

Around the Inner Circle[edit]

Symmetrical four-storey Neoclassical villa with an imposing pedimented entrance and balustrades around a valley roof surmounted by a small cupola and flanked by two-storey wings, the whole covered with stucco rendering painted pale pink. In front is a freshly mown lawn surrounded by plants and shrubs. In the foreground is a raised round stone pool with a bronze of a nude man being pulled into the water by a mermaid.
St John's Lodge
  • St John's Lodge: A private residence (Brunei royal family) but part of its garden is a public garden designed by Colvin and Moggridge Landscape Architects in 1994. This is an arrangement with the owner who allowed the main portion of their garden to be enjoyed by the public. St John's Lodge was the first villa to be constructed in the park by John Raffield.[31]
  • The Holme: A private residence (Saudi royal family) but its garden is open several days a year via the National Gardens Scheme.[32] It has been described as 'one of the most desirable private homes in London' by architectural scholar Guy Williams,[33] and as 'a definition of Western civilization in a single view' by architectural critic Ian Nairn.[34] The Holme was the second villa to be built in Regent's Park.
  • South Villa: Site of George Bishop's Observatory which closed when its owner died in 1861 (instruments and dome moved to Meadowbank, Twickenham in 1863). Regent's University London now stands on the site, one of the two largest groups of buildings in the park, alongside London Zoo.
  • Regent's University London has its campus just southwest of the Inner Circle. Previously was home to Bedford College.

Close to the eastern edge of the park[edit]

Park Crescent, home of International Students House, is just above Regent's Park station
  • Sir H. Taylor's Villa: Demolished. Site now part of open parkland.
  • International Students House, London
  • Between 1988 and 2004, six new villas were built by the Crown Estate and property developers at the north western edge of the park, between the Outer Circle and the Regent's Canal. They were designed by the English Neo-Classical architect Quinlan Terry, who designed each house in a different classical style, intended to be representative of the variety of classical architecture, naming them the Veneto Villa, Doric Villa, Corinthian Villa, Ionic Villa, Gothick Villa and the Regency Villa respectively.[35]

More attractions[edit]

  • Park Crescent's breathtaking façades by John Nash have been preserved, although the interiors were rebuilt as offices in the 1960s.
  • The Camden Green Fair is held in Regent's Park as part of an ongoing effort to encourage citizens of London to go Green.
  • The fountain erected through the gift of Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney is on The Broadwalk, between Chester Road and the Outer Circle.

Transport[edit]

Nearest Tube stations[edit]

Nearest railway stations[edit]

Cultural references[edit]

In film[edit]

  • In 28 Weeks Later (2007), the surviving members of the American military escort Tammy and Andy to Regent's Park to get evacuated out of London.
  • Regent's Park is the setting and closing scene for the black comedy film Withnail and I (1987).

In literature[edit]

  • In Elizabeth Bowen's wartime novel The Heat of the Day the park appears a number of times, most memorably in a long atmospheric description of the park in an autumn dusk. Regents Park also appears in her short story of wartime London, "Mysterious Kor".
  • In Agatha Christie's short story "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman", Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings travel in a taxicab to Regent's Park to investigate a murder that has taken place in "Regent's Court", a fictional block of modern flats nearby.
  • In Agatha Christie's novel The Secret Adversary, Tommy Beresford proposes to Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley and Julius Hersheimmer proposes to Jane Finn while in Regent's Park, on their way home from a celebratory dinner for defeating the protagonist of the story, the infamous Mr. Brown.
  • Rosamund Stacey, protagonist of Margaret Drabble's novel The Millstone (1965), lives in "a nice flat, on the fourth floor of a large block of an early twentieth-century building, and in very easy reach of Regent's Park".
  • Ian Fleming's James Bond novels frequently mention the headquarters of MI6 as a "tall, grey building near Regent's Park."[36]
  • In Charlie Higson's post-apocalyptic young adult horror novel The Enemy (2009), a group of children make a perilous trek through an overgrown St. Regent's Park, en route to Buckingham Palace, where they seek safe refuge, after a worldwide sickness has infected adults turning them into something akin to zombies. In the park, diseased monkeys from the nearby zoo attack the group, killing several children and wounding others.
  • In Ruth Rendell's crime novel The Keys to the Street (1996), much of the action (and murders) take place in and around Regent's Park.
  • In J. K. Rowling's first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) and the eponymous film, Harry goes to the London Zoo for his cousin's birthday.
  • In Dodie Smith's children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), the protagonist dalmatian dogs live near Regent's Park and are taken there for walks by their human family, the Dearlys. Regent's Park is also featured in the films based on Smith's book.
  • The Regent's Park is the setting for several scenes in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

In music[edit]

  • In Madness' single "Johnny The Horse" (1999), the eponymous character ends his days in the park after taking "his battered bones and broken dreams to Regent's Park at sunset".
  • The artwork to Coil's 1986 album Horse Rotorvator contains a photograph of the bandstand located in Regent's Park.

In art[edit]

In video games[edit]

References[edit]

Citations

  1. ^ Westminster Boundary (Map). City of Westminster. 2008. LA 100019597 2008. Retrieved 14 April 2009.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ Historic England, "Regents Park (1000246)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 10 February 2016
  3. ^ "The Regent's Park". The Royal Parks. Archived from the original on 16 May 2010. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  4. ^ Mills, A., Dictionary of London Place Names, (2001)
  5. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 688.
  6. ^ a b Williams, Guy (1990). Augustus Pugin Versus Decimus Burton: A Victorian Architectural Duel. London: Cassell Publishers Ltd. pp. 11–12. ISBN 0-304-31561-3.
  7. ^ a b Arnold, Dana. "Burton, Decimus". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4125. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h "James Burton [Haliburton], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography".
  9. ^ a b Arnold, Dana (2005). Rural Urbanism: London Landscapes in the Early 19th Century. Manchester University Press. p. 58.
  10. ^ Curl, James Stevens (January 2006). "Burton, Decimus (1800–81) :". A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. doi:10.1093/acref/9780198606789.013.0745. Retrieved 2016-08-22.
  11. ^ ODNB, Burton, Decimus (1880–1881)
  12. ^ Stern, Robert A.M.; Fishman, David; Tilove, Jacob (2013). Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City. The Monacelli Press. p. 23. ISBN 1580933262.
  13. ^ "William Copeland Astbury". Facebook. 15 April 2013. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
  14. ^ The Catastrophe in the Regent's Park, The Times, 22 January 1867, p.12
  15. ^ London, past and present: its history, associations, and traditions – Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Peter Cunningham – Google Books. Books.google.com. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  16. ^ Col ET Vallance (2015). 'Postmen at War – A history of the Army Postal Services from the Middle Ages to 1945' p.110, 114. Stuart Rossiter Trust, Hitchin. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  17. ^ www.strava.com
  18. ^ "Regent's Park Cyclists – Uniting all of Regent's Parks Cyclists". Regent's Park Cyclists.
  19. ^ UCI wants London Olympic road race route changed, CyclingWeekly
  20. ^ Exclusive: 2012 Olympics road race route, CyclingWeekly
  21. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 327.
  22. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 227.
  23. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 161.
  24. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 122.
  25. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 1037.
  26. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 208.
  27. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 191.
  28. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 900.
  29. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 382.
  30. ^ Weinreb et al. 2008, p. 454.
  31. ^ Williams, Guy (1990). Augustus Pugin Versus Decimus Burton: A Victorian Architectural Duel. London: Cassell Publishers Ltd. p. 37. ISBN 0-304-31561-3.
  32. ^ NGS website[permanent dead link]
  33. ^ Williams, Guy (1990). Augustus Pugin Versus Decimus Burton: A Victorian Architectural Duel. London: Cassell Publishers Ltd. p. 133. ISBN 0-304-31561-3.
  34. ^ Nairn, Ian (1966). Nairn's London (first ed.). ISBN 978-0141396156.
  35. ^ Kenneth Powell (25 November 2002). "Grandeur cannot be done cheaply". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  36. ^ "News and Pictures From The 2002 James Bond Celebrity Golf Classic".
  37. ^ Arnaud, Danielle. "Fair Play". Danielle Arnaud. Retrieved 7 December 2016.

Sources

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

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