Regent's Park was originally known as Marylebone Park. It was formed following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII when he decided to create a royal hunting park near to London.

The curious shape seems to bear no relation to any physical feature or known manorial boundaries. Indeed, to this day it spans two London boroughs.

Thereafter it was split and fell into the hands of various landlords, either as gifts for services rendered or through purchase, and was used as farm and pasture land.

The Park as we know it today was originally developed in the first three decades of the nineteenth century as the northern termination of the Regency Metropolitan Improvements, the great town plan for London extending on an axis northwards from Carlton House, the Prince Regent's residence in Pall Mall.

It reverted to The Crown in 1806 and Nash was commissioned by the Prince Regent to develop a scheme for the whole area. His design was quite original for an urban area and in direct contrast to the grid-square layout found all around Regent's Park. Nash created a picturesque landscape: a series of neo-classical terraces around the Park with a number of villas laid out within the Park, each in its landscape setting.

Nash's design was published in 1812 and approved by the Treasury. Work began immediately, though as the project developed many modifications were made. Only a few of the many villas proposed were constructed and the proposed circus at the top of Portland Place was reduced to a crescent when its builder went bankrupt. The construction of the terraces began with Cornwall Terrace in 1820 and continued over the next ten years to conclude with Gloucester Gate.

Nash produced the design for most of the facades assisted by Decimus Burton. The actual houses behind were of the standard London type, erected by speculative builders and sold on 99 year leases. Sir John Summerson, the architectural historian, has described the extravagant scenic character of the terraces as:

"... dream palaces, full of grandiose, romantic ideas such as an architect might scribble in a holiday sketch book ... It is magnificent. And behind it all, are rows and rows of identical houses."

To an extent Nash's architecture represented grandeur on the cheap. The spectacular frontages with their columns, statues and pediments were merely stucco. Even his classical facades, to a purist, showed inattention to detail. The structure behind was all stock brick and thin deals like any other London terrace. The foundations were shallow, set on London clay and there were no damp courses. This flimsiness of construction exacerbated the problems faced by the government and The Crown Estate in deciding the future of Regent's Park in the 1940s and 1950s after a decade of war damage and lack of maintenance.

Apart from their poor structural condition, at the end of the War there was also a feeling, especially on the part of the local authorities, that the terraces should not be restored as houses for the well-to-do but be demolished and the area redeveloped to serve a more "social" purpose. At that time building materials were strictly rationed and the restoration of large houses was not a priority.

However, Nash's achievement in the design of such a unique estate in the centre of London was recognised as worthy of conservation by a number of bodies, including the Georgian Group (founded in 1937 in direct response to a threat to demolish Nash's Carlton House Terrace). As a result of campaigning the Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, and his government, set up a special committee under the chairmanship of the 3rd Lord Gorell to consider the future of the terraces. The committee produced the Gorell Report in 1947 which recommended that the Nash Terraces should be preserved as far as practicable. It also recommended that the long-term use of many of the buildings should be residential.

The restoration accomplished throughout Regent's Park since that report is recorded in the publication The Regent's Park Terraces 50 Years of Restoration published by The Crown Estate in 1997. For a copy of the publication, please email us at Enquiries.