Regent's Park, The, Central London, England

Originally known as Marylebone Park, the land was seized by the Crown after the dissolution of the monasteries and became a royal hunting park.

After 1646 the land was farmed, until in 1811 a large part of the original site was sold for development. The Prince Regent (later William IV) commissioned John Nash to design the present park, which he intended to be the grounds of a summer palace. Only the park was constructed, and the design remains much the same as it was originally.

The park houses the Royal Zoological Society (London Zoo), and was formerly the home of The Royal Botanical Society (RBS), whose gardens were designed and curated by Robert Marnock in 1839. After the RBS left the park in the 1930s, the space was redeveloped as Queen Mary's Gardens with a large collection of roses.

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest: 

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Having been a Crown estate since 1539, the area of Regent's Park, then known as Marylebone Park, was by the end of the 18th century largely farmland (Richardson, 1794). Schemes to develop the area, including an unsuccessful design competition, were considered from about 1809. It was decided that the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, Parks and Chases should put forward alternative proposals which were required to include the creation of a new street linking the park with the city. John Nash (1752-1835) had been appointed as their architect in 1806 and, together with his partner James Morgan, produced the favoured solution (Nash, 1812) which included proposals for Regent Street (built between 1814 and 1819). The character of Nash's design was essentially one of villas in a parkland setting. Space was to be provided for barracks and other major features including the Prince Regent's Palace, a huge basin of ornamental water, and an informal lake. A large central double circus of houses, the Great Circus and the Inner Circus, was intended as the focal point for the scheme with a new branch of the Grand Union Canal, called the Regent's Canal, passing through the park. Nash had worked closely with Humphry Repton (1752-1818) between 1795 and 1802 and the influence of this association is reflected in the design for Regent's Park, especially in the positioning of groups of trees and the use of ornamental water running through parkland. Regent's Park and its buildings took seventeen years to construct, work having started in 1811. The first operations consisted planting as well as excavations for the lake and ground modelling, Nash arguing that planting in advance of building gave a maturity to the site (Summerson 1980).

The park, as it was completed by 1827 (Nash, 1827), was developed from the 1812 proposals with a number of alterations and omissions. The Prince's Palace, the basin, some of the terraces and crescents of houses, and the Great Circus were not built, and the canal was re-routed to the north of the Outer Circle. The forty villas Nash had proposed to be sited within the park were reduced to eight in number. Regent's Park as built was largely a fashionable residential estate set in extensive private parkland and occupied by wealthy merchants and professional people. In 1828 however the Royal Zoological Society (founded in 1824) acquired 8 hectares of land in the northern part of the site. Four years later a further 7 hectares was leased to the Toxophilite Society and in 1838 the 7 hectares of land within the Inner Circle was leased to the then newly formed Royal Botanic Society.

Recommendations for opening part of the park to the public were recorded in 1834 (Barnett and Britton, 1834). The addition of fence lines and footpaths to a slightly later plan of 1850 (Crown plan, 1850) illustrates the extent to which public access had increased by this date.

Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park became Crown property in 1841 and in 1842, after an Act was passed securing the land as public open space, the public were freely admitted. A year later the bridge connecting Regent's Park with Primrose Hill was completed and opened.

In 1851 the parkland of Regent's Park was transferred by means of the Crown Land Act from the management of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, Parks and Chases, to the newly formed Ministry of Works. Pressure from the public for further access to the park continued and several alterations to private fence lines and public footpaths are related to this. The image of Regent's Park was being transformed and the park was no longer one of the more fashionable areas of London, the ground being used increasingly for recreation. Extensions to the Zoological Gardens were undertaken in 1905 and again in 1908. Replacement of the wooden railings around the park was started in 1906 and largely completed by 1931 using iron railings.

During the First World War the park was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence, land to the north-west and along the east side being used as a military camp and drill ground. At the end of the war the buildings in these areas were demolished and replaced with sports fields. By the 1920s the remaining villas in the park were too large and expensive to be maintained as private dwellings and were taken over by public institutions. Consequently it became the policy for the Ministry of Works that as properties became vacant their land, where ever possible, should be transferred to parkland. In 1932 the land within the Inner Circle, which had until that date been leased by the Royal Botanic Society, reverted to the Ministry of Works. Duncan Campbell, the then Parks Superintendent, was largely responsible for redesigning the gardens. The offices of the Botanic Society were converted into a tea house and the museum closed. An open-air theatre was given premises on the north side of the garden.

The park and its surroundings, particularly Nash's terrace and villas, were severely damaged during the Second World War and rubble from damaged buildings was used to fill in the eastern arm of the Regent's Canal, the reclaimed land later being made into a car park for the Zoological Gardens. Iron railings from around the park were largely removed as part of the war effort and much of the replacement chain-link fencing still (2000) remains. By 1970 almost 121 hectares of the 147 hectares of Regent's Park were open to the public and managed by the Ministry of Works, the remainder of the site staying under the control of the Crown Estates Commission.

Today (2000) Regent's Park remains a public park managed by the Royal Parks Authority.