Regent's Park, NW1: history and architecture

Domesday records the ground under today's park as held by the Abbess of Barking. It came to the Crown in 1538-39, when Henry VIII took it for a hunting forest within easy reach of Whitehall.

Westminster's leaflet tells the next stage: Marylebone Park was enclosed as a deer park, then let as farmland to the Duke of Portland, and returned to the Crown when his lease ended in 1811.

Sources: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011), Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004)

Nash's design was chosen that year and set the park at the end of a ceremonial route running north from Carlton House by Regent Street and Portland Place.

He and James Morgan proposed parkland scenery as the draw for residents, with the working quarters kept out of sight.

The builders took building leases, so they, not the Crown, paid for the construction.

The forty villas on the 1811 plan were cut to eight by 1827, and in 1826 the Commissioners gave up further building to protect the parkland and its views.

Camden's appraisal calls the result a single scheme for a whole community, from grand terrace to market and canal.

Sources: Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004), Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011)

Building began with Park Crescent in 1812; the terraces followed from Cornwall Terrace in 1821 to Kent Terrace in 1827, according to Westminster.

The crescent and Park Square were meant to form one circus across the New Road, but its northern half was never built.

York Gate was added to frame St Marylebone Parish Church, built south of Marylebone Road between 1813 and 1819.

Nash wanted the stucco painted to look like Bath stone, the joinery like oak and the ironwork like bronze.

Chester Terrace stretches 287 metres; Cumberland Terrace, the grandest of the eleven, runs 244 metres.

Westminster's leaflet puts every terrace round the park at Grade I.

Sources: Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004), Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011)

The east side of the park opened to the public in 1835, and the rest of it, with Primrose Hill, in 1841.

The Zoological Society took a twenty-acre site on the northern edge in 1826, and Nesfield laid out the Avenue Gardens in 1864.

By the end of the Victorian period the park read as a public space with a few private houses, rather than a private residential estate.

Sources: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011), Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004)

St Katherine's Hospital came here from beside the Tower when its old site was dug out for St Katherine's Dock, and Ambrose Poynter designed its chapel.

James Pennethorne's Christ Church served the east side of Nash's development and is now the Greek Orthodox St George's Cathedral.

R.C. Carpenter's St Mary Magdalene, near Munster Square, answered Christ Church's classicism with ragstone gothic.

Denys Lasdun's Royal College of Physicians opened in 1964 and was listed Grade I in 1998.

Source: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011)

Bombs destroyed St Katherine's villa and the northern half of Cambridge Terrace.

In 1947 the Gorrell Committee found the terraces of national interest and importance and asked for them to be kept as far as practicable.

The rebuilding went deep: in 1962 the Commissioners reported entirely new internal construction in every Chester Terrace house.

That history matters when a house here is surveyed. A front can be Regency while the floors, stairs and walls behind it are of the 1960s, and the right repair depends on which is which.

Source: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011)

Camden's half covers only the eastern segment of Nash's development; the larger part lies west, in the City of Westminster.

Westminster's conservation area reaches beyond the park to take in St Marylebone Parish Church and Park Crescent, south of Marylebone Road.

A house on one side of the line can therefore face a different council, list description and set of site rules from its neighbour across the park, and we check which before any history is applied to a design.

Sources: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011), Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004)

Westminster and Camden designated their halves of the park as conservation areas in 1969.

Westminster counts over 300 listed buildings in its half alone, from terraces and villas to lamp posts, railings and statues.

Camden uses its 2011 appraisal, with this history appended, to judge planning applications on its side.

Our Regent's Park renovation hub sets out how we work in NW1, and our pages on refurbishing a listed terrace house and lateral and converted flats by the park turn this history into practical advice. Our article on the mews, markets and Park Village covers the working side of the estate.

Sources: Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011), Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004), Camden Council: Regent's Park Conservation Area appraisal and management strategy

• Camden: Regent's Park Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 July 2011)
• Westminster City Council: Regent's Park conservation area information leaflet (May 2004)
• Camden Council: Regent's Park Conservation Area appraisal and management strategy