Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
St John's Wood
The residential district of
St John's Wood
was built over in the nineteenth century by
developers hoping to attract a wealthy clientele with a mixture of semi-detached
Italianate villas, multi-occupancy Gothic mansions and white stucco terraces. Edwin
Landseer (of Trafalgar Square lions fame), novelist George Eliot and Mrs Fitzherbert,
the uncrowned wife of George IV, all lived here, while current residents include knights
Richard Branson and Paul McCartney and supermodel Kate Moss.
Lord's Cricket Ground
St John's Wood Rd • Museum Non-match days daily 9.30am-4.30pm • £7.50 Guided tours all year round daily • £15 •
T
020 7616 8500,
W
lords.org •
!
St John's Wood
The Regent's Canal was bad news for Thomas Lord, who had only recently been forced
to shift his cricket ground due to the construction of Marylebone Road. In 1813, with
the canal coming, he once more upped his stumps and relocated, this time to St John's
Wood Road, where
Lord's
, as the ground is now known, remains to this day. Lord's is,
of course, home of the
MCC
(Marylebone Cricket Club), founded in 1787, and the
most hallowed institution in the game, boasting a very long members waiting list
(unless you're exceptionally famous or rich). Its politics were neatly summed up by
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who said, “I have been a member of the Committee
of the MCC and of a Conservative cabinet, and by comparison with the cricketers, the
Tories seem like a bunch of Commies.”
Lord's is home to the
MCC Museum
, the world's oldest sports museum, which
houses the minuscule pottery urn containing the Ashes (along with the complex tale
of this odd trophy), numerous historic balls, bats and bails, and a sparrow which was
“bowled out” by Jehangir Khan at Lord's in 1936. The museum can also be visited as
part of a
guided tour
, which sets off from the Grace Gates at the southwest corner of
the ground. On the tour, you get to see the famous Long Room (from which the
players walk onto the pitch), Lord's Real Tennis Court, the various stands and the
futuristic aluminium Media Centre.
20
Regent's Park
Daily 5am to dusk •
T
0300 061 2300,
W
royalparks.org.uk •
!
Regent's Park, Baker Street, Great Portland Street, St John's Wood or
Camden Town
Regent's Park
is one of London's smartest parks, with a boating lake, ornamental ponds
and waterfalls and wonderful gardens all enclosed in a ring of magnificent nineteenth-
century mansions. As with almost all of London's royal parks, we have Henry VIII to
thank for Regent's Park which he confiscated from the Church for yet more hunting
grounds. However, it wasn't until the reign of the Prince Regent (later George IV) that
the park began to take its current form - hence its o
cial title, “The Regent's Park” -
and the public weren't allowed in until 1845 (and even then for just two days of the
week). According to John Nash's 1811 master plan, the park was to be girded by a
continuous belt of terraces, and sprinkled with a total of 56 villas, including a
magnificent pleasure palace for the prince himself, linked by Regent Street to Carlton
House, George's palace in St James's. Inevitably, the plan was never fully realized, but
enough was built to create something of the idealized garden city that Nash and the
Prince Regent envisaged.
The eastern terraces
Nash's terraces form a near-unbroken horseshoe of cream-coloured stucco around the
Outer Circle. By far the most impressive are the eastern terraces, especially
Cumberland
Terrace
, completed in 1826, and intended as a foil for George IV's planned pleasure
palace and tea pavilion. Its 800ft-long facade, hidden away on the eastern edge of the
park, is punctuated by Ionic triumphal arches, peppered with classical alabaster statues
