Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Marylebone was once the outlying village of St Mary-by-the-Bourne (the bourne in
question being the Tyburn stream) or St Marylebone (pronounced “marra-le-bun”),
and when Samuel Pepys walked through open countryside to reach its pleasure gardens
in 1668, he declared it “a pretty place”. During the course of the next century, the
gardens were closed and the village was swallowed up as its chief landowners - among
them the Portlands and the Portmans - laid out a mesh of uniform Georgian streets
and squares, much of which survives today.
Langham Place
North of Oxford Circus, Regent Street forms the eastern border of Marylebone, but
stops abruptly at
Langham Place
, which formed an awkward twist in John Nash's
triumphal route to Regent's Park in order to link up with the pre-existing Portland
Place. Nash's solution was to build his unusual All Souls Church, now the only Nash
building left in this star-studded chicane that's home to the BBC's Broadcasting House
and the historic Langham Hotel.
All Souls Church
Langham Place • Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun 9am-2pm & 5.30-8.30pm • Free •
T
020 7580 3522,
W
allsouls.org •
!
Oxford Circus
John Nash's simple and ingenious little
All Souls Church
was built in warm Bath Stone
in the 1820s, and is the architect's only surviving church. The unusual circular Ionic
portico and conical stone spire, which caused outrage in its day, are cleverly designed to
provide a visual full stop to Regent Street and lead the eye round into Portland Place
and ultimately to Regent's Park.
4
Broadcasting House
Langham Place • Guided tours Sun; £13.50; no under-9s •
T
0370 901 1227,
W
bbc.co.uk/tours •
!
Oxford Circus
Behind All Souls lies the totalitarian-looking Art Deco
Broadcasting House
,
BBC radio headquarters since 1932. The figures of Prospero and Ariel (pun
intended) above the entrance are by Eric Gill, who caused a furore by sculpting
Ariel with overlarge testicles, and, like Epstein a few years earlier at Broadway
House, was forced in the end to cut the organs down to size. Broadcasting House
has recently undergone a £1-billion refurbishment and is now the headquarters of
BBC News (both TV and radio) and you can sign up for a guided tour (1hr 30min)
to see the state-of-the-art open-plan newsroom, the Radio Theatre and some of
the studios.
Langham Hotel
Opposite Broadcasting House stands the
Langham Hotel
, built in grandiose
Italianate style and opened by the Prince of Wales in 1865 as the city's most
DOCTORS AND DENTISTS
Harley Street
was an ordinary residential Marylebone street until the nineteenth century
when doctors, dentists and medical specialists began to colonize the area in order to serve
London's wealthier citizens. Private medicine survived the threat of the postwar National
Health Service, and the most expensive specialists and hospitals are still to be found in the
streets around here.
The national dental body, the
British Dental Association (BDA)
has its headquarters at
nearby 64 Wimpole St, and a
museum
(Tues & Thurs 1-4pm; free;
T
020 7935 4549,
W
bda.org;
!
Bond Street) displaying the gruesome contraptions of early dentistry, and old prints of
agonizing extractions. Although dentistry is traditionally associated with pain, it was, in fact, a
dentist who discovered the first anaesthetic.
