Regent Street is named after the Prince Regent, who would become King George IV. I have a soft spot for this particular obese royal reprobate, not least because I took him as a specialist subject on a well known British quiz show. Regent Street was one of the very first planed developments of London to actually be developed. Both Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn drew up plans for redeveloping the City of London under brand new street plans, but it took so long for anything practical to be done about the plans that people just went ahead and built new houses according to the old street plan.
The street was originally built by architect John Nash. He was responsible for rebuilding the Regent’s elegant and sedate Marine Pavilion in Brighton into the glorious madcap folly of the Royal Pavilion. He became so synonymous with a particular style that George Cruikshank labelled him as “The one wot builds the arches’ in a cartoon from 1829. Originally Nash planned a straight boulevard, but this was impossible because of land ownership issues. Today, Regent Street without its elegant curve at the Piccadilly Circus end would be unthinkable, and it makes the Street one of the most instantly recognisable of all London’s great thoroughfares.
The Green set of properties are three London streets particularly known for shopping, and Regent Street is certainly not short on famous stores, including Liberty’s and Hamley’s, noted in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s oldest Toy shop. For a long time it was also the largest toy shop in the world, but that record passed elsewhere in the 1990s.
Under a change of name Regent’s Street continues to Oxford Circus, which forms the junction with the green property, Oxford Street.
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