The Marylebone Road was originally called the New Road and ran from Paddington to Euston. It opened in 1757 and developed rapidly from the late 18th century. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows terraces with generous gardens fronting the New Road: these were built on land leased from the Portman Estate. To the north the area remained largely rural with fields that would subsequently become The Regent’s Park. In the late 19th century Alsops Farm would become the site of Baker Street Station and immediately to the east of this can be seen the future site of Madame Tussaud’s.
By 1830 Greenwood’s map (below) shows The Regent’s Park, York Terrace with its Mews and the original Nottingham Terrace. The acutely angled boundary between Nottingham Terrace and Union Place, the future site of Madame Tussauds, remains largely unchanged to this day.
York Terrace was built as part of John Nash's original conception for what has been called the 'jewel in the crown', The Regent's Park. The land has been Crown property almost continuously since 1538 when Henry VIII appropriated it for his hunting chase, and this area was known as Marylebone Park after the nearby village. At the end of the Civil War it had been sold by Cromwell to a John Spencer but reverted to the Crown at the Restoration and was subsequently leased to various noblemen and largely used for farming. The final lease-holder was the Duke of Portland, whose lease was due to revert to the Crown in 1811.
In preparation for this, John Fordyce, who had been appointed Surveyor General of His Majesty's Land Revenue in 1794, was authorised to produce a plan for the area of Marylebone Park and various architects competed for the tender. On Fordyce's death in 1809 the offices of Land Revenue were combined with those of Woods and Forests and the architects of the two departments were asked to produce plans. John Nash (1752-1835), who was official architect to the Commission of Woods and Forest and a friend of the Prince Regent, designed the layout of the park as it is today as part of his grand plan for London, which was approved by the Treasury in October 1811. His plan had an avenue stretching from Marylebone via Portland Place and Regent Street to Carlton House Terrace and Gardens, and included the 400-acre park, which was to be surrounded by palatial terraces and villas. The Prince Regent agreed to let the new park be named after him.
The terraces were built between 1821-32 and were given names that reflected Royal patronage. Cambridge Terrace, built 1825 by Richard Mott to Nash's design, took its name from Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. York Terrace, built 1822-3 took its name form Frederick Duke of York, younger brother of George IV. It was designed by Nash in two separate groups of 20 houses apiece, split by an open vista down to Hardwick's Marylebone Parish Church.
The houses had their main entrances in the mews on the south side and thus presented an uninterrupted façade to Regent's Park, although they appeared as two long palaces. The eastern half was built by James Burton and the western by William Mountford Nurse. The terraces were administered by the Commission for Paving and Lighting, which was set up after the gardens had been laid out. The Commission met monthly and was chaired by a succession of noblemen including Lords Lowther, Duncannon and Boston. Railings around the garden enclosures had been erected as part of the original design.
During WWII they were taken down for scrap and stored at Willesden Junction but it appears they were never used. York Terrace is now largely divided into flats and offices and has had various distinguished tenants over the years including William Charles McReady, manager of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Mrs Elizabeth Reid, founder of Bedford College, and author Hugh Walpole. Maintenance of the gardens is now the responsibility of the Crown Estates Paving Commission, the successor to the original Paving and Lighting Commission.
From the early 20th century, the Marylebone Road was transformed, with the building of larger-scale mansion blocks. In the inter-war years significant development occurred along Baker Street and Marylebone Road and the platforms at Baker Street Station were surrounded by the development of Chiltern Court during the 1920s.
The pictures below show the original Nottingham Terrace that was still standing in 1938.
By this time these houses were becoming run down and during the war they suffered further damage and neglect. York Terrace West also suffered bomb damage during the Blitz with at least one house destroyed. Following the war, the Crown Estate Paving Commission began the task of redeveloping and restoring the properties around the park. In 1947 partial clearance of the land around York Terrace West was discussed in Parliament with a view to the provision of car parking and by the 1950s an Ordnance Survey map shows the Nottingham Terrace site cleared of houses.
Following the war, there had been considerable concern regarding the condition of The Regent’s Park terraces. In common with many other terraces York Terrace West had suffered bomb damage during the Blitz with at least one house destroyed.
In 1946 a Government Committee, set up under Lord Gorell, to consider the future of The Regent’s Park terraces concluded that a number of Nash Terraces would definitely be preserved but that the future of the remainder, designed by Nash or his contemporary, Decimus Burton, would depend upon it being achievable without undue capital cost. Concern for the future was raised in Parliament and by Henry Moore and other leading cultural figures, urging the unity of the Regent's Park terraces to be preserved.
In 1957 a document titled “First Statement of the Crown Estate” concluded that it might be possible that, after large-scale conversions, all the buildings facing The Regent’s Park would contain modern residential accommodation but to make this economically possible parts of the buildings not facing the Park could be used for some non-residential uses.
By the time the Crown Estate published a second report in 1959, proposals for the redevelopment of York Terrace West and the former site of Nottingham Terrace facing the Marylebone Road were taking shape. The Taylor Woodrow Group with the architect Sir Thomas Bennett proposed the erection of an office block of nine floors on the site of Nottingham Terrace facing the Marylebone Road and nine three-storey houses and nine two-storey houses sited along the south side of York Terrace West. The office building was, at the time, considered necessary to meet the Crown Estate’s aim to avoid seeking support from public funds for the restoration of the Nash terraces to residential use. The houses in York Terrace West were to be converted into 64 flats, behind the Nash facade, varying in size from the smallest with a living room and two bedrooms to the largest with a living room, dining room and three bedrooms.
The Commissioners were made aware that the retention and restoration of the existing Nash facades while the buildings behind were reconstructed might well cost about £90,000 (equivalent to £1.75M in 2021) more than complete demolition and the replacement of the facades with exact replicas in modern materials. In their 1957 Statement the Crown Commissioners had implied that the complete demolition of Nash terraces with the erection of modern replicas ought to be ruled out but the substantial cost of taking this route was now questioned.
Further approaches to the redevelopment were explored through the 1960s which culminated in the estate we see today. Plans were drawn up by the Architects T.P. Bennett & Sons for a comprehensive redevelopment of the whole site including York Terrace West, Nottingham Terrace and York Gate West. York Terrace West was completely reconstructed behind a retained façade to the park. Nottingham Terrace was a new build and beneath the buildings and roadway a car park was formed. The builders were Myton Group, part of Taylor Woodrow.
The photograph above shows work in progress in the late 1960s with the original facades to York Gate and to the Outer Circle retained and the basement car park partially excavated.
The perspective below, showing the view from the portico of St Marylebone Parish Church, formed part of the original 1969 Nottingham Terrace sales brochure.
One of the directors, Allan Murray-Jones, has written a dissertation on the post war restoration of Regent's Park and how close York Terrace came to being pulled down.