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Regent's Park Road

Primrose HillStreets in the London Borough of Camden
Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill geograph.org.uk 1550174
Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill geograph.org.uk 1550174

Regent's Park Road is a street in the Primrose Hill area of London, England. Located in the London Borough of Camden, it runs in a curving crescent shape. For some of its route it follows alongside the eastern edge of Primrose Hill park and also includes the commercial centre of the area. Despite its name the street does not run as far as Regent's Park although the adjacent Prince Albert Road does. It diverges from Gloucester Avenue at Cecil Sharp House and heads westwards until it meets Primrose Hill. It runs adjacent to the park and then at the northern end the previously residential buildings give way to shops, restaurants and a pub, the Queen's Hotel, as the road curves eastwards. It again meets Gloucester Avenue by the Pembroke Castle pub and then continues over a bridge across the West Coast Main Line until it finishes at the junction with Haverstock Hill between Chalk Farm tube station and the Roundhouse. The bridge that carries the street across the West Coast Main Line is now pedestrianised. It was the location of the former Primrose Hill railway station, once an important commuter station on the North London Railway, which closed in 1992. The northern part of the street dates back to at least the eighteenth century and was known as Primrose Vale. Like the rest of the area it was laid out as a residential area in nineteenth century, with many of the original buildings surviving. There had been an older Chalk Farm Tavern on what is now the street, which was famous as a site of dueling in eighteenth century and Regency London, but was rebuilt in the Victorian era. The stretch of street south of the Queen's Hotel was originally known as Queen's Street, but later the whole road adopted the same name. The Anglican St Mark's Church was opened in 1852, and then rebuilt following German bombing in the Second World War. The German socialist theorist Friedrich Engels lived in the street from 1870 to 1894 and is now commemorated with a blue plaque. Kingsley Amis lived in the street from 1984 onwards. The pianist and teacher James Gibb lived in a flat at No 10 from 1956 until his death in 2013, aged 95.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Regent's Park Road (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Regent's Park Road
Regent's Park Road, London Chalk Farm (London Borough of Camden)

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N 51.54006 ° E -0.15744 °
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Regent's Park Road

Regent's Park Road
NW1 8UE London, Chalk Farm (London Borough of Camden)
England, United Kingdom
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Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill geograph.org.uk 1550174
Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill geograph.org.uk 1550174
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Chalk Farm Tavern
Chalk Farm Tavern

The Chalk Farm Tavern was a public house located in what is today Regent's Park Road in Primrose Hill, London. The first inn was located on Primrose Vale close to the historic Chalk Farm that gives its name to the area. It was a popular stop on the route for Londoners returning from a day out in Hampstead on weekends and holidays. It had spacious rooms for entertainment as well as a pleasure garden. In 1837 a crowd of eight thousand was reported for a wrestling match.The area became notorious for duelling during the Regency Era, as it was located, like Putney Heath, beyond the outskirts of the city. In 1806 the poet Thomas Moore and Francis Jeffrey met at Chalk Farm, but the authorities arrived to arrest both men before shots were fired. A famous duel took place on 16 February 1821, when John Scott, the editor of The London Magazine, was fatally wounded by the barrister and literary critic Jonathan Christie. Scott was carried back to the tavern, where he died nine days later. Christie was tried at the Old Bailey for murder but was acquitted.Over the following decades the rural nature of the area disappeared, as it was increasingly built up by the Victorian era, served by the nearby North London Railway station. The street it stood on was renamed from Primrose Vale to Regent's Park Road. The tavern was rebuilt in 1854 on a smaller scale, allowing its gardens to be redeveloped and turned into new houses towards Chalcot Square. In the twentieth century it was rebranded as a Lotus-themed bar before closing as a public house in the early 1990s. It subsequently became a Greek restaurant.

Gorilla House
Gorilla House

The Gorilla House (later known as the "Round House") was built at London Zoo in 1932–33, on a site between Regent's Canal and the Outer Circle of Regent's Park. It was designed by the Modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin, with civil engineering assistance from Ove Arup, in the International Style. It was the first substantial building completed to a design by Lubetkin's firm, Tecton Group, and the firm's first building at London Zoo. It was designated as a Grade I listed building in 1970. The Gorilla House was commissioned to house the zoo's pair of gorillas from the Congo, Mok and Moina The main structure is based on a cylindrical drum made from 4 in (10 cm) reinforced concrete, painted white. The structure is divided into two halves, one enclosed and one open, with a semi-circular indoor winter enclosure to the north, and a low-walled open-air summer enclosure to the south surrounded by a metal cage. The entrance and exit doors are in small projecting wings to the east and west. It included a rotating semi-circular top-hung insulating screen, rotating around a central pivot and moving along rollers in a metal channel around the top of the building, that could be deployed in the winter to turn the outdoor space into a sheltered viewing area for zoo visitors, while the gorilla remained behind glass screens in their heated indoor enclosure. In the summer, the screen could be rotated away and concealed within the northern half of the structure, so the gorillas could live and viewed in the outdoor half of the structure. The northern half is lit by clerestory windows, topped by a flat asphalt roof. It opened in April 1933. The structure was later housed a series of different animals, including elephants, Kodiak bears, chimpanzees (from which the building is sometimes known as the "Chimps Breeding Colony"), koalas, aye ayes, and fruit bats. The rotating screen fell out of use and was fixed in place. After the successful Gorilla House, Tecton Group designed other structures at the zoo, including its Penguin Pool, also completed in 1934 and also listed at Grade I in 1970.