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A delightful pair of streets on the south-western
edge of Camden Town, created in the 1820s by John Nash as part of his master plan for Regent’s Park. Park Village West – which survives intact – is a crescent
located just north of Regent’s Park barracks, off Albany Street. Park Village East meanders gently south as an extension
of Prince Albert Road. Nash and his protégé James Pennethorne combined stuccoed villas and terraces of sharply differing proportions and styles, including Gothic, Italianate and Tudor,
on either side of an arm of the Regent’s Canal that was later filled in. The village was a model for subsequent Victorian
estates and has even been identified as the first modern suburb, albeit in miniature – but there are many other contenders
for a title that is so hard to define, from Clapham to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Among the early residents was Dr James Johnson,
physician to William IV. Johnson lived at 12 Park Village West, possibly the most impressive villa in the whole development.
A few doors away at No.17, Dr E.B. Pusey founded the Anglican Church’s first sisterhood in 1845, which was soon followed
by others in England and North America. Just a generation after its completion, half of Park Village East was torn down to
make way for the London and Birmingham railway.
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