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The Architect who transformed London

© Viola Ashford

THE ARCHITECT WHO TRANSFORMED LONDON

The sweeping curve of elegant Regent Street, picturesque Regent's Park and the delightful Georgian terraces nearby, the charming colonnade of All Souls, splendid Buckingham Palace - all these were designed by one man, the brilliant architect John Nash. During the Regency this great man transformed London into a much more stylish and attractive city.

Born in 1752, John Nash was the son of an impoverished Lambeth millwright. He began his career in London in service with Sir Robert Taylor, but due to a legacy from a merchant uncle, he was able to set up his own business as a speculative builder. He unfortunately became bankrupt, retiring to Wales where he had a spectacular change of fortune, becoming a country-house architect and mixing in county society. Eventually he formed a partnership with Humphrey Repton, the landscape gardener.

Returning to London in 1798, when he was 45, Nash married a pretty, dark-eyed girl much younger thank himself, Mary Anne, who was commonly supposed to have been one of the Prince Regent's mistresses. Nash may even have met the Prince because of his wife. After his marriage, writes Christopher Hibbert:

"he became much more successful and much richer, arousing a good deal of dislike by his self-satisfaction and display, his snobberies and affectations. "A great coxcomb", Robert Finch recorded in his diary, "...He lives in Dover Street, has a charming place on the Isle of Wight and drives four horses".1

The Prince Regent, albeit a strange and eccentric man, was a great patron on the arts, with excellent taste - Jane Austen, for example, was his favourite author - chose John Nash as his favoured architect. Although, by this time Nash had become a member of the Carlton House set and contemplated a political career, 'he was not...to be diverted from architecture".2 In 1806 he accepted, together with his draughtsman Morgan, the post of Architect to the Woods and Forests, at the 'hideous joint salary of 200 pounds a year".3

George IV planned to turn London into a magnificent capital, perhaps even 'eclipsing Napoleon's Paris'4. The great plan for London, made possible by the reversion of Marylebone Park to the Crown, carried out under the supervision of the brilliant architect, already 60, constituted the development of Regent's and St. James Parks, and the layout of a new street, Regent Street which would link the two parks. This enormous scheme took a little over 15 years to complete. Although his idea of a garden city in the middle of the park composed of 26 villas was never realised Park Village West was one of the first garden suburbs. Nash's white stuccoed terraces on the perimeter of the Park were all 'in the Neo-Classical style, namely Palladian, decorated by porticoes, pediments and statues."5 Cumberland Terrace, according to Nash's biographer Summerson, is: "easily the most breath-taking architectural panorama in London".6 This wasn't all Nash did - he also redesigned St.James Park according to the picturesque principles of landscape gardening and planned Trafalgar Square.

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