We've found 129 parks

* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens

Formerly rough farmland belonging to the College of Eton and Lord Southampton, Primrose Hill was acquired as a gift, to be opened as a public park as a result of local pressure in 1842. After 1851 the land was drained and levelled on the north and west sides of the hill, and footpaths and lamps and some new planting were laid out. In 1863 the north side of the hill was developed for housing. The hill top, which gives panoramic views over London, has been exposed and treeless since the Middle Ages, and on the slopes are many mature trees including oak, horse chestnut, London planes, whitebeam and hawthorn.

Queen Square was built between 1713-25, with its central garden laid out in 1716, an elongated rectangle originally open on the north side. A statue of a crowned queen, thought to represent Queen Charlotte or possibly Anne or Mary II, is in the north of the garden. A number of Victorian hospitals were built on the square, the Italian Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology, and nearby is Great Ormond Street Hospital. A sculpture commissioned by Friends of the Children of Great Ormond Street was erected in the garden in 2001. Today the garden has areas of lawn, roses, bedding displays and a variety of trees, together with a number of artefacts and sculptural works.

Red Lion Square was laid out from the late C17th as a speculative venture and derives its name from the Red Lion Inn in Holborn. Among stories surrounding Oliver Cromwell's bodily remains (d.1658) is that in 1661 his exhumed corpse and that of Ireton and Bradshaw were brought to Red Lion Inn and buried nearby, with dummies substituted and taken to Tyburn. In 1737 an Act of Parliament was passed for 'beautifying' the square and in 1894 the freehold passed to the MPGA who then passed it free of cost to the LCC for use as a pleasure ground. The garden contains various commemorative statues, including to Bertrand Russell and Fenner Brockway, and at one time had a sculpture of Pocahontas. A handkerchief tree was planted here for the victims of the Lockerbie air disaster.

Regent Square Gardens were originally laid out for the private use of residents of the surrounding houses built from 1829, of which only the terrace on the south side of the square remains. Maintained by a Committee of residents, the garden was an enclosed rectangle with exits on each side linked by a curving perimeter path and bisected by another path along its short axis, with perimeter trees and a few trees in the centre. The garden was later opened to the public. By the 1950s the layout comprised a straight perimeter path and central oval path, and further changes took place in the 1970s. The current layout of 1995 as part of King's Cross area improvements is closer to the original. Planting consists of shrubs and herbaceous perennial plants, the central area mainly laid to lawn crossed by a serpentine path, and the garden has a number of the original London plane trees.

The Regent's Canal runs from Little Venice to Limehouse Basin and is 13.5 km long. Part of the Grand Union Canal system, it was built to link the Grand Junction Canal's Paddington Arm with the Thames. The c.2.75km Camden section begins at Regent's Park, runs through Camden Town, and leaves the borough at York Way; a former pumping house of 1898 was converted to a Lock Keeper's Cottage in 1926. Thomas Homer's proposal for the canal found approval with John Nash in 1811, at the time designing Regent's Park; Nash's associate James Morgan drew up plans in 1811, which were passed by Act of Parliament in 1812. The Regent's Canal Company was set up and the canal was fully completed in 1820. Its importance for trade was later superseded by the coming of the railways but it is now a popular public amenity.

* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens

Although the majority of Regent's Park is in Westminster, a small part is in LB Camden, being the strip to the east of the Broad Walk, which forms the borough boundary. South of Chester Road this wide path passes through a formal Italian Garden, with an informal English Garden to the east, both dating from 1861-64 and restored since 1996. The Regent's Park was laid out between 1812-30 to designs of John Nash as a fashionable estate of fine villas and terraces set in a private landscaped park. Named for the Prince Regent, the land had been part of the Crown Estate since 1539. While details of Nash's plan were much modified, the overall conception was, and remains, his own. Although some areas remain in separate use and ownership, part of the park had been opened to the public in 1835 and today the majority of the park is accessible. During WWI part of the park including the strip to the east was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence for a military camp and drill ground, restored to public use after the war. See Westminster entry for the majority of the park's features.

Regent's Park Terrace consists of 22 four-storey houses built c1840-50 in front of which is a private roadway and a strip of garden with a boundary wall to Oval Road. The garden was provided for the use of the tenants and lessees of the terrace, who paid an appropriate amount for its maintenance. It remains today much as it was in the early C20th, with grass, shrubs and mature trees.

Ridgmount Gardens is an elongated private garden for the use of residents of the imposing Ridgmount Mansions apartment building that overlooks it, built in the 1890s. Stretching from Chenies Street to Tavistock Place, the garden has a path that leads alongside a series of miniature lawns interspersed by shrubbery borders. At either end of the garden are ornamental bird baths set off by lavender and wisteria.

Rochester Square is a roughly square plot of land to the rear of a C19th terrace of houses, enclosed by a privet hedge and barbed wire fence. The houses were completed by the 1840s as part of the development of the Camden Estate, but the central area was leased as a nursery ground from as early as 1825. This use as a nursery continued into the early C21st, the last tenants being Strouds of London, but the business had gone into decline by the 1980s. In 2016, the neglected site was purchased by two local residents who have revitalised the square, bringing it into use as a sustainable, community and arts space.

The gardens are overlooked by the C19th houses of Rochester Terrace, arranged in pairs of semi-detached villas. The land was owned by the Marquis of Camden and the central garden maintained by a Committee of inhabitants out of rates levied by St Pancras Borough Council. In 1928 it is described as having well-kept lawns, trees and shrubs around the perimeter and an ash tree on the lawn. Renovations in the early C21st provided new play facilities, restoration of the railings and Victorian-style landscaping with grass, flower beds, benches and paths.

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518; the present college dates from 1964, extended in 1996. Although there are some remnants from 1960s planting, the medicinal garden has been extensively replanted since 2005. It contains over 1000 different plants, arranged as a series of areas, including beds of medicinal plants from various cultures, plants with known medical value and those connected with physicians through the ages. There are mature London plane trees at the front, a sheltered south-facing lawn and beds to the rear. Eight gardens along St Andrews Place were planted in 2006/7 with box parterres containing plants from the 'Pharmacopeia Londinensis' published by the Royal College of Physicians in 1618.

* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens

By late C17th much land in London was owned by the Russell family and their Bloomsbury Estate was developed from 1660s-1850s, becoming part of the Bedford Estate in 1723. Russell Square was laid out by Humphry Repton in 1800, with a broad perimeter walk, hedged to screen it from the street; a large lawn intersected by a broad walk under 2 rows of lime trees, the statue of Francis Russell, Duke of Bedford (1809) on the south; 2 narrower walks intersecting the gardens; and in the centre a shelter around which were 4 compartments, each treated in a different way. Repton's layout largely remained until 1959-60 when there was extensive replanting, a large paved area with 3 fountains in the centre, and a Tea House. In 2000-2 re-landscaping echoing Repton's designs was undertaken, together with a new fountain and refreshment kiosk.