The Hyde Park Estate is a residential district in the Paddington area of London. It is an affluent area, characterised by a layout of squares and crescents, and is home to several embassies, prestigious businesses and celebrities.
The estate covers a triangular area, centred on Hyde Park Square, roughly located south-east of Sussex Gardens, west of the Edgware Road and north of Bayswater Road, between Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch.
It includes Connaught Square and Connaught Village, Water Gardens, Norfolk Crescent and the church of St John's, Hyde Park.
The Hyde Park Estate was developed in the nineteenth century on land owned by the Bishop of London and was originally known as the Paddington Estate. Ownership then passed to the Church Commissioners who remain the primary freeholders of the estate. [1]
After World War II, following extensive wartime bomb damage, the Church Commissioners rebuilt parts of the estate in partnership with the building firm Wates, introducing high density blocks of flats with underground car parking among the Victorian villas. [2]
In September 2014, residents of 1 Hyde Park Street chose to take ownership of the Grade II listed building on the corner of Bayswater Road. A major refurbishment programme was then undertaken to address alleged historical underinvestment.
Past residents include:
Quentin Willson, Motoring journalist (Top Gear): Hyde Park Gardens Mews
Bayswater is an area within the City of Westminster in West London. It is a built-up district in the West End with a population density of 17,500 per square kilometre, and is located between Kensington Gardens to the south, Paddington to the north-east, and Notting Hill to the west.
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station.
The Westbourne or Kilburn is a culverted small River Thames tributary in London, rising in Hampstead and Brondesbury Park and which as a drain unites and flows southward through Kilburn and Bayswater to skirt underneath the east of Hyde Park's Serpentine lake then through central Chelsea under Sloane Square. It passes centrally under the south side of Royal Hospital Chelsea's Ranelagh Gardens before discharging into Inner London's old-fashioned, but grandiose combined sewer system, with exceptional discharges into the Inner London Tideway. Since the latter 19th century, the population of its catchment has risen further but to reduce the toll it places on the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and related bills its narrow basin has been assisted by private soakaways, and public surface water drains. Its depression has been replaced with and adopted as a reliable route for a gravity combined sewer. The formation of the Serpentine relied on the water, a lake with a long, ornate footbridge and various activities associated, which today uses little-polluted water from a great depth.
Connaught Square in London, England, was the first square of city houses to be built in Bayswater. It is named after a royal, the Earl of Connaught who was from 1805 until death in 1834 the second and last Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, and who maintained his fringe-of-London house and grounds on the land of this square and Gloucester Square. Its appearance is essentially the same as in the 1820s. Its south-east is 115 metres north of Hyde Park and the same west of Edgware Road. This point is 302 m (991 ft) WNW of Marble Arch, which sits on a very large green roundabout marking the western end of Oxford Street. Connaught Street runs along is northern end.
Westbourne is an area in West London. It has a manorial history spanning many centuries, within a more broadly defined Paddington, before shedding its association in the mid-19th century. It is named after the west bourne, West Bourne, or River Westbourne, a Thames tributary which was encased in 19th-century London in the 1850s. The spring-fed stream and associated manor have led to the place names Westbourne Green, Westbourne Park and more narrowly: Westbourne Gardens, Westbourne Grove, Westbourne Park Road, Westbourne Park tube station, Westbourne Studios and the name of a public house.
St George's Fields are a former burial ground of St George's, Hanover Square, lying between Connaught Street and Bayswater Road in Tyburnia deconsecrated and sold off by the Church Commissioners in the 1970s to be built upon by The Utopian Housing Association, a housing trust.
Connaught Village is a commercial and residential area just west of Marble Arch and just north of Hyde Park within the City of Westminster, London. As part of the Hyde Park Estate, it is owned by the Church Commissioners of England. Numerous boutiques, designer shops and restaurants reside in Connaught Village and it is often referenced as a hidden gem that you can spend many hours meandering around. The couture store of famous shoemaker Jimmy Choo was previously located here. Tony Blair, former leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, lives in Connaught Square.
Tyburnia, a part of Paddington in London, originally developed following an 1824 masterplan drawn up by Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753–1827) to redevelop the historic lands of the Bishop of London, known as the Tyburn Estate, into a residential area to rival Belgravia. Tyburnia was the first part of Paddington to be developed.
Porchester Square is an archetypal-format, narrow London garden square in Bayswater on the cusp of inter-related Westbourne. It is lined with tall white Victorian classical architecture residential buildings.
George Gutch (1790-1894) was a British architect and to four successive Bishops of London surveyor for much of the Diocese's c. 500-acre (2.0 km2) southern strip of the parish of Paddington.
Hyde Park Square is a residential, tree-planted, garden square one block north of Hyde Park fronted by classical buildings, many of which are listed and marks a crossover of Lancaster Gate and Connaught Village neighbourhoods of Bayswater, London. It measures (internally) 200 by 500 feet, of which the bulk is the private communal garden – the rest is street-lit, pavemented streets with low railings in front of the houses. Connaught Street runs eastwards from the square towards the Edgware Road.
Cleveland Square is a private and gated garden square in the predominantly classically conserved Bayswater district of the City of Westminster, north of Central London's Hyde Park. The housing is in tall, tree-shaded rows, stuccoed and with pillared porches, with some discreet infilling of other housing behind.
Gloucester Terrace is a street in Central London in the vicinity of Paddington and Bayswater. Located in the City of Westminster, it runs northwards from Lancaster Terrace near to Lancaster Gate tube station and Hyde Park before curving round to meet Porchester Square around Westbourne. The southern section is close to the border between Tyburnia and Bayswater. It intersects with Craven Road, Chilworth Street, Cleveland Terrace, Bishop's Bridge Road and Orsett Terrace. Its northern section is close to the Great Western Main Line and Westway. Westbourne Terrace runs directly parallel to the east.
Connaught Street is a street in Central London. Located in the City of Westminster, it is part of the Tyburnia area of Paddington north of Hyde Park. It runs west to east from Hyde Park Square to the Edgware Road. It continues eastwards becoming Upper Berkeley Street in Marylebone. The street contains a mixture of commercial and residential properties, forming part of Connaught Village. Connaught Square and Albion Street are located on its southern side. The Duke of Kendal public house sits at the junction between Connaught Street and Kendal Street.
Albion Street is a residential street located in Central London in the City of Westminster. Part of the Tyburnia area, it runs southwards from Connaught Street to the Bayswater Road on the edge of Hyde Park. It is notable for its Regency architecture.