Over on My London Your London I’ve an account of London: A Life In Maps, an exhibition continuing at the British Library until March 4. Really – see it if you can.

In that piece I cover the general history, but of course I couldn’t resist checking out all records of the area of Regent’s Park in which I now live (south-west of the park itself). In the 18th-century it was still open farmland, much of it owned by the Duke of Grafton. By 1794 there is a some settlement around the top of what is already called Tottenham Court Road, which extends north of its current end before turning into “Turnpike Lane” (now Hampstead Road) at the Hampstead Turnpike.

What is now the cluster of Indian restaurants in Drummond Street is roughly where there was a big dam, the “New River Reservoir”. What is now Stanhope St was called Brook St. The area now called Haymarket already had that title, probably for that practical purpose, I’d hazard a guess. And Munster Square and Clarence Gardens are arranged in their current form, probably I’d imagine with houses for the middle class with pretensions.

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