The Regent's Park

This guide to The Regent's Park in London opens with John Nash's grand design for the Prince Regent, who dreamed of turning an old royal hunting ground into the finest pleasure garden in Europe when the park opened to the public in 1835. It then turns to a single January afternoon in 1867, when hundreds of skaters crowded the frozen boating lake and the ice gave way beneath them, sending spectators scrambling along the bank for anything that could serve as a lifeline. Picture that shoreline as you walk the lake's edge today.