CHAPTER IV 
REGENT’S PARK 
When Philomel begins to sing 
The grass grows green and flowers spring; 
Methinks it is a pleasant thing 
To walk on Primrose Hill. 
—Roxburgh Ballads, c. 1620. 
EGENT’S PARK has had but a 
transitory day of fashion, and his¬ 
tory has not crowded it with asso¬ 
ciations like the other Royal Parks. 
It is the largest and one of the most 
beautiful, yet there is something 
cold and less attractive about it. 
In spring, with its wealth of thorn 
trees, it has a delightfully rural appearance, and it pos¬ 
sesses many charms on close acquaintance. Its history 
as a Royal Park is as ancient as that of Hyde Park 
or St. James’s, but it remained a distant country sport¬ 
ing estate, and only assumed the form of a Park, in 
the modern sense of the word, less than a hundred 
years ago. 
In the dim distance of Domesday it formed part of 
the manor of Tybourne. Later on the manor became 
Marylebone or Mary le Bourne, the Church of St. Mary 
by the Burn, the brook in question being the Tyburn. 
The manor in Domesday is described as part of the 
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