Regent's Park and Primrose Hill: Circles and Hill Streets

The Outer Circle is not a normal road

The Outer Circle rings Regent's Park and looks, on a map, like a convenient orbital. It is a Royal Parks road with its own regime: stopping and waiting are restricted along most of it, the surface is shared with a heavy flow of cyclists and runners, and the crossings through the park at Chester Road and York Bridge have their own arrangements. Treating it as a bypass around the Marylebone and Camden traffic is a common mistake.

What it does very well is give access to the terraces and villas that face it. What it does not do is provide anywhere for a car to stand, so an arrival at a park-facing address is a set-down followed by the vehicle moving to a legal spot on one of the roads leading away.

The Nash terraces and their service roads

Cornwall Terrace, Cumberland Terrace, Chester Terrace, Hanover Terrace and Sussex Place present a formal stucco frontage to the park, but the working entrances are usually behind, off a private service road or through a gated forecourt. That is a genuine advantage: where the service road is accessible, the car sets down away from the Outer Circle entirely. Confirming which terrace, which number and whether access is from the front or the rear removes most of the difficulty.

Zoo traffic and the northern edge

The zoo sits on the northern edge of the park and generates strong family traffic at weekends and through school holidays, concentrated on the Outer Circle near the Broad Walk and on Prince Albert Road. Prince Albert Road itself is a useful east to west link along the top of the park, connecting St John's Wood to Camden, and it carries far more traffic than its residential appearance suggests. Parking there is controlled and generally full.

• Weekend and school-holiday mornings are the heaviest for zoo-related traffic
• Prince Albert Road is a through route, not a quiet residential street
• Park gates for pedestrians close at dusk, which changes walking routes in winter

Primrose Hill village streets

North of Prince Albert Road, Primrose Hill is a small grid of Victorian terraces on a slope. Regent's Park Road curves through the middle and carries the shops and restaurants; Chalcot Square, Chalcot Crescent, Fitzroy Road, Princess Road and Sharpleshall Street run off it. These streets are narrow, parked on both sides and permit-controlled, and several have a rise steep enough that a driver will choose the direction of approach deliberately.

The railway cutting to the north limits crossings, so movement between Primrose Hill and Camden or Chalk Farm goes through a small number of points. That is why a journey of a few hundred metres can require a wider loop than expected, particularly when Gloucester Avenue is busy.

Where to meet the car

For the Primrose Hill shops and restaurants, Regent's Park Road works for a brief set-down but not for waiting. Gloucester Avenue and Princess Road are usually better collection points. For the park itself, the gates on Prince Albert Road and the Outer Circle each serve a different part, so naming the gate rather than the park saves a long walk at the end of a journey.

Plan your chauffeur journey

London Chauffeurs provides itinerary-led private travel for airport transfers, executive travel, private aviation, events and long-distance UK journeys. Availability and pricing are confirmed for the requested itinerary.

Frequently asked questions