London’s famous Regent Street was designed by John Nash and constructed between 1813 and 1821 as a processional way for the Prince Regent The idea was to create an approach to the former Marylebone Park (which Nash, incidentally also laid out in 1811 as Regent’s Park), with Lower Regent Street leading to the Prince Regent’s residence – Carlton House.
Within greater London there soon followed a number (more than twenty) of other Regent Streets, Roads or whatevers. Plymouth’s Regent Street is contemporary with them and is another nod in the direction of the then fifty-something Prince George Augustus Frederick, the eldest son of George III who, between 1811 and 1820, served as regent during his father’s time of insanity. On 29 January 1820 the 81 year-old George III died and his son succeeded him as George IV.
One of the best know buildings in Plymouth’s Regent Street is the great grey school building that housed Sutton High School between 1926 and 1984, prior to that it had since its construction in the early 1890s been known as Regent Street School.
