Less than 10 minutes’ walk from London’s Oxford Circus is the beautiful Portland Place, Marylebone. The design of the road is more in keeping with the wide boulevards of Paris. The street was laid out in the 1770s and is thought to be so wide (33 metres/110 feet) as to not obscure the views of the Regent’s Park at the North end.
The BBC to the South 
The Regent’s Park to the North
As you might imagine, most of the terraced houses are now home to company headquarters, embassies, professional bodies and charities. (Personally, I’m always uncomfortable discovering charitable HQs in extremely expensive areas of town – it makes me think that too much of a charity’s income is possibly being spent in the wrong place. I’m looking at you, RAF Benevolent Fund.)
75 Portland Place 
71 Portland Place
Portland Place has had many famous residents down the years – I was delighted to find a blue plaque for Frances Hodgson Burnett (I loved her books when I was a child – The Secret Garden, A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy).
The address has also appeared in many novels – Richard Hannay lived here in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps to name one.
The price of property is ludicrously expensive – a quick look on Zoopla revealed a 4-bed flat on sale for £6,950,000 or a cheaper 2-bed flat for £1,430,000. I won’t be moving in any time soon. 🙂
I began and ended my walk at Oxford Circus Tube station. Duration of walk: 1 hour.
This West London Life 
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