The south-eastern tip of the then-rural parish, being the closest to London, was the first part to be affected by a building act of 1795.

Successful schemes for the Marylebone side of Edgware Road influenced not only the decision to build on the Paddington Estate lands but to some extent the layout devised by the bishop’s surveyor Samuel Pepys Cockerell. The key to Cockerell’s plan was a wide avenue running north-east to link the Uxbridge Road (Bayswater Road) with the western end of the New Road (later Marylebone Road). Traffic would thus be diverted and the proposed residential area could be separated by the avenue from the industrial belt around the new canal basin where building materials could be brought.

Cockerell’s plans had a grandiose nature with their lavish use of space, although some changes were made: Connaught Square had not originally been included and Cockerell’s own design for a classical church on the axis of a proposed ’polygon’ was not put into effect. His successor George Gutch, formerly surveyor to the Grand Junction Canal Comapny, made further changes, although he still catered for the rich, by introducing more squares and larger houses. The polygon was partly filled by the Gothic St. John’s church, built 1829-32, and neighbouring houses, leaving Cambridge Square to the north and Oxford Square to the south; a projected Polygon Street, running south-westward past a single square towards Lancaster Gate, was made to border Gloucester and Sussex squares; the proposed west end of Berkeley Street West was widened to form Hyde Park Square. A straight terrace, Hyde Park Gardens, was substituted for the crescent which was to have faced the park.

Hyde Park Gardens was designed by John Crake, with a mews behind the entrances to the north and the main rooms facing the park across a large strip of communal garden. The same arrangement was used in Gloucester Square, where in the 1840s new houses by George Ledward Taylor faced the central garden, with their entrances in the approach roads behind. The new emphasis on gardens, marking a shift from status to amenity, was to be copied in both Kensington and Bayswater. Hyde Park Gardens is now listed Grade II in two groups on the National Heritage List for England.

Hyde Park Gardens Mews lies behind the houses and originally served as stables for Hyde Park Gardens.

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Main source:	A History of the County of Middlesex | British History Online
	Further citations and sources