Hyde Park (Part 2) – The lungs of London

For around 160 years during the 16^th and 17^th centuries Whitehall Palace was the main London home of the monarchs but in 1689 the royal residence moved to Kensington. Hyde Park was reduced by 300 acres to around half its size in 1727 when Queen Caroline, wife of George II, enlarged the gardens of Kensington Palace. A dividing ditch known as a ‘ha-ha’ separated the park and the garden. Hyde Park remained open to the public. Kensington Gardens became a private space for the royal family and their guests, only gradually opening to the public from the end of the 18th century. The ha-ha boundary was dispensed with during the 19^th century and thus the two parks were effectively reunited in all but name.

Caroline had the Serpentine lake created by damming the Westbourne Brook, which was completed in 1733, to provide a scenic view from their palace garden. The eastern section of the lake (the Serpentine) is in Hyde Park, while the western section (the Long Water) is in Kensington Gardens. The Serpentine Bridge marks the boundary between the two parts. (The Westbourne continues its journey down to the Thames through Chelsea. It has long been covered over but the conduit through which it flows can be seen passing above the tracks at Sloane Square station).

There had been a lodge in Hyde Park as far back to at least the reign of Queen Anne, celebrated for its cheesecake and syllabubs. The site was given by George III in 1794 to the Humane Society, who from 1834 kept a building there for the purpose of providing medical treatment to those rescued from the Serpentine. The building was badly damaged by bombing in 1940 and was not replaced.

The Serpentine froze over during the coldest winters. The first occasion was in 1776. A fair was held on the ice in 1815. In January 1826 a Mr. Henry Hunt drove his father’s van across the ice, drawn by four horses, in a bet for 100 guineas. It was described as the “Extraordinary Exploit, or Crossing the Serpentine”.

When the Serpentine was created it flowed out at the western end into an additional pool. The pool stretched as far as the edge of the park and was bridged by Rotten Row. The section south of Rotten Row was infilled in 1844 by William Cubitt, with the overflow passing over artificial rocks. During the 1870s and ‘80s this area was transformed into a delightful sub-tropical garden by Lord Redesdale, known as the Dell.

The public were certainly swimming in the Serpentine during the 18^th century. In the 1860s it was formalised with the foundation of the Serpentine Swimming Club and the London Swimming Club, both based on the south side of the lake. The SSC continues to hold many competitions but is probably most famous for its Peter Pan Cup each Christmas Day. Boating on the lake began in 1847.

Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park are bordered on their northern side by Bayswater Road, the former Via Trinobantina, the Roman London to Oxford road. At its eastern end, at the north-east corner of Hyde Park, Bayswater Road meets Oxford Street. It was there at Tyburn, what is now Marble Arch, that until 1783 public hangings took place. Along the south side of Hyde Park was, in the 18^th century, the Kensington turnpike, now Kensington Road and Knightsbridge.

Along the east side of Hyde Park was Tyburn Lane (later renamed Park Lane), which was a simple country track with a high wall separating it from the park. It gradually became a fashionable place for residences facing the park. With increasing traffic, the Kensington Turnpike Trust took over the road’s maintenance in 1741. By the 19^th century some of London’s grandest houses stood along the eastern side of the street on land owned by the Duke of Westminster.

During the 1790s, in the reign of King George III, barracks were built on the southern edge of Hyde Park to house the King’s mounted guards, which was convenient for exercising their horses in the park. A riding school was added in 1857, designed by Philip Hardwick, replaced later in the century by new buildings by Thomas Henry Wyatt. The current buildings by Sir Basil Spence were completed in 1970.

A great fair took place in the summer of 1814 in Hyde Park, St. James’s Park and Green Park to celebrate the apparent victory over Napoleon, and also the centenary of the start of the Hanoverian dynasty. Huge crowds of visitors were able to witness three naval battle re-enactments on the Serpentine using a fleet of small-scale ships built specially for the occasion at Woolwich. Two of the mock battles were Nelson’s victories at the Nile and Trafalgar, and the third was defeating the Americans at sea that year.

In the same year, the Countess of Spencer and friends, known as the Ladies of England, had the idea of creating a statue to commemorate the victories of the Duke of Wellington (a year before the Battle of Waterloo). A fund raised £10,000 and the sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott was commissioned. An 18 feet tall fighting figure of Achilles was produced modelled on a figure in Rome and with a likeness of the head of the Duke himself. It was believed to be the largest bronze statue made in Europe since antiquity until that time, created using 33 tons of bronze melted down from French cannons. The original model was completely naked, which became a major talking point at the time, with cartoons produced by George Cruickshank of women enjoying the view. A strategically placed fig-leaf was then added. A space was provided in the south-east corner of the park, close to the Duke of Wellington’s home of Apsley House. The statue was too large to enter through any of the park’s gates so a wall was demolished to pass through. It was unveiled in 1822 on the seventh anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, the first statue in Hyde Park.

In 1825 a French visitor to London wrote:

The public promenades are St. James’s Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, which communicate with each other… [They] are to me the Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, and the Jardin des Plantes united. On Sundays crowds of carriages which repair thither, and the gentlemen of fashion who exhibit their horsemanship with admirable dexterity in the ride, remind me of the Long Champs… Sheep graze tranquilly in Hyde Park, where it is pleasing to see the deer bounding about.

During the 18^th century London had expanded, with the new suburbs of St. James’s, Soho, and Mayfair reaching, the eastern side of Hyde Park. Those approaching from the south-west considered the turnpike gate on the Kensington road outside the south-east corner of the park to be the start of London. (The adjacent Apsley House is still known as ‘No. 1, London’). There were plans to build a new entrance to the city there, which came to nothing, but the turnpike gate was adorned with elegant lodges in 1791 to designs by Henry Holland.

When he ascended the throne in 1820, George IV decided to make Buckingham Palace the main royal residence in London. He had a grand triumphal arch designed by John Nash as its entrance, based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, known as the ‘Marble Arch’.

George decided on a second arch at the Kensington Turnpike as the gateway to Green Park, which would be the approach to the palace from the west. Thus, a royal route would be created from Buckingham Palace to Hyde Park. Decimus Burton, the architect at the Office for Woods and Forests, was working on a series of lodges and gates in Hyde Park, as well as railings to replace the surrounding wall. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, briefed Burton on the King’s wishes. The great archway, as well as a triple-passage entrance screen into the park adjoining Apsley House, were completed in 1830. In 1846 the triumphal arch was topped with a giant bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington and thus the structure became known as the Wellington Arch. Somewhat out of proportion to the arch, the statue failed to achieve public acceptance.

In the late 19^th century London was becoming increasingly busy with road traffic. In 1883 a new road junction was created at the junction of Piccadilly and Park Lane. The Wellington Arch was moved so that it was aligned with Constitution Hill, and its much-derided statue of the Duke of Wellington removed and re-housed at a barracks at Aldershot. In 1912 it was replaced on the arch by the quadriga, a chariot pulled by four horses, designed by Captain Adrian Jones, which remains today.

Buckingham Palace was re-modelled in the mid-19^th century. Nash’s gateway, the Marble Arch, was by then too narrow for carriages to pass through. In 1851 it was moved to Tyburn where the public hangings had previously taken place, at the junction of Park Lane, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road and Edgware Road.

The most spectacular event to ever take place in Hyde Park was the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was a pet project of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. A great glass building was erected to contain the event, known as the Crystal Palace. During a period of nearly six months around four million people visited, making well over six million visits. When the exhibition finished the Crystal Palace was transferred to south-east London as the centrepiece of a permanent venue for entertainment. (The building was destroyed by fire in 1936).

During the 19^th century Hyde Park became a place where protests would take place. In 1855 shopkeepers decided to hold an open-air meeting in the park to protest about Lord Robert Grosvenor’s Sunday Trading Bill, but the meeting was forbidden by the Commissioner of Police. There soon followed several riotous gatherings, however, with police called to restore order.

When a crowd gathered to support the Italian republican Garibaldi in 1862 it ended in bloodshed. The Reform League were refused permission to hold a rally in the park in 1866 but they went ahead anyway. When their entry was blocked by police they tore down the railings in anger and three days of riots followed. The following year 150,000 marchers defied a government ban, the police failed to intervene, and Home Secretary Spencer Walpole resigned.

When a request was next submitted to the Commissioner of Police he arranged with the Commissioner of Works for a place where meetings could be held. The spot in the north-east corner of the park close to Marble Arch became known as ‘Orators’ Corner’ or ‘Speakers’ Corner’. In 1872 the right to protest in Hyde Park was formalised by Act of Parliament and Speakers’ Corner has since remained a place where people of different opinions go on Sunday mornings to voice their viewpoint. Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and George Orwell have all spoken there.

A ban on protests at Trafalgar Square was lifted during the 1880s and that increasingly became the favoured place for large public demonstrations and, occasionally, riots. Hyde Park was left as a space for relaxation and entertainment.

In the 19^th century horse-riders could gallop along ‘the Row’, as they called Rotten Row. Large gatherings of carriages could occasionally be seen along ‘the Drive’, the South Carriage Drive that ran parallel with Rotten Row. The Whip Club began to meet in the park in 1808.

Later, the Coaching Club organised an annual parade of the best-presented horses and four-in-hand carriages along the Ladies’ Mile, the driveway along the north side of the Serpentine. Each carriage was pulled by four horses. Large crowds of spectators came to view and discuss the entrants.

Mr and Mrs J. Lewis Barned often visited Hyde Park with their pet terrier and they befriended Mr. Winbridge, the park gatekeeper. When the dog passed away in 1881 Winbridge gave permission for it to be buried in the back garden of Victoria Lodge, which stands beside a gate into Hyde Park from Bayswater Road.

The Duke of Cambridge must have heard of this because when his Yorkshire terrier was killed by a carriage Winbridge buried it alongside the Lewis Berned’s dog. The idea caught on and a pet cemetery grew at Victoria Lodge. The graveyard closed for new burials in 1903, by which time there were 300 graves. Their tombstones remain there today.

Hyde Park continued to evolve during the 20^th century. Park Lane was widened in the 1960s by reducing the east side of the park by 20 acres and appropriating its East Carriage Drive. At the same time a large car park was created beneath the north-eastern section of the park. A new gate from Park Lane was created in 1995 to honour Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Between 1969 and 1971 a series of free rock concerts were held in the park, headlined by groups such as the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, attracting sizable audiences. In more recent years these have continued in the park in the form of large, commercial, music festivals.

During the 1970s and ‘80s London was regularly targeted by the Irish Republican Army terrorist group. Members of the Queen’s Household Mounted Regiment based at the Knightsbridge barracks were riding in the park in July 1982 when a nail bomb was detonated in a car as they were passing. Four soldiers and seven horses were killed, and other soldiers were injured.

A fountain in memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales who died in a car crash in 1997, was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth in 2004. Located just to the south of the Serpentine it takes the form of a large oval stream, allowing visitors to stand in the flowing water.

In a speech in Parliament in 1808 William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, described Hyde Park as “the lungs of London”. The capital now has many other parks and public areas but Hyde Park remains as popular as ever to Londoners and visitors.

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