Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hyde Park
Daily 5am-midnight •
T
0300 061 2000,
W
royalparks.gov.uk •
!
Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Knightsbridge or Lancaster Gate
Seized from the Church by Henry VIII to satisfy his desire for yet more hunting grounds,
Hyde Park
was first opened to the public by James I, when refreshments available included
“milk from a red cow”. Under Charles II, the park became a fashionable gathering place
for the beau monde, who rode round the circular drive known as the Ring, pausing to
gossip and admire each other's equipages. Its present appearance is mostly due to Queen
Caroline, an enthusiast for landscape gardens, who spent a great deal of George II's
money creating the park's main feature, the
Serpentine
lake.
Hangings, muggings and duels, the 1851 Great Exhibition and numerous public
events have all taken place here - and it's still a popular gathering point for pop
concerts in the summer, Christmas markets in the winter and political demonstrations
all year round. For the most part, however, Hyde Park is simply a wonderful open
space that allows you to lose all sight of the city beyond a few persistent tower blocks.
The southeast corner of the park contains two conventional tourist attractions:
Apsley
House
, housing a museum to the Duke of Wellington, and the triumphal
Wellington
Arch
, which you can now climb.
17
Marble Arch
Marble Arch
looks rather forlorn on a ferociously busy tra
c island in the treeless
northeastern corner of the park at the west end of Oxford Street. Designed in 1828 by
John Nash as a triumphal entrance for Buckingham Palace, it has suffered over the years:
the sculpted friezes intended to adorn it ended up on the palace, while the equestrian
statue of George IV, intended to surmount it, was carted off to Trafalgar Square. When
the palace was extended in the 1840s, the arch was moved to form an entrance to Hyde
Park, its upper chambers used as a police observation post. During the 1855 riot (see
below), a detachment of police emerged from the arch, like the Greeks from the Trojan
Horse, much to the surprise of the demonstrators. The arch has been joined recently by
a slightly surreal 33ft-high bronze sculpture of a horse's head by Nic Fiddian-Green.
Tyburn Convent
8 Hyde Park Place • Daily 6.30am-8.30pm • Guided tours 10.30am, 3.30 & 5.30pm • Free •
W
tyburnconvent.org.uk •
!
Marble Arch
Despite appearance, Marble Arch stands on the most historically charged spot in Hyde
Park, as it marks the site of
Tyburn gallows
, the city's main public execution spot from
at least 1196 until 1783 (when the action moved to Newgate). There's a plaque on the
tra
c island in the middle of Edgware Road where it joins Bayswater Road marking
the approximate site of the gallows, where around fifty thousand lost their lives. Of
these, some 105 were Catholics, martyred during the Reformation, in whose memory
the
Tyburn Convent
was established in 1902. It's run by a group of cloistered French
Benedictine nuns who are happy to show visitors round the basement shrine, which
contains a mock-up of the Tyburn gibbet over the main altar, and various pictures and
relics of the martyrs. The house next door to (and now part of ) the convent, no. 10, is
reputedly London's smallest, measuring just three and a half feet across.
Speakers' Corner
W
speakerscorner.net •
!
Marble Arch
In 1855 an estimated 250,000 people gathered in the northeastern corner of the park to
protest against the Sunday Trading Bill (Karl Marx was among the crowd and thought it
was the beginning of the English Revolution), and ever since it has been one of London's
most popular spots for political demos. In 1872 the government licensed free assembly at
Speakers' Corner
, a peculiarly English Sunday-morning tradition that continues to this day,
featuring a motley assortment of ranters and hecklers. Despite the park authorities' best
attempts, the largest demonstration in London's history took place in this section of the
park in 2003 when over a million people turned up to try and stop the war against Iraq.
