Hyde Perk

Welcome to this lore channel. You join us here today in the lovely Hyde Park and that's what we're going to be talking about today, another in our series of Royal Parks of London. And this started its life off and belonged to Westminster Abbey about 900 years ago. It was mentioned in the Doomsday Book as well. It was purchased by that notorious King Henry VIII as a hunting ground and here is the story of Hyde Park. Welcome to London. It's around the time the Doomsday Book, about 900 years ago, the area became Hyde Park was part of the Manor of Ea. It belonged to the monks who were in Westminster Abbey. There were lots of meadows, there were lots of trees and there would have been deers, boars and wild boars roaming about. The Westbourne stream which now flows underground across the area on its way between Hampstead and the River Thames itself. It was in 1536 that King Henry VIII seized the Manor from the monks in the dissolution of the monasteries. He sold some of the land but turned the rest into a vast hunting park that stretched from Westminster to Kensington. A fence was put around his new park and he dammed the Westbourne stream to make a drinking pond for the deers. Here Royal Hunts were organised to entertain ambassadors and visiting dignitaries. Visitors could also watch from grandstands when they enjoyed great feasts in temporary banqueting houses as well. The traditions of hunting continued with Queen Elizabeth I. She also reviewed her troops in Hyde Park on the Rayground, a flat area that's now next to Park Lane. The park remained very much unchanged until around about 1625 when Charles I became King. He created a circuit track called the Ring where members of the Royal Family could drive their carriages. The park was open to the public in 1637 and it became one of the fashionable places to be seen, particularly on holidays such as May Day. It was during the English Civil War that parliamentary troops built forts in the park and they dug defensive earthworks on the east side and they helped defend the city of Westminster from the royalist attacks. These earthworks, there'still evidence of them on the Ray's Bank next to Park Lane today. When Charles II was restored to the monarchy in 1660 Hyde Park became a royal park again and the new King Charles replaced the wooden fence with a brick wall and he restocked the park with deer and organised great carriage parades. There were larger changes when William and Mary became King and Queen in 1689. They bought the old Nottingham House on the western edge of the park. It was renamed to Kensington, a processional route was created through the park. It was lit by 300 oil lamps and was a first road in England to be artificially lit at night. The road was called Root Droy or Kings Road and it soon became corrupted into Rotten Row. Many of the features you see in today's Hyde Park were created in the 18th century by Queen Caroline, a very keen gardener. In 1728 she took almost 300 acres from Hyde Park and that made up Kensington Gardens which she separated the two parks by a long ditch or a ha. Queen Caroline established a large lake which she called the Serpentine by damming the River Westbourne. At the time artificial lakes were usually long and very straight. The Serpentine was one of the first created in England that was designed to look as natural as possible and that was soon copied in parks and gardens all over the country. It was in 1814 the Serpentine became the centrepiece of celebrations of the victory of the Battle of Trafalgar that happened in 1805. Hyde Park remained largely untouched for over a hundred years until the 1820s when it was King George IV who ordered another makeover. He employed Decimus Burton to create a mon It was a tri We have another video all about the Wellington Arch elsewhere on the channel. It was around this time that John Renny also built a bridge across a Serpentine and Hyde Park was formally split from Kensington Gardens next door by road we still call West Carriage Drive. One of the biggest events to happen in Hyde Park happened in 1851 when the great exhibition was here between May and November of that year. A great palace, a crystal palace, was built in the park itself, 1850 feet long and 103 feet high and it also encompassed a lot of the mature trees that were growing in the park at the time but we'll do another video all about the crystal palace elsewhere on the channel. The park has also hosted some of the most iconic concerts in history. The Rolling Stones, Pavarotti, Pink Floyd have all played here. There's even the BBC Proms in the park and there's also a celebration for the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela. A darker side of history on the 20th of July 1982 in Hyde Park a bomb was detonated by the IRA. The explosion killed four soldiers at the Blues and Royals and seven horses. One of the horses that survived the attack was called Sefton. He was subsequently featured in a television program and he was also awarded Horse of the Year at that year's Horse of the Year show. Hyde Park was also at the birth of films. It was William Frieze Green who had a studio not far from here in Piccadilly and would actually use, I think it was Actually Gate was one of the first moving pictures that was actually shot in the world and it was here in Hyde Park. Other films have been shot around Hyde Park as well and I've got my little list here to remind me. One of my favourite films as a child was Genevieve all about the vintage car race that starts in Hyde Park and ends up in Brighton. Other films that were made in around here around the world in 80 days there was quite a few scenes shot around here especially with some of the soldiers marching to the park and I do believe there was another film called The Million Pound Note that was made around 1954 I think with Gregory Peck and they shot some of the scenes in here especially at the start of the film when he was walking through and again it was a guardsman marching along. Other films another one favourite of mine with Michael Cain 1965 I think it was the Ipcrest file was shot in and around here where else Oh a touch of class with Glenda Jackson this is where George Siegel taught her how to play baseball and that was a film she won her second Academy Award for and we've also had of course it wouldn't be Hyde Park and around here if it hadn't been filming for Peter Pan and there you go I'm going to stop waffling now thanks very much for watching we do hope you enjoy these videos and if you do please subscribe if you want to know when videos are uploaded there is a notification bell just down below and if you want to see when what we do outside this channel then please go to hislaw. co. uk see about a walking tour of London or have a look down below and see about James's YouTube channel which is called Last Line Films.