The first gate in the Bayswater Road, starting from Kensington Gardens, is called the Victoria Gate, and it is opposite Sussex Place—there is an entrance by the drinking fountain—but there is no other gate till Cumberland Gate, or the Marble Arch, as it is more generally called. Turning down Park Lane we have first Grosvenor Gate, and then Stanhope Gate; whilst on the Knightsbridge side is the principal entrance, or Hyde Park Corner. Next comes Albert Gate, the roadway of which was finished and opened to the public on April 6th, 1842. The present gates were not then erected, nor the noble mansions which stand on either side of the entrance. Then comes the Prince of Wales’ Gate, and the Alexandra Gate—both modern entrances in the Park—and are among the many improvements effected in Queen Victoria’s reign.
At its commencement, the Park was not altogether a place of beauty, or of “sweetness and light”—gravel used to be dug there, as we see by the following letter to The Times, Oct. 18th, 1838:—“I beg through your columns to remonstrate with the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, on the extreme negligence of leaving the gravel pit in Hyde Park in its present dangerous state. Two sides of it are very deep and precipitous, without any fence whatever to protect the unwary traveller, when darkness conceals the danger from him. I wonder, Sir, that fatal accidents do not nightly happen; if neck or limbs escape fracture in the fall, there is now water enough in the pit to drown anyone stunned by the accident.”
There is a letter in The Times of April 11, 1839, from Mr. I. C. Loudon, the eminent authority on gardening—speaking of the improvements which had taken place in the Park during the past five or six years; how the pasture had been renovated by manuring, and other means, the carriage roads had been altered, the footpaths gravelled, and greatest of all, in his estimation, the number of single trees which had been planted in different situations; but he anathematises the planting them in clumps, as the Commissioners of Woods and Forests were then doing. Probably this generation, who have benefited by the Commissioners’ planting, will not endorse Mr. Loudon’s opinion, but then letters to The Times are not always temperate, vide the following—in that paper of Feb. 13, 1844:—
“Sir, permit me, through your columns, to call the attention of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to a serious nuisance in Hyde Park, which, if continued and increased, will be a permanent injury to the Park and its neighbourhood. A large excavation has been made in the south-western side of the Park, for the purpose of procuring gravel; and this excavation, extending over more than an acre of ground, and 15 or 20 feet deep, is being filled up with the refuse from a nightman’s or dustman’s yard. The stench which proceeds from the spot, whilst the work is in progress, is of a most pestiferous description; but this is not the worst of the mischief. The real damage is in altering the character of the superficial strata; so that, hereafter, the moisture which heretofore drained off through the gravel, will be retained near the surface, and generate miasma.”
Then came the grievance of so called “encroachment”—and a gentleman asks in The Times of March 21, 1845: “Why have several hundred yards of Hyde Park been enclosed during the last weeks—not by a low wooden rail, but a high iron fence? This encroachment is making in the space between Albert Gate and the Piccadilly Gate; and, by it, the public must be for ever excluded. Is it to be planted, or converted into a garden for the benefit of the twin giants,[59] untenanted as yet, after the precedent set some years ago of taking a considerable plot of ground between Stanhope Street Gate and the Piccadilly one, for the exclusive advantage of a very few houses in Hamilton Place and Park Lane?”
And the same gentleman in another letter (March 27, 1845) says: “The expense, also, of maintaining these enclosures is very heavy, for not less than £500 a year is spent on the small plot between Stanhope Gate and Piccadilly. This outlay seems enormous, but the authority on which it rests is unquestionable, and it furnishes, on the score of economy, a strong argument for its restoration to the Park, from which it was taken about twenty years ago. This concession would be a gracious act on the part of the Crown, save much charge, and be highly estimated by the people. So little was the public health and pleasure considered formerly, that a plan was proposed by the Woods and Forests, when presided over by Mr. Huskisson, for building a line of houses from the reservoir, near Grosvenor Gate, towards Piccadilly, and the aggression was only quelled by Lord Sudeley, and another member of the House of Commons.”
From the grumbles, it is refreshing to turn to the improvements—and in April, 1845, upwards of 150 labourers were employed for some time in levelling the grass, new gravelling the paths, and generally making very considerable improvements throughout the whole of Hyde Park. On the 8th August, same year, the erection of the new iron gates at the Albert Gate entrance was completed, and the stags appeared to public gaze.
In 1851, the Park had to be set in order—for the Great Exhibition, and some old established privileges had to give way—one of which was the famous case of Ann Hicks, which came before the House of Commons on July 29, 1851. The following is the report in Hansard:—
“Mr. Bernal Osborne wished to ask the noble lord, the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, whether Ann Hicks held a house in Hyde Park by the gift of George II., or by what tenure she occupied the house from which she had been evicted? and, also, whether the noble lord had permitted any other house to be erected in the Park?
“Lord Seymour said, that in answer to the first question of the hon. gentleman, he had to state that Ann Hicks did not hold any house by the gift of George II. or of any other Royal personage at all. The first time he (Lord Seymour) ever heard of her claim to a house as the gift of any Royal personage, was a few weeks ago. In 1843, Ann Hicks, like several other persons, had a little stall, where she sold apples and ginger-bread in the Park. Previous to that, she had occupied one of the old conduits there. She subsequently wrote to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, and requested leave to build a place to lock up her ginger-beer bottles in; and after some correspondence with the Commissioners, they told her she might have a wooden stand, the same as some persons had near where the cows are kept in St. James’s Park. Shortly afterwards, she wrote to the Commissioners again, saying she was very much obliged by their reply, but that she should like to build her stall of brick, instead of wood, as a wooden one was insecure, and liable to be broken open; but in all those applications she never made any allusion to any Royal gift, but always rested her claim on her having fifteen children to support.