Roughly speaking, Hyde Park is about 3¼ miles round, or covers an extent of 360 acres. This is by no means enormous, not as large as the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, nor as wild as Thier gaarten in Berlin, but there are trees in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens which far surpass in bulk and beauty the trees of either of these Continental rivals. We have in Hyde Park none of the “ancestral statues” such as Berlin has to represent the noble army of the Kaiser’s forebears. Our Park is not quite like the Castellana in Madrid, where fashion drives from the Prado during the dusk, shut up in truly Spanish fashion in closed carriages, or the Prater in Vienna, where so many beautiful women may be seen; nor is it nearly as large as the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, which, however, is more of wild common than cultivated land.
Hyde Park differs from all these; and Hyde Park stands within a huge city, and not a mile or two outside. It is not newly planted or freshly made, and some of the trees within its railings, dating back through many centuries, would be hard to rival in any land. So interesting, indeed, are the trees and shrubs and plants, the birds and beasts, that a list will be found in an appendix.
At an early period in the history of Great Britain, this district must have been part of the vast forest that lay inland from the little British settlement, founded on the banks of the Thames before the Romans landed. These early inhabitants of London lived in rude huts, probably stretching from where the Tower now stands to Dowgate, their simple tenements forming the beginning of the present great throbbing heart of the Empire.
It is probably true that at the time of the Saxons, parts of the Park of to-day were cultivated in the primitive fashion of the race; while the forests afforded good feeding-ground for the hogs which later formed such an important item in the farming operations of our ancestors.
It must be remembered that a forest in ancient times meant not only a thickly wooded area, but also wide open glades and spaces, in which simple homesteads nestled and cattle grazed. In these the Saxons, according to the sparse records of the period, turned their attention to their “wyrt-tun” (plant-enclosure) or “wyrt-geard” (plant-yard), from which probably originated the modern kitchen garden. The leek seems to have been the favourite object of culture as a vegetable, the name leac being a pure Anglo-Saxon word, and in the old MSS. the terms “leac-tun” and “leac-ward” are equivalent to the modern designations “kitchen garden” and “gardener.” The rose and the lily are mentioned; but whether cultivated or not is a matter of uncertainty, for probably the only plants cherished and propagated were those which provided material for food, or had medicinal qualities of value.
Later, as will be seen, an orchard stood in Hyde Park, and in due course many other queer institutions and customs within that field will be disclosed, for Hyde Park has, indeed, had a curious history; so curious that it reads more like fiction than fact.
As Hyde Park, however, its importance really began under Henry VIII., who seized it from the Church. Then it became Hyde Park for the first time; before that it was merely grazing land and ditches of no particular interest, known as “The Manor of Hyde.”
Crown hunting lands were called Forests, Chases, and Parks.
Forests were portions of land consisting both of woodland and pasture circumscribed by certain bounds, within which the right of hunting was reserved exclusively for the King, and subject to a code of special laws, often of great severity, and a special staff of officers—Verderers, Regarders, Agistors, Foresters, and Woodwards.
A Chase was, like a Forest, unenclosed, but it had no special code of laws, offenders being subject to the Civil Law, and its custodians were only keepers and woodwards.