After its mention in Domesday Book, and the subsequent gift by Geoffrey de Mandeville of the Manor of Eia, Hyde Park remained Church land for close on four and a half centuries, during which period it had little history. It was the lardour of the monks. Lying remote from the town, chroniclers of the mediæval ages would probably have passed it over with barely a word of notice but for two associations, one grim and dreadful, the other pleasant enough. The former, at least, has carried the name of Tyburn down through centuries as a word of blackest omen.
By the side of the burn where it trickled down into the Park, stood the common gallows, of which much more will be said in another chapter. From springs feeding the burn, London obtained its first systematised water supply, which served the needs of a portion of the town for two or three centuries.
A few remote cottages were placed about the burn, and a little village grew up, but at the close of the fourteenth century it was deserted. Small wonder! The setting up of the gallows in its neighbourhood was sufficient cause for abandonment, within hearing, as the hamlet was, of the shrieks of the dying, and in sight of the processions that wended their way from the City to the gibbet. It was an age steeped in superstition, when people of high and low degree were staunch believers in witchcraft. Many a simple countryman must have been chilled with horror at the weird sounds he heard when the wind swept over the scaffold at night, or in his disordered imagination he saw, amid the darkness, the ghosts of victims return to visit the scenes where a violent death had ended their tortures and sufferings.
So complete was the demoralisation of the district, that the church built near Tyburn was the constant scene of robberies. Bells, vestments, books, images, and other ornaments were stolen, and in consequence, in the year 1400, Robert Braybrooke, Bishop of London, granted a licence to pull down the edifice. This was done, and a new one was erected farther back from Tyburn Road, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the words “le-bourne” being added to the name of Mary to distinguish it from other churches dedicated to the Virgin, hence Marylebone.
Pepys writes of the district as “Marrow-bones,” and this appears to have been the corruption in use in his day, as the form is often to be found in the early eighteenth-century newspapers, at which time “Marrow-bone-Fields” seems to have been a popular pleasure resort.
From Tyburn the famous Great Conduit was fed. This remarkable enterprise is of more than passing interest, as it is among the earliest examples in this country of which record survives of a municipal water supply. The story of its origin is quaintly given by Stow, who used such authorities as were at hand or traditions which he could himself pick up in Queen Elizabeth’s reign:
“The said River of Wels, the running water of Walbrooke, the Boornes afore named, and other the fresh waters that were in and about this Citie, being in process of time by incroachment for buildings, and heightnings of grounds mightily increased; they were forced to seeke fresh waters abroad, whereof some, at the request of King Henrie the third, in the 21 yeere of his reigne, were (for the profit of the Citie, and good of the whole Realme thither repairing; to wit for the poore to drink, and the rich to dresse their meat) granted to the Citizens, and their Successors, by one Gilbert Sandford, with liberty to convey water from the towne of Teybourne, by pipes of lead into their Citie.”
The date thus ascribed to the origin of the Great Conduit was 1237-8.
Near the close of the fourteenth century there was a large cistern, castellated with stone, in the Chepe—modern Cheapside. The expense of the works seem to have been heavy. Not only were various specific sums set aside, but foreign merchants visiting our shores were actually made to share the cost of the enterprise. Northouck says, writing of the year 1236: