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This article is part of a guide to London from FT Globetrotter
All of London’s parks offer something special. Richmond Park is home to herds of Red and Fallow deer. Dazzling Nash terraces frame Regent’s Park. Hampstead Heath’s swimming ponds have a more dedicated following than any of the celebrities who live nearby.Â
Parks and green spaces cover nearly 18 per cent of the UK capital; you don’t have to venture far to enjoy one.
But our most famous lie across a swath of central London: Hyde Park and its adjoined sibling Kensington Gardens — royal parks with lakes, meadows and more than 7,000 plane, lime, chestnut and oak trees. For visitors to London, they might be a box to tick on a sightseeing list, but for locals and regulars it’s much more personal. They’re our back garden in the heart of town.
Hyde Park was established as a hunting ground for Henry VIII in 1536 and opened to the public a century later. Kensington Gardens was the western extent of Hyde Park until 1728, when Queen Caroline separated the two. At the time, Kensington Palace was the monarch’s preferred residence — and Caroline wanted to extend its grounds to keep the public out. (Today, royal enthusiasts can visit the palace, the official abode of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are occasionally spotted with their children at the park’s playgrounds too.)Â
For centuries, parties, fairs and celebrations for the city’s elite were hosted in Hyde Park. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the most renowned, organised by Prince Albert to showcase Victorian ingenuity and attended by 6m visitors and exhibitors from around the globe.
“Great numbers of the people of the world have visited and admired Hyde Park,†wrote the American author George M Towle in 1875. “There is no public ground in Europe more interesting or suggestive.â€
Today around 13m people visit the park annually, a meeting place of different ethnicities, cultures and religions — a place where everyone is welcome. London is not only one of the most visited cities on the planet but home to a large foreign-born population (almost 37 per cent of Londoners are from outside the UK). Having moved here from New York and hailing from Vancouver, two diverse cities in their own right, I am often awed sitting on the grass in the park and listening to the nearby chatter of half a dozen languages.Â
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens meet in the middle of the 625-acre rectangular space and its large body of water. They flow together seamlessly, though the Gardens are more formal, forested and only open during daylight hours. (Hyde Park is open from 5am until midnight.)
My heart lies with Kensington Gardens, where I’ve spent more weekends than not throughout the pandemic. Anchored by the palace to the west and the Round Pond in its middle, the Gardens have a plethora of trees to relax by. Their seasonal transformation has fastened my sense of time to reality as the weeks and months have otherwise blurred together.
Early on in the pandemic, as Covid fears began to take hold, the trees were barren — having lost their leaves before we knew coronavirus existed — which allowed the eye to see further across the grounds. There was almost no one there.Â
By the time the blossoms arrived, the park had become a battlefield in the social-distancing wars between joggers, cyclists and walkers. With summer, now our second of the pandemic, comes a canopy of saturated green foliage — and an easing of restrictions — transforming one the greatest city parks in the world into a surprisingly intimate space for pootling, picnics and small parties.Â
In the north-east corner of Kensington Gardens, the top of the parks’ great lake is punctuated by one of my favourite features: the Italian Gardens, a gift from Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. Grand and elaborate, they are made up of four water basins and a collection of stone and marble statues, fountains and urns — austere under the grey skies of winter, but utterly beautiful year round. You’ll often see mounted officers walking through (London’s Metropolitan Police has stables in the park), dozens of dog walkers struggling to keep their canines calm, people lounging on the park’s green- and white-striped chairs and children queueing for a cone from the Rolls-Royce ice-cream van.
The Italian Gardens are a testament to Victoria and Albert’s historic romance; at the opposite side of Kensington Gardens you’ll find another. At 53m tall, the Albert Memorial is one of London’s most ornate monuments, commissioned by Victoria after Albert’s death in 1861. The monument shows Albert holding the programme of the Great Exhibition and celebrates his interests in science, art and music. He looks on to the Royal Albert Hall, one of the UK’s most distinctive buildings and a wonderful venue for live music. The long flat pathway between the two is typically used for hockey games, personal-training sessions and chaos on weekends when dozens of children take skateboarding lessons.Â
The southern half of Hyde Park is to the east of Albert, defined by the Serpentine lake and bordered by some of London’s most expensive postcodes. Even the dogs on this side of the park are fancier. You’ll often encounter well-heeled walkers with twin chow-chows, prancing poodles or Afghan hounds with enviable coiffs. The other four-legged beasts to frequent these parts come from the UK’s Household Cavalry, a mounted regiment whose barracks are on the edge of the park. The soldiers occasionally can be seen riding along West Carriage Drive, the road that divides the two parks, holding up impatient drivers in expensive sports cars desperate to top London’s average speed of 7mph.
The banks of the Serpentine bring a flurry of activity: couples working their sea legs aboard pedal boats (available for rental), ducks, swans and other waterbirds waiting politely to be fed — and little humans happily indulging them. If you’re there early enough, you might catch a glimpse of the Serpentine Swimming Club, Britain’s oldest, plunging into the lido. (At the moment, it’s members only; in normal times the lido is open for public swimming during summer months and children are welcome to splash in the nearby Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain.)Â
Nearby, you’re likely to find the rollerbladers — a tribe of unabashed enthusiasts who have been slaloming here forever (or at least long before rollerblading became cool on TikTok).Â
At the opposite end of the park is the famous Speakers’ Corner, a place of protest since the 19th century, when it was set aside by parliament for public speaking. Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell were some of the historic figures to pontificate here. Still today you might see crowds gathered around a soapbox speaker — though with the opinion economy booming on Twitter, it is largely a tourist attraction.
From the entrance at Speakers’ Corner, across from bustling Oxford Street, you are greeted with Hyde Park’s meadowy expanse. On a recent visit it was buzzing with families enjoying picnics, friends catching up over a bottle of fizz, children climbing trees and flying kites, and Frisbee, football and volleyball games. The weather was rubbish but, after a long winter lockdown, no one seemed to care.
In normal times, this peaceful quadrant is taken over every summer by neon lights and large crowds — Hyde Park draws concertgoers in the hundreds of thousands to see a wide range of bands and singers that has included the Rolling Stones, the late Luciano Pavarotti and Taylor Swift. Colder months bring Winter Wonderland, a raucous mix of festive markets, amusement-park rides and performances.
Hyde Park’s festivals have caused consternation with local residents who lobbied for volume and time limits. During a 2012 show, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney famously had their microphones switched off for running over curfew. There are no exceptions to the rules — not even for The Boss.Â
It might be a while yet before Springsteen returns. But the park will be busy as Londoners young and old, from near and far, loll away the summer months. The trees will keep turning. And before long, the rest of the world will come back too.
Photography by Marco Kesseler
Which is of London’s many green spaces is your favourite? Tell us in the comments
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