Abstract
THIS is an abridged and revised edition of a book published in 1908, which in many parts has been largely rewritten. For Mrs. Tweedie's point is that of to-day. She brings the story of Hyde Park down to its mobilisation in 1926 during the great strike, and refers to the danger of Socialist proposals to-day for its popularisation as a sports ground. She follows the Park through its many vicissitudes from the grants of land east of Tyburn from the King to St. Dunstan in 960 and of Geoffrey de Mandeville, who fought at Hastings, of the Manor of Hyde to the abbey at Westminster. Under the Tudors after the suppression of the monasteries it became a Royal hunting-ground; but it was not until the return of Charles II. that it really entered upon its function as a centre of social gathering, primarily for the Court and its hangers-on. For long the people were not admitted. Nevertheless, Hyde Park serves as focus for more than one side of our earlier social history. Its neighbourhood was infested with footpads and highwaymen, and Tyburn, with its sinister associations of the hangman and the ‘Triple Tree’, was within its purlieus.
Hyde Park: its History and Romance.
Mrs. Alec Tweedie (née Harley). Abridged revised edition. Pp. vii + 239 + 29 plates. (London: Besant and Co., Ltd., 1930.) 3s. 6d. net.
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Hyde Park: its History and Romance . Nature 126, 127 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126127a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126127a0