Picture above (taken from internet) shows the ‘Long Walk’ at Windsor Great Park, fallow deer crossing.
The Royal Parks, an organisation to oversee the running of them, is now a charity called the Royal Parks of London. The eight public parks the charity administers are; Bushy Park, Green Park, Greenwich Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Park, Regents Park, Richmond Park and St. James’ Park. The charity also administers; Brompton Cemetery, Grosvenor Square Garden, Victoria Tower Gardens, Poet’s Corner, Canning Green and the gardens of numbers 10,11 and 12, Downing Street. Windsor Great Park, it seems, is not under the authority of the Royal Parks.
Most of today’s Royal Parks started life centuries past as hunting parks of monarchs serving the cluster of royal palaces around London, the expansion of the metropolis resulting eventually in their incorporation into the urban landscape. For example, even as late as the mid 17th century Samuel Pepys sometimes resorted to the village of Chelsea to escape the city.
Although no longer used for royal hunting parties it was not until after the Napoleonic Wars that the move to make royal parks public parks began. In the 1820s George IV instructed that ‘the whole range and extent of the (royal) Parks should be thrown open for the gratification and enjoyment of the Public’. However the initial perception of George and his supporters were that only the roads were to be open, the green areas fenced-off for fear of them providing an opportunity for immorality and that young trees were likely to be damaged by some members of the public (an on-going issue still). The movement for public parks soon broadened beyond the metropolis and in the 1830s Parliament agreed to the formation of a select committee ‘An Enquiry into the means of providing Open Spaces in the vicinity of populous towns as public walks and Places of Exercise calculated to promote the Health and Happiness and Comfort of the Inhabitants’. From the outset the movement for public parks was part of the public health movement.
(To be continued)