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Stone. In the true spirit of British scientific
discovery all the important work was done
in a series of sheds at the bottom of the garden.
Once it was all up and running the
somewhat fickle and distracted King lost
interest and Flamsteed had to take on private
pupils to make ends meet.
About a third of the size of Greenwich Park,
St James's Park is named after a 13
th
century
leper hospital that occupied a marshy water
meadow often flooded by the River Tyburn.
Henry VIII built the Palace of St James and
hunted deer here. James I drained the marshy
land and Charles II, once again all French in
his ways, had a long
straight canal built to
make it look a bit like Versaille. During the
Georgian period Horse Guards Parade, which,
will never be the same again after the Olympic
Beach Volleyball competition, was made by
filling in one end of the canal: the rest was
transformed into a natural looking lake. This
was the first Royal Park to be opened to the
public and pelicans have been kept here since
two were given as gifts in 1664 by the Russian
Ambassador. One rather cheeky pelican used to
fly over to London Zoo in Regents Park to steal
fish. Today there are three resident pelicans,
two Eastern or Great White pelicans and one
South American White pelican, which is
slightly different in colouring and has a crest
on its bill. Fascinating birds pelicans, considered to be
lucky unless you’re one of the occasional pigeons or
squirrels they gobble up. Pelicans will vomit when
threatened in the hope that whatever is chasing them
will stop and eat it and not them. The St James’s Park
pelicans are fed daily between 2.30pm and 3.00pm
If you cross The Mall and head towards Piccadilly as
soon as the flowerbeds and anything of interest comes
to an end you’ll know you are in Green Park, which
takes its name very seriously. I have never understood
the attraction of Green Park, no more than I have ever
understood why anyone bothers to order a green salad
in a restaurant. An unlucky park it is too. Queen
Victoria was twice shot at by lunatics when travelling
through Green Park and Sir Robert Peel died a few
days after being thrown from his horse in the park.
Continue through the underpasses and walk beneath
Wellington Arch and you are soon into 600 acres of
land which belonged to the Abbot of Westminster in
the old Manor of Hyde until Henry VIII and the
Dissolution of the Monasteries. This particular land
grab was part of his plan for hunting grounds that ran
from the Palace of Westminster all the way to the
slopes of Hampstead with the huntsman’s cry of
So-Ho along the way.
Hyde Park wasn’t opened to the public until the time
of Charles I but soon after the King’s execution
Cromwell sold it off and John Evelyn was aghast to
be charged an entrance fee by the new owner. It
returned to the public realm after the restoration of
Charles II. Queen Caroline, busy bride of George II,
had the lake built which is now known as Long Water
in Kensington Gardens but is called the Serpentine in
Hyde Park. It is fed by the Westbourne stream.
When the Serpentine was opened two yachts were
launched for the royal amusement and the Doge of
Genoa for some reason sent the queen a large number
of tortoises. Do you remember the time when so
many people kept tortoises in the back garden that it
was customary to paint your house door on the shell
in white gloss? During the Olympic Games, when the
Triathlon and Marathon swimmers competed in the
Serpentine, some of the American press derided its
cleanliness, even saying that we Londoners call it
The Turpentine
. We don’t for the record. But in the
18
th
century it did get a bit smelly owing to the habit
of the big houses draining their lavatories into the
Westbourne. “Good society no longer goes there,
except to drown itself” wrote a German princess
resident in London, which is exactly what the poet
Shelly’s first wife did in 1816.