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Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in London, and one of the Royal Parks of London. The Park is the largest of four parks which form a chain from the entrance of Kensington Palace through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, via Hyde Park Corner and Green Park (19 hectares), past the main entrance to Buckingham Palace and then on through Saint James's Park (23 hectares) to Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall. The park is divided in two by the Serpentine and the Long Water. The park is contiguous with Kensington Gardens; although often still assumed to be part of Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens has been technically separate since 1728, when Queen Caroline made a division between the two. Hyde Park covers 142 hectares (350 acres) and Kensington Gardens covers 111 hectares (275 acres), giving an overall area of 253 hectares (625 acres), making the combined area larger than the Principality of Monaco (), though smaller than the Bois de Boulogne in Paris (845 hectares, or 2090 acres), New York City's Central Park (), and Dublin's Phoenix Park (707 hectares, or 1,750 acres). To the southeast, outside the park, is Hyde Park Corner. Although, during daylight, the two parks merge seamlessly into each other, Kensington Gardens closes at dusk but Hyde Park remains open throughout the year from 5 a.m. until midnight. The park was the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851, for which the Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton. The park has become a traditional location for mass demonstrations. The Chartists, the Reform League, the Suffragettes, and the Stop the War Coalition have all held protests in the park. Many protesters on the Liberty and Livelihood March in 2002 started their march from Hyde Park. On 20 July 1982 in the Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings, two bombs linked to the Provisional Irish Republican Army caused the death of eight members of the Household Cavalry and the Royal Green Jackets and seven horses. ==History== Hyde Park was created in 1536 by Henry VIll for hunting. He acquired the manor of Hyde from the canons of Westminster Abbey, who had held it since before the Norman Conquest;〔It was the northeast part of the manor of Eia, or Ebury. ('The Acquisition of the Estate', ''Survey of London'' 39: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 1 (General History) (1977), pp. 1–5. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=41820. Date accessed: 5 June 2007); about the time of Domesday the manor of Eia was divided into three smaller manors, Ebury (Eia), Neyte and Hyde. "The latter still lives and flourishes as a royal park, under its ancient name, no doubt of Saxon origin", (Edward Walford, ''Old and New London: Volume 4'' ); the ''Oxford Book of British Place Names'' says the various "Hyde" placenames, including Hyde Park, comes from the Anglo-Saxon unit of land taxation, the hide.〕 it was enclosed as a deer park and remained a private hunting ground until James I permitted limited access to gentlefolk, appointing a ranger to take charge. Charles I created the Ring (north of the present Serpentine boathouses), and in 1637 he opened the park to the general public. In 1689, when William III moved his residence to Kensington Palace on the far side of Hyde Park, he had a drive laid out across its south edge, formerly known as "The King's Private Road", which still exists as a wide straight gravelled carriage track leading west from Hyde Park Corner across the south boundary of Hyde Park towards Kensington Palace. The drive is now known as Rotten Row, possibly a corruption of ''rotteran'' (to muster), ''Ratten Row'' (roundabout way), ''Route du roi'', or ''rotten'' (the soft material with which the road is covered). Public transport entering London from the west paralleled the King's private road along Kensington Gore, just outside the park. In the late 1800s, the row was used by the wealthy for horseback rides. The first coherent landscaping was undertaken by Charles Bridgeman for Queen Caroline;〔Bridgeman was Royal Gardener 1728–38; he also designed the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Peter Willis, ''Charles Bridgeman and the English Landscape Garden'' (London and New York) 1978, devotes a chapter to Bridgeman's Royal Commissions.〕 under the supervision of Charles Withers, the Surveyor-General of Woods and Forests, who took some credit for it. It was completed in 1733 at a cost to the public purse of £20,000. Bridgeman's piece of water called The Serpentine, formed by damming the little Westbourne that flowed through the park, was not truly in the Serpentine "line of beauty" that William Hogarth described, but merely irregular on a modest curve. The 2nd Viscount Weymouth was made Ranger of Hyde Park in 1739 and shortly began digging the Serpentine lakes at Longleat.〔Timothy Mowl, "Rococo and Later Landscaping at Longleat", ''Garden History'' 23.1 (Summer 1995, pp. 56–66) p. 59, noting Jacob Larwood, ''The Story of London Parks'' 1881:41.〕 The Serpentine is divided from the Long Water by a bridge designed by George Rennie (1826). One of the most important events to take place in the park was the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace was constructed on the south side of the park. The public in general did not want the building to remain in the park after the closure of the exhibition, and the design architect, Joseph Paxton, raised funds and purchased it. He had it moved to Sydenham Hill in South London.〔Purbrick, Louise: ''The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays'': 2001: Manchester University Press, p. 122〕 Another significant event held in Hyde Park was the first Victoria Cross investiture, on 26 June 1857, when 62 men were decorated by Queen Victoria in the presence of Prince Albert and other members of the Royal Family, including their future son-in-law Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, later Emperor Frederick III.〔Crook, M. J.: ''The Evolution of the Victoria Cross'': 1975: Midas Books, pp. 49–52.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hyde Park, London」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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