Green Park (officially The Green Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. Covering , it lies between London's Hyde Park and St. James's Park. Together with Kensington Gardens and the gardens of Buckingham Palace, these parks form an almost unbroken stretch of open land reaching from Whitehall and Victoria station to Kensington and Notting Hill.

By contrast with its neighbours, Green Park has no lakes. Also has only the Canada Memorial by Pierre Granche) and the Constance Fund FountainThe park consists entirely of wooded meadows. The park is bounded on the south by Constitution Hill, on the east by the pedestrian Queen's Walk, and on the north by Piccadilly. It meets St. James's Park at Queen's Gardens with the Victoria Memorial at its centre, opposite the entrance to Buckingham Palace. To the south is the ceremonial avenue of The Mall, and the buildings of St James's Palace and Clarence House overlook the park to the east. Green Park tube station is a major interchange located on Piccadilly, Victoria and Jubilee lines near the north end of Queen's Walk.

History

The park is said to have originally been a swampy burial ground for lepers from the nearby hospital at St James's. It was first enclosed in the 16th century by Henry VIII, when it formed part of the estate of the Poulteney family. In 1668 an area of the Poulteney estate known as Sandpit Field was surrendered to Charles II, who made the bulk of the land into a Royal Park. He laid out the park's main walks and building an icehouse there to supply him with ice for cooling drinks in summer. At the time, the park was on the outskirts of London and remained an isolated area well into the 18th century, when it was known as a haunt of highwaymen and thieves; Horace Walpole was one of many to be robbed there. It was a popular place for ballooning attempts and public firework displays during the 18th and 19th centuries. Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks was composed specifically for a fireworks celebration held in Green Park in 1749. The park was also known as a duelling ground; one particularly notorious duel took place there in 1730 between William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath and John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol.

There are Government offices and corridors, linking the nearby Royal palaces, beneath the east side of Green Park and continue to run to the south. These are clearly visible on the edges of Green Park and St. James Park, with the glass roofs just below ground level. The rooms are thought to be conversions of some of the tunnels built as part of the Cabinet War Rooms from the Second World War.

Gallery

References

1. http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/green_park/
2. 'The Bailiwick of St. James', Survey of London: volumes 29 and 30: St James Westminster, Part 1 (1960), pp. 21-28. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=40542. Date accessed: 29 January, 2008.
3. "Green Park". The Encyclopedia of London, eds. Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert. Macmillan, 1992.
4. "Fireworks Music" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007.
5. London: what to see, and how to see it, p. 61. H.G. Clarke, 1862.

External links

• Royal Parks website: Green Park