Hyde Park originally belonged to the Canons of Westminster Abbey until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.

King Henry VIII appropriated it for himself in order to be a hunting ground, and deer and wild boar were kept in the Park for his hunting pleasure.

It stayed a hunting ground from 1536 until James I, came to the throne and decided to allow some public access.

James I appointed a park ranger to be in charge of Hyde Park and to run it.

Charles I later opened the Park to the general public most of the time in 1637. He also built The Ring, near where the Serpentine Boat Houses are at the moment.

In the year of the Great Plague of London, 1665, Hyde Park became a kind of refugee camp.

People from the City of London and from Westminster left their homes, afraid of the plague, and camped in Hyde Park.

William III, who ruled in conjunction with his wife Queen Mary II, elder daughter of James II, decided to live in Kensington Palace.

He decided that the walk from Kensington to the Government Centre at St James was unsafe, and made an artificially lit road between the two places.

This is the road now known as Rotton Row, which is thought to be a corruption of the French “route de Roi”, or the "road of the King".

George II, and his wife, Queen Caroline, created the Serpentine. This is the lake in the middle of Hyde Park which stretches over to Kensington Gardens, and results from the damming of the River Westbourne.

The Lido, an open air swimming pool, was built by the Commissioner of Royal Parks Works in 1930, and the current Boat Houses were completed at about the same time.

