Qualla: Hyde Park, London https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Hyde Park, London https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london Hyde Park, London: Introduction https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit Robin Stott, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk in from Marble Arch on a Sunday morning and the first thing you'll hear is shouting. A man on a stepladder in a tweed jacket is explaining the End Times. Beside him, a woman with a megaphone is denouncing the city council. Tourists film both. None of them seem to mind being filmed. This corner of the park, just inside the gate, has been London's open-air debating chamber since 1872 - the only place in the country where a citizen can stand on a box and say more or less anything to anyone who'll listen. It's the smallest, loudest postage stamp of a 350-acre park.

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: Robin Stott | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hyde Park, London: Henry's Hunting Ground https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit MariamPogosyan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hyde Park exists because Henry VIII wanted to chase deer without crossing London. In 1536, riding the dissolution of the monasteries, he took the manor of Hyde from Westminster Abbey and threw a fence around it. For exactly a hundred and one years it was a private royal hunting g...

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: MariamPogosyan | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-henrys-hunting-ground.mp3 0:06 2 full Hyde Park, London: Caroline's Lake https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit Roger Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Serpentine is not a river. It looks like one, snaking 700 metres east-to-west through the middle of the park, but it was dug. In 1730, Queen Caroline - wife of George II, and an enthusiastic landscape gardener - had the little River Westbourne dammed to create the broad ornam...

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: Roger Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-carolines-lake.mp3 0:06 3 full Hyde Park, London: The Crystal Palace https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit Public domain. For five months in 1851, the south side of the park held one of the strangest buildings ever erected in Britain. Joseph Paxton, a gardener who designed greenhouses for the Duke of Devonshire, sketched the Crystal Palace on a piece of pink blotting paper during a railway board mee...

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-the-crystal-palace.mp3 0:06 4 full Hyde Park, London: Concerts and Concrete https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit Matt Deegan, CC BY 2.0. On 29 June 1968, Blackhill Enterprises put on the first free rock concert in Hyde Park. Pink Floyd headlined, with Roy Harper and Jethro Tull. John Peel later called it 'the nicest concert I've ever been to.' A year later, Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool two days before ...

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: Matt Deegan | CC BY 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-concerts-and-concrete.mp3 0:06 5 full Hyde Park, London: Memorials in the Grass https://qualla.com/hyde-park-london/ Photo credit Nick Cooper (talk), CC BY 3.0. If you walk the park slowly, the dead start to appear. The Cavalry Memorial stands near the Serpentine, bronze St George trampling a dragon. Just south of the water, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain - an oval ring of Cornish granite that opened in 2004 - runs cold a...

Read more: Hyde Park, London on Qualla

Image: Nick Cooper (talk) | CC BY 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/hyde-park-london-wp/gcpv-hyde-park-london-memorials-in-the-grass.mp3 0:06 6 full