Hyde Park once contained a river--the Westbourne--which formed ponds (originally possibly monastic fish ponds) in the Park. In 1730 Queen Caroline ordered that the Westbourne be dammed to create a long, narrow artificial lake as part of the Park redevelopment.
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| Detail of the 1746 Rocque map showing the newly constructed Serpentine. (Wikipedia) |
The Serpentine quickly became a focal point for the Park and a centre, during the Regency, of newsworthy activity. At the beginning of the century the news was all bad.
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| Morning Chronicle - Saturday 30 May 1801 |
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| Saunders's News-Letter - Friday 03 December 1802 |
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| Oxford University and City Herald - Saturday 05 December 1807 |
Skaters on the Serpentine in Hyde Park by Julius Caesar Ibbitson (1786)
In 1808, however, some pleasant stories about the Serpentine appeared.
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| Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal - Friday 15 April 1808 |
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| Globe - Tuesday 27 December 1808 |
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| View of the Serpentine River, Hyde Park, looking from Kensington Gardens 1787 |
The Serpentine's walk was the site of sporting events
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| Morning Post - Thursday 17 June 1813 |
And research was aiming to make the Serpentine and other urban bodies of water safer places.
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| Bury and Norwich Post - Wednesday 08 December 1813 |
Frost was always a problem and the lure of ice skating and sliding created many issues in
1816.
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| Morning Post - Saturday 03 February 1816 |
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| Morning Chronicle - Monday 23 December 1816 |
The great tragedy of the Serpentine was its use as a method of suicide. The desperate, too often young women, chose drowning as their escape from their troubles.
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| Oxford University and City Herald - Saturday 25 June 1814 |
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| Sussex Advertiser - Monday 04 April 1814 |
In December 1816 Harriet Westbrook, the pregnant wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was found drowned in the Serpentine. I cannot discover that the newspapers had anything to say about that event.
Despite its checkered past, the Serpentine is still a lovely feature of Hyde Park and a tribute to the vision of our Georgian forebearers.
'Til next time,
Lesley-Anne
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