TURNPIKE GATES 45 



journey safer. Even then they did not rely only on 

 their numbers, but went well armed with swords, 

 pistols, and cudgels. 



It is scarcely to be supposed that the turnpike-gates 

 earned much money in those times, when ways were 

 foul and dano;erous, and when the cut-throats who 

 lurked about that delectable ''Halfway House" were 

 in their prime. Printed here will be found several 

 views of the first gate, showing its development from 

 1786 to 1797. It will be seen that a high brick 

 wall then bounded the Park. This was continued 

 all the way, except where the houses, low inns, and 

 cottasfes on the north side of the road stood, and 

 where their successors stand to-day, to the eastward 

 and westward of the present "Albert Grate." That 

 imposing entrance to the Park was made in 1846, 

 and the immense houses on either side — the " two 

 Gibraltars," as they were called — built. They were 

 so called because it was thought they would never 

 be taken; but the one on the east side, now the French 

 Embassy, was soon let to Hudson, the Railway King. 

 As mentioned just now, the "Halfway House" 

 stood where the Prince of Wales's Gate opens into 

 the Park. It stood there until 1848, when the ground 

 was purchased for £3000, and the house pulled down. 

 If the owners had kept the land, their descendants 

 to-day could have sold it for a sum that would re- 

 present a handsome fortune, as evidenced by the fact 

 that a plot of ground of the same size, on which 

 Thorney House stood, in Kensington Gore was sold 

 in 1898 for £100,000. Thus does the value of land 

 increase in the neiojhbourhood of London. 



