A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



3 68 '44. The park has therefore only lost 253*39 acres, and as its 

 boundaries north, east, and south are nearly the same as formerly, the loss 

 must necessarily therefore have chiefly occurred on the western or Ken- 

 sington side. As at the sale of 1652 the Kensington portion (the largest 

 of the five divisions) comprised 177-36 acres, Mr. Rutton, from his study 

 of accounts and particulars at the Record Office, concludes that Queen 

 Anne caused about 100 acres to be appropriated from the park for the 

 Palace Gardens, and that George I was responsible for annexing most of 

 the remainder, which could not have exceeded 150 acres. 8 * Queen 

 Caroline's own contributory work to Kensington Gardens seems to have 

 been confined to the completion of the work left unfinished by George I, 

 though she has been credited by Lysons and Faulkner with having filched 

 some 200 or 300 acres from Hyde Park. 



It was probably, however, Queen Caroline who "caused the stately 

 Broad Walk to be laid out, in its final form, as a gravelled road, 60 ft. 

 wide, between four rows of elms ; but as Mr. Rutton points out, 80 Queen 

 Anne seems to have been its originator. 



The elm is more especially the tree of Kensington Gardens than of 

 any other of our London Parks ; at least ninety per cent, of the Ken- 

 sington trees being of that species. It has been said that several of the 

 giant elms of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park are 350 years old. 

 But the best judges are sceptical as to this ; it is probable that very few 

 of even the most carefully tended English elms attain to an age of more 

 than two centuries. The elm is an essentially dangerous tree, both on 

 account of its liability to be blown over through the roots spreading over 

 the surface of the soil (instead of penetrating deeply like the oak), and 

 because of the great brittleness of the wood, which causes the occa- 

 sional sudden falling of large boughs. A young woman lost her life in 

 Kensington Gardens in 1906 through the latter cause. Hence a very 

 careful survey of the timber was made, and a large number of the veteran 

 elms were pollarded during the winter of 1906 7." 



MARYLEBONE OR REGENT'S PARK 



In 1541, when Henry VIII was busily engaged in extending his 

 hunting grounds in the immediate vicinity of London, he acquired divers 

 lands belonging to the prebendal manor of Rugmere for the enlarging of 

 ' Marybone Park in the county of Middlesex,' in lieu of which land the 

 king secured the parsonage of Throwley, Kent, to the prebendary and his 

 successors by a private Act of Parliament of that year." In 1544 the king 



" In fact it may have been less, as a triangular slip of Hyde Park covering 22 acres was taken into 

 Kensington Gardens in 1872. Mr. Rutton's final conclusion is that 231-39 acres were taken from the 

 park by Queen Anne and George I, and that in all probability about 66-36 acres were originally 

 attached to the palace, having been purchased by William III. Home Counties Mag. vi, 126 . 



90 Home Counties Mag. vi, 227. 



" A child was killed in these gardens on I May, 1903, through the blowing over of an elm tree 

 during a slight gale. 



" Davies, 'The Prebendal Manor of Rugmere,' in Home Counties Mag. iv, 24; L. and P. Hen. Vlll, 

 xv, 217. 



240 



