32 LONDON PARKS © GARDENS 
themselves, and I took them and we to the lodge : and at 
the door did give them a syllabub and other things, cost 
me 12s. and pretty merry.” 
What an amusing picture, not only of Hyde Park in 
1669 but of human nature of all time 1—the start, the 
pride and delight with their new acquisition, the little 
annoyances, the marred pleasures, the ungenerous dislike 
of the less fortunate who could not afford coaches of 
their own, whose ranks he had swelled the very last drive 
he had taken. Then the little kindness and the refresh¬ 
ment, so that the story ends merrily. 
The “ Lodge ” is but another name for the “ Cheese¬ 
cake House ” or S€ Cake House,” or as it was sometimes 
called from the proprietor, the Gunter of those days, 
“ Price’s Lodge.” This house, which was a picturesque 
feature, stood near the Ring, on the site of the present 
building of the Humane Society, and must have been 
the scene of many amusing incidents in the lives of 
those who graced the Ring, in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. A little stream ran in front of 
it, and the door was approached over planks. White 
with beams of timber, latticed windows, and gabled roof, 
a few flowers clustering near, with the water flowing by 
its walls, the old house gave a special charm and rural 
flavour to the tarts and cheesecakes and syllabub with 
which the company regaled themselves. 
The gay sights and sounds in Hyde Park were 
silenced during those terrible weeks, when the Great 
Plague spread death and destruction through London. 
As the summer advanced, and the havoc became more 
and more appalling, many of the soldiers quartered in the 
city, were marched out to encamp in Hyde Park. At 
first it seemed as if they would escape the deadly 
