Hyde Park

About

Hyde Park, Sydney, is an urban park, of 16.2-hectare (40-acre), located in the central business district of Sydney, Australia. It is the oldest public parkland in Australia. Hyde Park is on the eastern fringe of the Sydney city centre and is approximately rectangular in shape, being squared at the southern end and rounded at the northern end. It is bordered on the west by Elizabeth Street, on the east by College Street, on the north by St James Road and Prince Albert Road and on the south by Liverpool Street. The park was designed by Norman Weekes, Sir John Sulman (1927 design resolution), Alfred Hook, W. G. Layton and I. Berzins and was built from 1810 to 1927. Historically, it has also been known as Sydney Common, Government Domain, The Common, The Exercising Ground, Cricket Ground and Racecourse. Hyde Park is owned by the City of Sydney and the Land and Property Management Authority, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 13 December 2011. It is the southernmost of a chain of parkland that extends north to the shore of Sydney Harbour via The Domain and Royal Botanic Garden. Around the park's boundaries lie various...

At the time of European settlement in 1788, the local Aboriginal people hunted ducks in the swampy marshes that were to become Hyde Park.

Hyde Park is also understood to be the site of an important Aboriginal contest ground which is a part of the greater Aboriginal history of Sydney. Until the mid-1820s, Aboriginal people travelled from all over Sydney and as far away as the Hunter and the Illawarra, to gather at a ceremonial contest ground to the south of the city. The exact location of this site of ritualized conflict settlement is unclear. Described as lying between the road to Botany Bay and the Brickfields, it was probably near Hyde Park South. Bloody fist fights involving up to 100 people, spearings and beatings were used to resolve conflicts at the Brickfields contest ground. These were observed and recorded by visiting Russian sailors in 1814, and again 10 years later by the French explorers Dumont d'Urville and René Lesson on their voyage of Coquille.

The valley of the Tank Stream was cradled between two slightly elevated sandstone and shale ridges which ran down to the harbour to form Dawes Point and Bennelong Point on each side of Sydney Cove. The Tank Stream itself was only a tiny rivulet which rose in marshy ground skirting the western slopes of the ground which later became Hyde Park. The seepage from the bed-joints of the underlying sandstone around the upper portion of its catchment, which headed about the centre of the park, filtered through the soil to form a definite channel near King and Pitt Streets. The area now occupied by Hyde Park was relatively flat, rising slightly along the centre and elevated. We know it was timbered, as was the rest of the topography, from the early drawings of the settlement. Sydney J. H. Maiden, director of the Botanic Gardens, has suggested that the dominant species were probably white or brittle gum ( Eucalyptus micrantha ), blackbutt ( E.pilularis ), bloodwood ( Corymbia gummifera ), Port Jackson figs ( Ficus rubiginosa ), Bangalow palms ( Archontophoenix cunninghamiana ), cabbage tree palms ( Livistona australis ) and smooth-barked white apple ( Angophora costata ), with an understorey of tea tree (Leptospermum sp.), wattle ( Acacia sp. ) and NSW Christmas bush ( Ceratopetalum gummiferum ).

From 1788 this was a place where soldiers could be quickly assembled in case of a convict rebellion. It was probably the site of a bloody battle between Aboriginal people and Europeans for control of land around Sydney.

Before Governor Phillip departed from the settlement in December 1792, he had drawn a line from the head of Woolloomooloo Bay to the head of Cockle Bay (now Darling Harbour ) and noted in writing on the map that no land within the line was to be leased or granted and should remain the property of the Crown. In subsequent years this directive was whittled away. King granted leases in the town, Foveaux had begun to issue grants, Macquarie was to extend the grants.

The area of Hyde Park however, fell largely within this line, and became regarded as a sort of "Common" on the edge of the town. It had quite a different status to the Governor 's Domain, which became the Botanic Gardens. It was land that belonged to the people, rather than to the Governor or his officials. The settlers grazed their animals on it and used its brush and trees as firewood. It was gradually denuded of vegetation. By 1810 it would have been a relatively open, elevated space and by then it would have had views out to the north east across Woolloomooloo to the harbour. Early on there were shingling parties and saw pits operating in the vicinity. It was known as "the Common" even before Governor Macquarie defined its size and use by his proclamation of 5 October 1810. His 83rd regiment had established a camp there while waiting for more permanent accommodation, on the southern end near the brickfields.

Later it became the colony's first sports centre and racecourse. Prize fights and cricket matches were held here. In 1803 cricket was introduced on The Common by British officers. This game became an obsession and the area served the game from 1827 to 1856.

Before 1810 the area was known as "The Common," the "Exercising Ground", "Cricket Ground" or "Racecourse". Macquarie, on 11 February 1810, formally reserved it as open space, the first public park set aside in Australia. He formally defined the park as bounded in the north by the NSW Government Domain, on the west by the town of Sydney, on the east by the grant to John Palmer at Woolloomooloo and on the south by the brickfields.

Macquarie named it "Hyde Park" after the Hyde Park in London, north-west of Westminster, near Buckingham Palace (which had once belonged to the Manor of Hyde and which was seized from the Abbey of Westminster by Henry VIII for a forest hunting reserve in 1536). Macquarie's naming and formal definition of the park was part of his town planning policy. He named the streets and regularised their courses, erected a wharf in Cockle Bay, relocated the Market Place and planned other improvements in the town, as well as defining Sydney's first major park and formalising its use "for the recreation and amusement of the inhabitants". He also added another use for the park, "as a field of exercise for the troops". His proclamation acknowledged the previous uses of the area.

Ten days after Macquarie named it Hyde Park it was the venue for Australia's first organised horse race and it was used for races through the 1820s. At that time it was much larger, marking the outskirts of Sydney's southern settlement. The park was used as Sydney's racecourse from 1820 to 1821. Whittaker adds that as well as being a popular cricket venue in the 1820s it was also popular for informal children's games.

It was delineated only as a space at the end of Macquarie Street, where the military held parades, and townspeople cut firewood and carted off soil. It became a favourite place for cricket, a playground for local school boys, a racecourse and – with its slightly elevated position – a promenade cites Hyde Park as being Sydney's cricket ground from 1827 to 1856.

In 1811 Macquarie framed further regulations to secure the space for public recreation. He closed access across the park to the Brickfields beyond, forbade carts to cross it, or cows, sheep, goats and pigs' to graze upon it, and ordered that no cattle headed for markets near Darling Harbour were to be driven across it. He caused a fence to be made between the park and the brickfields and directed that carts carrying bricks or pottery should go through the turn-pike gate in George Street. He directed that all traffic crossing the park was to use the new line of road along the route of Liverpool Street to South Head Road (or Oxford Street ). This roadway then defined the southern boundary of Hyde Park.

The northern boundary was at first defined by the edge of the Governor's Demesne (Domain), which the Macquaries came to regard as their personal pleasure grounds. Macquarie himself directed the building of Hyde Park Barracks (1817–19), St James' Church (1820) and the Law Courts (1819–28) at the northern end of Hyde Park, using Francis Greenway as his architect, with these buildings as fine embellishments to the colonial town, facing each other across a plaza which terminated Macquarie Street. Macquarie blocked the street named after himself at what was later known as Queens's Square and excluded all roadways from the park.

The western boundary was defined as Camden Street, later Elizabeth Street, renamed by Macquarie for his wife, Elizabeth Campbell). It was marked out in Meehan's plan of 1807 almost as far as present day Park Street. This was first a street of scattered small wattle and daub thatched houses, brush and grass trees. These were gradually replaced by more substantial houses in the next four decades. It became a fashionable residential street, with elegant terrace houses overlooking the maturing Hyde Park.

The eastern boundary was not sharply defined when the Macquaries departed Sydney in 1821. A map of that year shows a vegetable garden of 11 acres allocated to the Barracks and a site marked out for the Roman Catholic Chapel... "near the rubbish dump". The foundation stone for what would become St Mary's Cathedral was laid in 1821 on a site adjoining Hyde Park's north-eastern side, the first site granted to the Roman Catholic Church in Australia.

Macquarie made no move to have the space planted. He probably had enough difficulty getting the Government Domain in order. However the formal nature of the Queens Square end of Hyde Park made it an appropriate place for Governor Brisbane 's Commission to be read to the assembled populace on 1 December 1821.

Francis Greenway, architect to Governor Macquarie, wrote in a letter to The Australian in April 1825 that Hyde Park was to be "given to the inhabitants of Sydney for ever, and to be laid down in the most elegant style of landscape gardening". It would be planted out "in the modern way of landscape gardening, as many of the squares are now in London, the garden enclosed with an elegant rail fence". Lack of cooperation from the Colonial Office in London meant that Greenway's elaborate and optimistic plans for beautifying Sydney were put aside for the time being.

Wrestling and boxing in the park continued, with quoits, rugby union, hurling, military drills, a zoo in 1849. In public holidays the park resembled a "side show alley".

From the first attempts at structuring it the site has lent itself to a formal design. Emphasis on a central avenue was given by the 1832 extension of Macquarie Street south through the park and by its flatness. When this street extension was closed for a second time in 1851, its north–south line became a rudimentary public walk (known as "Lovers" Walk'); a derivation from the planted walks in English 18th century urban pleasure gardens (such as Vauxhall Gardens).