Key

Steel key with a solid oval shaped bow with with 'W IV R Hyde Park Pleasure Gardens' inscribed on the obverse and 'Lady Abingdon Stanhope St No 15 Non Transferable' inscribed on the reverse.

This key provided access to Hyde Park Pleasure Gardens. The exact location of this part of the park is no longer known, but it thought to have been on the Eastern side of the Royal Park. As a Pleasure Garden, it would have been reserved for wealthy residents to promenade and socialise in seclusion. Between 1790 and 1804, local householders paid the Office of Works to construct private gates through the park walls into Hyde Park. For at least another four decades after, the Office issued individually numbered, non-transferable keys, granting entry only during permitted hours.

This key was issued to Lady Abingdon. Emily Gage (25 April 1776-28 August 1838) was the daughter of General the Honourable Thomas Gage and Margaret Kemble. Emily married her distant cousin Montagu Bertie, 5th Earl of Abingdon on 27 August 1807. Based at Wytham Abbey in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), the couple had eight children together before Emily's death. A mininature portrait of Emily on ivory from 1807 was exhibited at the at the South Kensington museum miniatures exhibition in 1865 (exhibit number 1072). Stanhope Street in Hyde Park Gardens is now know as Stanhope Terrace.