Key

Steel key with a solid oval shaped bow with 'W IV R Hyde Park Pleasure Gardens' inscribed on one side and 'Mrs H Shaw Lefevre No.34 Non Transferable' on the other side.

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.

The key probably belonged to Helen Le Marchant (c.1803-19 February 1833), who married City merchant and banker Henry Francis Shaw-Lefevre on 20 March 1827, when her married name became Shaw-Lefevre. They had three children together before she died aged 30. She is buried in the vestibule of Christ Church, Spitalfields.