Key

Steel key with a solid oval shaped bow with a crowned 'VR No.20 HP Pleasure Gardens' inscribed on the obverse and 'Sir C.B. Codrington Not 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 is numbered 20 and belonged to Sir Christoper Bethell-Codrington. Born Christopher Codrington (October 1764 – 4 February 1843) Codrington was a cricketer, MP, and owned sugar estates in Antigua and Barbuda. He changed his surname after inheriting some of these estates from his maternal uncle. In the 1830s the British government emancipated the slaves, and Bethell-Codrington was compensated over £30,000 for nearly 500 slaves in his ownership. He had six children with his wife The Honorable Caroline Georgina Harriet Foley.