Key

Steel key with a solid oval shaped bow with a crowned 'VR HP Pleasure Garden' inscribed on the obverse and 'C. Wykeham Martin Esq 17 Great Cumberland Place Hyde Park 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 was issued to Charles Wykeham Martin (1801-1870), a Conservative MP and owner of Leeds Castle. Born Charles Wykeham, his father Fiennes Wykeham assumed the additional surname of Martin in 1821 when he succeeded to Leeds Castle in Kent. Charles was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Statistical Society. He served as a lieutenant-colonel of the 3rd Battalion Kent Volunteers, as a Deputy Lieutenant and as a Justice of the Peace for both Kent and Hampshire. Charles married twice, first Lady Jemima Cornwallis in 1828, with whom he had four children, and after her death, Matilda Trollope in 1838.