Key

Steel key with a solid oval shaped bow with 'W IV R Hyde Park Pleasure Gardens' inscribed on one side and 'R.A.Oswald Esqr Not Transferable No 68' inscribed 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.

This key was probably issued to Richard Alexander Oswald (1771-1841), politician and MP for Ayrshire, 1832-1835. Richard was the son of Glasgow tobacco merchant George Oswald of Scotstoun and great-nephew of slave-trader and plantation owner in the North American colonies Richard Oswald, from whom he inherited Auchincruive house, Ayrshire. In 1835, Richard and his wife Lady Lilias were awarded compensation by the British state for the loss of their enslaved 'property' in Pemberton Valley estate and Boscabelle Pen, both in St Mary Jamaica.