Brompton Cemetery is located near Earl’s Court in West Brompton, a part of the Borough of Kensington & Chelsea in South West London, England (postal district SW5). It is managed by The Royal Parks and is one of the Magnificent Seven. Established by Act of Parliament, it opened in 1840 and was originally known as the West of London and Westminster Cemetery. While the cemetery is still open for occasional new burials, today more people use it as a public park than as a place for mourning the dead.

The cemetery was opened as part of an initiative in the mid-19th century to provide seven large, modern cemeteries (sometimes called the ‘Magnificent Seven’) in a ring around the edge of London of which Highgate Cemetery was another example. The inner city cemeteries, mostly the graveyards attached to individual churches, had long been unable to cope with the number of burials and were seen as a hazard to health and an undignified way to treat the dead.

Beatrix Potter, who lived in The Boltons nearby, took the names of many of her animal characters from tombstones in the cemetery and it is said that Mr. McGregor’s walled garden was based on the colonnades. Names on headstones included Mr. Nutkins, Mr. McGregor, a Tod (with that unusual single ‘d’ spelling), Jeremiah Fisher, Tommy Brock – and even a Peter Rabbett.

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St. James’s Park is a 23 hectare (58 acre) park in Westminster, central London, the oldest of the Royal Parks of London.
The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James’s area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.
St. James’s Park is bounded by Buckingham Palace to the west, The Mall and St. James’s Palace to the North, Horse Guards to the east, and Birdcage Walk to the south. The park has a small lake, St. James’s Park Lake, with two islands, Duck Island (named for the lake’s collection of waterfowl), and West Island. A bridge across the lake affords a view of Buckingham Palace framed by trees and fountains, and a view of the main building of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, similarly framed, to the east.

The park is the most easterly of a near-continuous chain of parks that also comprise (moving westward) Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The closest London Underground stations are St. James’s Park, Victoria, and Westminster.

Richmond Park is a 955 hectares (9.55 km2; 3.69 sq mi) urban park within London.
Almost three times as large as New York City’s Central Park, it is Britain’s largest urban walled park, and the largest of the Royal Parks in London. It is close to Richmond, Ham, Kingston upon Thames, Wimbledon, Roehampton and East Sheen.

The park is famous for its red and fallow deer, which number over six hundred.

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The park has an outer ring road called the Outer Circle (4.3 km) and an inner ring road called the Inner Circle, which surrounds the most carefully tended section of the park, Queen Mary’s Gardens.

Apart from two link roads between these two, the park is reserved for pedestrians. The south, east and most of the west side of the park are lined with elegant white stucco terraces of houses designed by John Nash.

Running through the northern end of the park is Regent’s Canal which connects the Grand Union Canal to the former London docks.

The 166 hectare (410 acre) park[2] is mainly open parkland which enjoys a wide range of facilities and amenities including gardens, a lake with a heronry, waterfowl and a boating area, sports pitches, and children’s playgrounds.

The northern side of the park is the home of London Zoo and the headquarters of the Zoological Society of London. There are several public gardens with flowers and specimen plants, including Queen Mary’s Gardens in the Inner Circle, in which the Open Air Theatre is located; the formal Italian Gardens and adjacent informal English Gardens in the south-east corner of the park; and the gardens of St John’s Lodge.

Winfield House, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, stands in private grounds in the western section of the park. Nearby is the domed London Central Mosque, better known as Regent’s Park mosque, a highly visible landmark.
Located to the south of the Inner Circle is Regent’s College, a consortium of institutes of higher education and home of London Business School (LBS), as well as the European Business School London, British American College London (BACL) and Webster Graduate School among others.

Immediately to the north of Regent’s Park is Primrose Hill, a park with fine views of Westminster and the City. Primrose Hill is a Royal Park and belongs to the Sovereign along with all the other Royal Parks of the Crown Estate.

The supposition that Primrose Hill is owned and maintained by the Corporation of London is an error that has been the subject of successful Crown litigation in both in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

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Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. Most of it is in the City of Westminster, but a small section to the west is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares (275 acres).
The open spaces of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St. James’s Park together form an almost continuous “green lung” in the heart of London between Kensington and Westminster.

Kensington Gardens are generally regarded as being the western extent of the neighbouring Hyde Park from which they were originally taken, with West Carriage Drive (The Ring) and the Serpentine Bridge forming the boundary between them. The Gardens are fenced and more formal than Hyde Park. Kensington Gardens are open only during the hours of daylight, whereas Hyde Park is open from 6 am until midnight all year round, which includes many hours of darkness.

Kensington Gardens were long regarded as smarter than Hyde Park because of its more private character around Kensington Palace. However, in the late 1800s, Hyde Park was considered the more “fashionable” of the two because of its location nearer to Park Lane (Mayfair) and Knightsbridge, adjoining the entrance to central London opposite Wellington Arch and was therefore more crowded.

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The park is divided in two by the Serpentine.
The park is contiguous with Kensington Gardens; although often still assumed to be part of Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens has been technically separate since 1728, when Queen Caroline made a division between the two.
Hyde Park is 142 hectares (350 acres) and Kensington Gardens is 111 hectares (275 acres), giving an overall area of 253 hectares (625 acres), making the combined area larger than the Principality of Monaco (196 hectares or 484 acres), but smaller than New York City’s Central Park (341 hectares or 843 acres).
To the southeast (but outside of the park) is Hyde Park Corner. Although, during daylight, the two parks merge seamlessly into each other, Kensington Gardens closes at dusk but Hyde Park remains open throughout the year from 5 am until midnight.
The park was the site of The Great Exhibition of 1851, for which the Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton.

Hyde Park ca. 1833: Rotten Row is “The King’s Private Road”.
The park has become a traditional location for mass demonstrations. The Chartists, the Reform League, the Suffragettes and the Stop The War Coalition have all held protests in the park. Many protestors on the Liberty and Livelihood March in 2002 started their march from Hyde Park.
On 20 July 1982 in the Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings, two bombs linked to the Provisional Irish Republican Army caused the death of eight members of the Household Cavalry and the Royal Green Jackets

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Greenwich Park is a former hunting park in Greenwich and one of the largest single green spaces in south east London. One of the Royal Parks of London, and the first to be enclosed (in 1433), it covers 74 hectares (180 acres),[1] and is part of the Greenwich World Heritage Site. It commands fine views over the River Thames, Isle of Dogs and the City of London. The park is open from 06:00 for pedestrians (and 07:00 for traffic) all year round and closes at dusk.

The park is roughly rectangular in plan with sides 1000 metres by 750 metres and oriented with the long sides lying NNW to SSE. In what follows this direction is taken to be N to S for ease of exposition. It is located at grid reference TQ390772.
The park stretches along a hillside and is on two levels. The lower level (closest to the Museum, Queen’s House and, beyond them, the Thames) lies to the north; after a steep walk uphill, there is a flat expanse that is, essentially, an enclosed extension of the plateau of Blackheath.

Roughly in the centre, on the top is the hill, is the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. To the north is the National Maritime Museum and Queen’s House, and beyond those Greenwich Hospital. To the east is Vanbrugh Castle. To the south is Blackheath and in the south western corner is the Ranger’s House, looking out over heath. To the west lie the architecturally fine streets of Chesterfield Walk and Croom’s Hill (Pevsner 1983).

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Bushy Park is the second largest of the Royal Parks of London, at 445 hectares (1,100 acres) in area, and lies immediately north of Hampton Court Palace and Hampton Court Park, a few minutes’ walk west of Kingston upon Thames. It is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south-west London and most of it is open to the public. It is surrounded by Hampton, Hampton Hill, Teddington and Hampton Wick. Its acid grasslands are mostly just above the 25 foot contour.

Originally created for Royal sport, Bushy Park is now home to Teddington Rugby Club, Teddington Hockey Club (during the late 1800s, the modern game of field hockey was largely invented at Bushy), and four cricket clubs, including Hampton Wick Royal Cricket Club, Teddington Cricket Club and Hampton Hill Cricket Club.
It also has fishing and model boating ponds, horse rides, formal plantations of trees and other plants, wildlife conservation areas and herds of both Red Deer and Fallow Deer.
The park is also home to several lodges and cottages, Bushy House, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at the Teddington end and the Royal Paddocks, and two areas of allotments, the Royal Paddocks Allotments at Hampton Wick and the Bushy Park Allotments at Hampton Hill.

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Green Park (officially The Green Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. Covering 19 hectares (47 acres), it lies between London’s Hyde Park and St. James’s Park. Together with Kensington Gardens and the gardens of Buckingham Palace, these parks form an almost unbroken stretch of open land reaching from Whitehall and Victoria station to Kensington and Notting Hill.

Charles II used to stroll here. Constitution Hill, on the northern border of the park, commemorates Charles’ excursions.

By contrast with its neighbours, Green Park has no lakes. Also has only the Canada Memorial by Pierre Granche) and the Constance Fund Fountain The park consists entirely of wooded meadows. The park is bounded on the south by Constitution Hill, on the east by the pedestrian Queen’s Walk, and on the north by Piccadilly. It meets St. James’s Park at Queen’s Gardens with the Victoria Memorial at its centre, opposite the entrance to Buckingham Palace. To the south is the ceremonial avenue of The Mall, and the buildings of St James’s Palace and Clarence House overlook the park to the east. Green Park tube station is a major interchange located on Piccadilly, Victoria and Jubilee lines near the north end of Queen’s Walk.

The park is said to have originally been a swampy burial ground for lepers from the nearby hospital at St James’s. It was first enclosed in the 16th century by Henry VIII, when it formed part of the estate of the Poulteney family. In 1668 an area of the Poulteney estate known as Sandpit Field was surrendered to Charles II, who made the bulk of the land into a Royal Park.^[2] He laid out the park’s main walks and building an icehouse there to supply him with ice for cooling drinks in summer. At the time, the park was on the outskirts of London and remained an isolated area well into the 18th century, when it was known as a haunt of highwaymen and thieves; Horace Walpole was one of many to be robbed there.^[3] It was a popular place for ballooning attempts and public firework displays during the 18th and 19th centuries. Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks was composed specifically for a fireworks celebration held in Green Park in 1749.^[4] The park was also known as a duelling ground; one particularly notorious duel took place there in 1730 between William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath and John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol.^[5]

There are Government offices and corridors, linking the nearby Royal palaces, beneath the east side of Green Park and continue to run to the south. These are clearly visible on the edges of Green Park and St. James Park, with the glass roofs just below ground level. The rooms are thought to be conversions of some of the tunnels built as part of the Cabinet War Rooms from the Second World War.

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The Chelsea Physic Garden 66 Royal Hospital Road Chelsea SW3 4HS
This botanic garden was established as the Apothecaries’ Garden in 1673 to investigate the medicinal role of plants. (The word ‘Physic’ here refers to the science of healing.)

It played a major role in the development of the sciences of botany and horticulture, and is the second oldest botanical garden in Britain, after the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, which was founded in 1621.

Its rock garden is the oldest English garden devoted to alpine plants. The largest fruiting olive tree in Britain is there, protected by the garden’s heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is doubtless the world’s northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors. Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, in 1983 the Garden became a registered charity and was opened to the general public for the first time. The garden is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine.

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