Rotten Row: Britain's First Lit Highway

Look at the sandy track stretching before you. This quiet, tree-lined path is Rotten Row... and its story begins with fear, darkness, and three hundred flickering flames. Rotten Row was established by King William the Third at the end of the seventeenth century.

London · from the walk “The People's Park: Secrets & Untold Stories of Hyde Park”

Open the walk

Rotten Row, Hyde Park, London SW1X 7NB

Look at the sandy track stretching before you. This quiet, tree-lined path is Rotten Row... and its story begins with fear, darkness, and three hundred flickering flames.

Rotten Row was established by King William the Third at the end of the seventeenth century. Having moved his court to Kensington Palace, William wanted a safer way to travel to Saint James's Palace. And he had Very good reason to worry. Sinister highwaymen, on horseback and on foot, frequently robbed travellers along this road in the hours of darkness. Imagine it... the sixteen nineties, no streetlights anywhere in England, and your royal carriage must cross a vast, pitch-black park where armed thieves are Waiting.

So William created this broad avenue through Hyde Park, lit with three hundred oil lamps in sixteen ninety... the First artificially lit highway in Britain. The lighting was a precaution against highwaymen, who lurked in Hyde Park at the time. Its construction was supervised by the Surveyor of Their Majesties' Roads, Captain Michael Studholme. Think about that. Before any street in London had a single lamp, This sandy path was blazing with light.

Now, the name. "Rotten Row" sounds rather unpleasant, doesn't it? The track was called Route du Roi, French for King's Road, which was eventually corrupted into "Rotten Row." Though some scholars have questioned this, suggesting it may derive from old English terms for a military muster ground.

But the story doesn't end with the King. Even Before the road was built, this stretch had drama. Oliver Cromwell himself, while visiting Hyde Park, once whipped a friend's carriage horses to a frenzy, lost control, was thrown from the carriage, and dragged for several minutes... during which time a pistol in his pocket went off, injuring his leg. Not his finest hour as Lord Protector.

By the eighteenth century, Rotten Row transformed into something entirely different... a Catwalk. It became a popular meeting place for upper-class Londoners. Particularly on weekend evenings and at midday, people dressed in their finest clothes to ride along the row and be seen. The Persian ambassador Mirza Abul Hassan Khan estimated that even in December he saw one hundred Thousand men and women walking and riding in the park in eighteen oh nine.

And then came the most scandalous chapter of all. Catherine Walters, also known as "Skittles," was a British fashion trendsetter and one of the last great courtesans of Victorian London. In the eighteen sixties, the sight of Walters riding on Rotten Row drew sightseers. Aristocratic ladies copied the cut of her perfectly fitting "Princess" riding habit. She was so dazzling that duchesses and marchionesses who imitated her style were simply Ignored by the crowds... everyone was waiting for Skittles herself to appear!

In the nineteen thirties, the whole Kennedy family used to ride out in Rotten Row when Joseph Kennedy was the United States Ambassador to the UK. Today, it is convenient for the Household Cavalry, stabled nearby at Hyde Park Barracks in Knightsbridge, to exercise their horses. If you're here early enough in the morning, you might still catch cavalrymen in striking red uniforms cantering down this very stretch of sand.

A Royal plaque commemorating three hundred years of Rotten Row was erected in nineteen ninety. Look for it nearby. It's a small monument to a path that changed how we light our world... one oil lamp at a time.

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