Hyde Park, Sydney, is an urban park, of , located in the central business district of Sydney, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It is the oldest public parkland in Australia. Hyde Park is on the eastern fringe of the Sydney city centre and is approximately rectangular in shape, being squared at the southern end and rounded at the northern end. It is bordered on the west by Elizabeth Street, on the east by College Street, on the north by St. James Road and Prince Albert Road and on the south by Liverpool Street.
The park was designed by Norman Weekes, Sir John Sulman (1927 design resolution), Alfred Hook, W. G. Layton and I. Berzins and was built from 1810 to 1927. Historically, it has also been known as Sydney Common, Government Domain, The Common, The Exercising Ground, Cricket Ground and Racecourse. Hyde Park is owned by the City of Sydney and the Land and Property Management Authority, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 13 December 2011.
It is the southernmost of a chain of parkland that extends north to the shore of Sydney Harbour via The Domain and Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens. Around the park's boundaries lie various buildings housing the Supreme Court of New South Wales, St. James Church, Hyde Park Barracks and Sydney Hospital to the north, St Mary's Cathedral, the Australian Museum and Sydney Grammar School to the east, the Downing Centre to the south, the David Jones Limited flagship store and the CBD to the west. It is divided in two by the east–west running Park Street.
Hyde Park contains well-kept gardens and approximately 580 trees: a mixture of figs, conifers, palms, and other varieties. It is famed for its magnificent fig tree lined avenues. Sandringham Gardens sit on the eastern side of the park, close to the intersection of Park Street and College Street.
History
At the time of European settlement in 1788, the local Aboriginal people hunted ducks in the swampy marshes that were to become Hyde Park.
Hyde Park is also understood to be the site of an important Aboriginal contest ground which is a part of the greater Aboriginal history of Sydney. Until the mid 1820s, Aboriginal people travelled from all over Sydney and as far away as the Hunter and the Illawarra, to gather at a ceremonial contest ground to the south of the city. The exact location of this site of ritualized conflict settlement and resistance is unclear. Described as lying between the road to Botany Bay and the Brickfields, it was probably near Hyde Park South. Bloody fist fights involving up to 100 people, spearings and beatings were used to resolve conflicts at the Brickfields contest ground. These were observed and recorded by visiting Russian sailors in 1814, and again 10 years later by the French explorers Dumont d'Urville and René Lesson on their voyage of Coquille.
The valley of the Tank Stream was cradled between two slightly elevated sandstone and shale ridges which ran down to the harbour to form Dawes Point and Bennelong Point on each side of Sydney Cove. The Tank Stream itself was only a tiny rivulet which rose in marshy ground skirting the western slopes of the ground which later became Hyde Park. The seepage from the bed-joints of the underlying sandstone around the upper portion of its catchment, which headed about the centre of the park, filtered through the soil to form a definite channel near King and Pitt Streets. The area now occupied by Hyde Park was relatively flat, rising slightly along the centre and elevated.
We know it was timbered, as was the rest of the topography, from the early drawings of the settlement, and Director of the Botanic Gardens, Sydney J. H. Maiden has suggested that the dominant species were probably white or brittle gum (Eucalyptus micrantha), blackbutt (E.pilularis), bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera), Port Jackson figs (Ficus rubiginosa), Bangalow palms (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana), cabbage tree palms (Livistona australis) and smooth-barked white apple (Angophora costata), with an understorey of tea tree (Leptospermum sp.), wattle (Acacia sp.) and NSW Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum).
From 1788 this was a place where soldiers could be quickly assembled in case of a convict rebellion. It was probably the site of a bloody battle between Aboriginal people and Europeans for control of land around Sydney. It was also the site of an important Aboriginal contest ground.