Hyde Park Road

There is a Hyde Park in New York, and a Hyde Park pub in Sheffield and both - as well as other Hyde Parks around the world - are said to owe their names to the famous park in London. In the case of the pub in Dronfield, near Sheffield, it is said that the original owner was staying in London, near Hyde Park, when he got first news that his premises had been granted a licence.

The name appears to derive from the old English "hid" or "hide", meaning an area of land of 60 to 120 acres. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that originally this was "the amount (of land) considered adequate for the support of one free family and its dependants. At an early date it was defined as being as much land as could be tilled with one plough in a year".

Plymouth's Hyde Park Hotel, at one end of Hyde Park Road, was once a prominent corner location. But in the early part of the last century a road was driven around its western side, and it has been on an island site ever since.