"Lady - Rotten Row" from 'London Types'

William Newzam Prior Nicholson

From the series of thirteen plates in Nicholson's London Types, published in a portfolio with typeset quatorzains (14 line poems) by William Ernest Henley. Pictured in this image is a couple walking arm-in-arm along the Rotten Row social promenade, or "broad track", in Hyde Park, London.

Originally built in the 17th century as a safer route for William III to travel between Kensington and St. James' palaces, it soon became a gathering place for the fashionable elite to see and be seen. It was later broadened and improved with bricks and fine gravel for horesback riding and, at the time of the portfolio's publication, it was a where the upper class would go riding in their finery.