Joanne Major

A sentry found Cromwell's head and kept it. At his death, the sentry bequeathed it (what an inheritance!) to his wife and daughter.

An ancient building, made of timber and plaster with a flat tiled roof, the Cheesecake House stood in the park from at least the reign of Charles II (and perhaps even earlier). To gain access to the front door, you crossed the small stream which ran in front of the building via a rudimentary wooden bridge. Samuel Pepys was a visitor; in 1669 he took his wife. They sat outside in their coach and ate ‘a cheesecake and drank a tankard of milk.’

Dido was the natural daughter of a former African enslaved woman and Sir John Lindsay. She was brought up at Kenwood House in Hampstead, London alongside her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, and also at Lincoln's Inn Fields and Bloomsbury. The girls' great-uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield owned the estate. You may have seen the film about Dido’s life, Belle (2013).

[A] Frost Fair began on the canal in St James’s park, where many thousands met, some for skaiting, others for sliding; several of whom, by the ice breaking, had the misfortune to drop in up to their armpits, which caused great diversion to most of the spectators...