In the Muniment Room at Westminster lies a paper (to which, through the courtesy of Dean Armitage Robinson, I have been able to refer) that records in 1285 the granting of parcels of land in the Manor of Hide to a tenant, reserving the right to enter and repair the “aqueductum subterraneum” running through them. This is the first of many references to the springs in Hyde Park which for long supplied the surrounding districts with water. When the Manor of Hide became a Royal hunting-ground, the “original fountain” and all the watercourses leading from it to the site of St. Peter’s, and the right of entering to repair them, were restored to the Dean and Chapter. Dean Stanley notes in his _History of Westminster_ how the Tyburn water was considered especially good on account of its having run through a bed of gravel somewhere near the present site of Buckingham Palace. There was in his time an ancient and well-worn pump standing in Dean’s Yard, under the shadow of the Abbey. [Illustration: Bathing Well in Hyde Park. _From a Print in the Crace Collection, British Museum._] Speaking the other day to an old inhabitant of Westminster who remembered this pump, I learnt that it was in existence until about twenty-five years ago, when the underground railway interfered with the spring, and although water was laid on from another source to provide passers-by with refreshment, the new supply was so little used that the pump was removed. In my informant’s remembrance an old woman used to sit there, with a glass, to dole out the pure liquid from the spring; and in his youth (1835) old people told him that numbers of halt, sick, and lame came to Dean’s Yard, under the shadow of the Abbey, and pumped the water on to their ailing limbs, or bathed their sores, while other visitors carried away buckets full to sick folk at home, just as they do at Lourdes to-day. But to return to the Manor of Hide. Some writers think that about the time of Edward III. it passed from the control of the monks, doubtless because there exists a document recording that Edward III. granted parcels of land in the Manor of Hide to his Barber, Adam de Thorpe. But probably the King held the land in some way from the Abbot. It was in this reign, too, that John of Gaunt (son of Edward III.), styling himself “King of Leon and Castille,” begged the Abbot of Westminster to grant him the use of the Neyte Manor House during the sitting of Parliament; while about the same time Abbot Nicholas Littlington, who did much good work for Westminster, and improved the Hide ground vastly, lived and died in the Neyte House.