Hampton Court Palace

Home of Henry VIII and the Tudor dynasty: a 500-year old royal pleasure palace The original Tudor palace was begun by Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century, but it soon attracted the attention of Henry VIII, who brought all his six wives here. Surrounded by gorgeous gardens and famous features such as the Maze and the Great Vine, the palace has been the setting for many nationally important events. When William III and Mary II (1689-1702) took the throne in 1689, they commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to build an elegant new baroque palace. Later, Georgian kings and princes occupied the splendid interiors. When the royals left in 1737, impoverished ‘grace and favour’ aristocrats moved in. Queen Victoria opened the palace to the public in 1838. It has remained a magnet for millions of visitors, drawn to the grandeur, the ghosts and the fabulous art collection. Royal preoccupation with Italian Renaissance classicism and baroque during the 17th and 18th centuries ennobled London. We are the beneficiaries. Sadly however the fabled Tudor palaces at Bridewell, Whitehall, Greenwich, Richmond and Nonsuch were torn down, together with their fabled banqueting halls during the great Stuart building spree as mediaeval old Gothic made way for Renaissance new classic, with considerable help from the 1666 Great Fire of London. Hampton Court is London's sole surviving Tudor palace, bar parts of St. James's Palace and Eltham. It is a true Tudor gem with Henry VIII's magnificent hammer-beam roofed Great Hall, Chapel Royal and apartments, and the vast warren of kitchens designed to cope with the 30 course banquets served to King and courtiers, sometimes numbering over 1,200 mouths to feed. A visit to these kitchens will open your eyes to the gluttonous feasting habits of the Tudor monarch and his household. We already have a clear picture of life in the royal kitchens from the Eltham Statutes; a series of ordinances drawn up in 1526 by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, for the better running of the King's household. As a preamble, the Statutes laid down a ruling that master cooks be paid to clothe the scullions. They had hitherto run about naked, (and slept), in the appalling heat of the open fire kitchens, or wore particularly vile and soiled garments. Wolsey's own household at his newly completed palatial Hampton Court residence had amounted to 1,000 persons in support of his lavish lifestyle and entertaining as England's prelate. Two years after compiling the Eltham Statutes, Wolsey tactfully handed Henry VII the keys to Hampton Court Palace in an unsuccessful effort to stave off political oblivion and disgrace following his debacle over the King's divorce from the hapless Catherine of Aragon. Not to be outdone by his former advisor, Henry VIII enlarged Wolsey's original kitchen plan to 50 rooms; a vast 36,000 square feet of food-preparation capacity. We see from Wolsey's Eltham ordinances that two courses should be served at the table of "the King's Majesty and the Queen's Grace" for dinner. For a first remove, the kitchens served up 15 dishes from a choice of bread and soup, beef, venison, red deer, mutton, swan (alternating with goose or stork), capon, cony, (rabbit), and carp. The remove was completed with a custard or fritters. This was followed by the second remove of nine dishes. These were composed of jelly, spiced wine and almond cream, followed by a selection from practically every bird in the sky - pheasants, herons, bitterns, shovelards, partridges, quails, cocks, plovers, gulls, pigeons, larks, pullets, and chickens. To this, was added lamb, kid, rabbit, venison, and tarts. Supper was a variation on dinner, with the addition of a blancmange pudding, butter, eggs and perhaps quinces or pippins in season. During Lent, on Fridays and on meatless days, a 'lighter' fare was set before the King. His first course of a meagre 15 dishes was taken from bread and soup, ling, eels or lampreys, pike, salmon (which ran up the River Thames in Tudor times), whiting, haddock, mullet or bass, sea-bream or sole, conger, carp, trout, crabs, lobster, porpoise or seal, (which counted as fish in those days), custard, tart, fritters and seasonal fruit. The second course comprised nine dishes from a menu of another soup, sturgeon, bream, tench, perch, eels, lampreys, salmon roes, crayfish, shrimps, tart, fritters, fruit, baked pippins, oranges, butter and eggs. The saltwater fish was brought up the Thames to the palace in seaweed packed barrels. The King might order anything or everything from these menus. His entourage fared scarcely less expansively. His Lord Chamberlain was entitled to two courses of ten and six dishes for dinner, and seven and four dishes for supper. And so the list of dish allowances carries on down to the end of the line where the maids, servants, porters and children had to exist on two meat dishes for dinner, (beef and mutton), and two for supper (beef and veal). Leftovers found their way, by royal custom of centuries, dating back to the banquets of William the Conqueror in his Great Hall at Westminster, to the poor at the gate. Henry's home By the 1530s, Henry VIII’s Hampton Court was a palace, a hotel, a theatre and a vast leisure complex. The King used it to demonstrate magnificence and power in every possible way, through lavish banquets, extravagant court life and fabulously expensive art. In addition to Henry’s state and private apartments, where he slept, ate and relaxed, and the queen’s private apartments, the palace contained accommodation for courtiers. The style depended on the status of the occupant, but again, were intended to impress. Around Base Court, the first big courtyard of the Tudor palace inside the West Front, there were 30 suites of lodgings used for the grandest visitors. These royal menus enshrined in the Eltham Statutes are notable for their high-protein content and lack of green vegetables, prompting some medical historians to wonder whether Henry VIII suffered from scurvy, (among other ailments), in his later years. Needless to say, such gargantuan royal meals served up in the Great Hall required prodigious quantities of home-brewed beer, ale, and wine imported from Burgundy and the Rhineland, to wash down these vast quantities of food. Accounts show that 600 barrels of alcohol were consumed each year at Hampton Court. Historic Royal Palaces, Hampton Court's managing authority, offer courses in Tudor cooking each year in the Palace kitchens to budding Clarissa Dickson-Wrights who wish to create such arcane delights as the 'Peacock Royal' or stuffed Boar's Head, as carved at Henry VIII's table on the 1542 Midsummer's Day Feast of St. John the Baptist. By then, in fact, the 50-year-old King was past such gourmandizing pleasures. He was obese, gout-ridden, jaundiced, ulcerated, paranoid and single, having beheaded his fifth wife, the 20-year-old Catherine Howard, four months previously. His youthful Merry England of joyful jousting, feasting and libidinous dalliance, when he was described as "the handsomest prince in Europe", were but a royal memory. The Tudor age of sumptuous royal feasting in Hampton Court's Great Hall flared briefly to final brilliance in 1546, when the then chronically ill King feted the French ambassador and 1,500 retainers for a week, but was not to survive his death the following year. Courtiers' feudal rights stemming from the custom begun by William the Conqueror and later enshrined in the Eltham Statutes were retained however. It was not until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, that servants and officers of the Royal Household finally lost their daily right to the King's meat. From then on, they were paid a wage in lieu of meat at the royal table, and the royal kitchens and the Great Halls they supplied went into consequent terminal decline. Menus for today's royal banquets given by The Queen at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle to visiting Heads of State are a pale shade of the gargantuan feasts of yesteryear. Sorrowful spectres The palace also held unhappy memories for Henry. His third queen Jane Seymour died giving the King a longed-for son, Edward, later Edward VI. It’s said her ghost, a ‘white wraith’ appears on the anniversary of her death. Henry's fifth wife Catherine Howard was arrested here and later executed at the Tower for adultery and treason. A most elegant era When William III and Mary II took the throne in 1689 they asked Christopher Wren to design a new baroque palace for them. Wren scrapped his original plan to demolish the whole palace and instead created the spectacular Fountain Court, leaving much of the Tudor palace intact. A lovely landscape William and Mary were also responsible for creating many of the most spectacular areas of the Hampton Court Gardens to complement their new palace. These include The Great Fountain Garden, created by Daniel Marot, and a new Privy Garden. The yew trees of the Great Fountain Garden, once neatly pruned, were later allowed to grow to their present height by Capability Brown, head gardener in the mid 18th century. The Maze The origins of the famous Maze are controversial, but it is thought it was created at the end of the 17th century. The Maze was first planted in hornbeam, then replanted in the 1960s with visitor-proof yew hedges. The more authentic hornbeam is now being re-introduced. The Georgian Palace George I’s (1714-27) main contribution to the palace was to build an impressive suite of rooms for his son George, Prince of Wales and his wife Princess Caroline. The King also commissioned a new kitchen, today known as the Georgian House. When George I returned in the summers to his native Hanover, he agreed reluctantly for for the Prince and Princess to represent him in England. They entertained lavishly in his absence, leading a glittering court that outshone the old King’s. The infuriated George I tried to outdo this rival court and make a bigger impact at Hampton Court. So in 1718, the Tudor tennis court was refurbished as a grand assembly room and the Great Hall was converted into a theatre. A last flourish When George II succeeded his father in 1727, the palace entered its final phase as a royal residence. George and Caroline completed work on their apartments and started new works for the younger members of their large royal family. In 1734 Queen Caroline invited her favourite architect and designer William Kent to decorate the plain walls of the Queen’s Stairs. He created a Roman-style design, which included a tribute to Caroline, whom he compared to the ancient goddess Britannia. Grace and favour By 1737, George II no longer wanted to use Hampton Court as a royal palace. It was quickly filled with grace and favour residents. Many of them were aristocratic widows in straightened circumstances, who were offered free accommodation in return for their husband’s services to the monarch. The various apartments, although extremely grand, not always the most comfortable places to live. Residents regularly complained that the palace was ‘perishingly cold’ and damp, and some had no access to hot water. Apartments continued to be granted as late as the 1960s, and although the practice has now ceased, there are still a couple of elderly residents living at Hampton Court today! 'Thrown open to all her subjects' In 1838, Queen Victoria ordered the gates of Hampton Court Palace be ‘thrown open to all her subjects’ as an early act of generosity. Visitors flocked to enjoy the stunning palace architecture, get lost in the Maze and relax in the beautiful gardens. A grand day out Hampton Court Palace was one of the few attractions open on a Sunday, the only day working people had to visit. Visitors arrived by every possible means: from boat to public coach. Their journeys were made easier by the railways arriving at Hampton Court in 1849. However, this sudden rush was not altogether welcomed by the grace and favour residents who had previously enjoyed exclusive rights to the palace gardens. They complained that the gardens became ‘hell on earth, the people come intoxicated and the scenes in the gardens on the Lord’s day are beyond description’. Despite the complaints, the number of visitors rose steadily year on year. The public were eager for novelty, and applauded the gardeners’ effort to put the palace gardens in the forefront of fashion. Patriotic displays of mass bedding celebrated the coronation of George V in 1911, for example. In the 1920s, further leisure activities were provided, along with a carpark, which was located, rather unattractively on the West Front! Visitors could take tea in the Tiltyard café, enjoy putting on the green or play a game of tennis on the newly installed court. Hampton Court today The palace is still a magnet for visitors from all over the world. One of the newest attractions for families is the Tudor-inspired Magic Garden, which was opened in 2016 by the Duchess of Cambridge. Two famous annual festivals - the Hampton Court music festival and the RHS Flower Show – stay true to Henry VIII’s ‘pleasure palace’ principle. And the superb art collection – a permanent, rotating display of some of the Royal Collections finest works, continues to delight.