Hampton Court Palace

We started off in Kingston and caught a boat down the River Thames. This is a great way to arrive because not only do you get an amazing view of Hampton Court Palace when you arrive but you also get to snoop on all those hoighty-toighty houses on the riverside. Hoorah!

When we bought our tickets in the ticket office (naturally) we also got handed an Order of Service for Henry's marriage to his sixth and last wife, Kateryn Parr!

We wandered around on our own but if you followed the instructions on the Order of Service you could hear costumed actors talk about Kateryn's last minute nerves or help her choose a wedding dress!

There are lots of tours going on every day and you can also get audio tour thingies- but you have to get their early otherwise they'll all be gone and you'll have to wander about aimlessly like we did!

There was an exhibition called "Henry's Women" with objects and portraits describing his wives and daughters. We didn't get to visit this because the queue was so long (with hour waits).

After wandering around Base Court and the Clock Court (see the images at the top of this page for photos of the court) and trying to get hold of an audio guide (we arrived fairly late in the morning so all of the audio guides were already out on loan) we climbed up the bowing steps to Henry's apartments.

The stone steps bow down in the middle after hundreds of years of feet walking up and down them. Before you climb the steps you can visit the Wardrobe and get a Tudor-esque velvety robe to wear around the Palace and make you feel like you fit in!

The first room you come to at the top of the stairs is the Great Hall. I was in a rush to get to the Great Hall because I knew from visiting before that this was where the collection of Cardinal Wolsey's and Henry's tapestries are kept. I'm a textiles artist and go crazy for anything fabricy. Check out the image opposite to see how filled with happy enlightenment I am to be with the tapestries!

Also in the Great Hall there was a very cool circular Tudor tent. I'm not really sure why it was there- perhaps it's something to do with Henry and Kateryn Parr's wedding festivities that are currently going on in the Palace.

Long banquetting tables line the long sides of the room, with another table at the far end (perhaps supposed to be the King's table?). Below you'll see images of the Great Hall and the stained glass windows.

Hampton Court Palce was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's (also known as Sam Neil) place. He bought the land and started building on it.

When Wolsey realised it wouldn't be long before he was for the chop he passed the palace to King Henry as a gift (perhaps trying to placate the volatile king).

Wolsey loved to collect tapestries. Apparently he collected 600 of them before his death. Tapestries were one of the way that Tudor toffs flaunted their wealth and money. They were also a way of showing what type of person you were. The person commissioning them would choose a Biblical story or some kind of scene that they wanted to be identified with. For example I might choose a taspestry based on the Lady of Shalott- as I spend all my time closeted away in my "tower" making textiles. King Henry commissioned tapestries based on the tale of Hercules and Abraham from the Bible.

When Henry took over Hampton Court Palace he also gained possession of Wolsey's tapestries. When Henry died in 1547 he'd amassed 2,000 tapestries! A man after my own heart.

You can see the tapestries in the gallery below. They're absolutely huge in real life- I don't have a single wall in my cottage that they would fit in. I'm bad with sizes but I'd say that the width of some of them might be around 20ft and there's so much detail in them- I mean I'm not sure you can really understand how cool they are until you try to weave something yourself!

The tapestries were made by the Brussels workshop and would take a team of men around 2 years to make.

A square yard of Brussels tapestries would cost £3. That doesn't sound like much, right? Well a Tudor family could live off £5 a year, even with teenage daughters- of course, they didn't have phones back then.

I'm Henery the Eighth, I am,
Henery the Eighth I am, I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
She'd been married seven times before.
And every one was a Henery
She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam
I'm her eighth old man named Henery
Henery the Eighth, I am!

OK, so that's not strictly accurate.
Here he is, the handsome old devil!

But what about the women in his life?

There was an exhibition on, in Henry's apartments, when we visited. The exhibition was a collection of portraits of Henry's wives and daughters and also contained cool objects like a book of song written for Anne Boleyn by one of her supposed fancy-men and a lock of Kateryn Parr's hair - that's 500 year old hair! Who wouldn't queue to see that? Actually me. Well I would have liked to have seen it but I was sick of queues by then (and the queue was about an hour and a half long!) which is strange because English people live for queues.

Anywho. This is quick rundown of what I know of Henry's wives

Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon (not Aragorn LOTR fans!) was Henry's first wife. Before that she was married to Henry's older brother but he died (not sure how). Anyway she said that she'd never consummated her marriage with Henry's older brother- for some reason this was a big deal- like there's some law that you can't marry two brothers or something?

Anyway- a lot of the first season of the Tudors is all about Henry trying to divorce poor Catherine. Henry, apparently, was obsessed with having a son and Catherine had only produced Mary (who later became Queen, before Elizabeth I). He saw "her" inability to have a son as a sign that God disapproved of their marriage.

This was kind of convenient because Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn and wanted to marry her.

He eventually (after, I believe, around 6 years) managed to divorce Catherine but he had to kill a lot of people and change England from a Catholic nation to a Protestant nation.

Catherine was sent away to a modest house and eventually died (probably of consumption?).


Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn is arguably Henry VIII's most famous, well-known wife.

She was the first one to be executed.

After Henry managed to divorce Catherine of Aragon, he married Anne Boleyn. Anne had cleverly said she wouldn't sleep with him until they were married. If she hadn't resisted him (like so many other women at court hadn't over the years) he probably would have stayed married to Catherine.

If you watch The Tudors TV series you probably don't like Anne. She comes across as crazy and maniopulative and also manipulated by her father and snivelling brother.

According to my partner, who has read David Starkey's book Six Wives, Anne was much cleverer than she's portrayed in The Tudors.

Unfortunately she overstepped her mark and didn't produce a boy. She was, however, the mother of Elizabeth I, arguably one of England's greatest queens.

Henry had Anne Boleyn executed on the grounds that she was a witch (something either do with an extra finger or fingernail) and that she'd commited incest with her brother, but mostly because he's had to execute some cherished friends because of her and that she didn't produce a boy heir.


Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour was Henry's favourite wife. She was one of Anne's ladys-in-waiting and Henry's lust for her probably sped along Anne's execution orders.

She unfortunately died after giving birth to Henry's son, Edward - not during childbirth as I'd originally wrote (thanks for the tip off, Snarky Anon!).

Rumour has it I am distantly related to her *sits a little prouder in chair*. "Seymour" is a middle name that's been passed down in my father's family for generations. Luckily neither myself or my brother were given the middle name "Seymour" considering our last name is "Cox"... well, you get the picture... my poor father.

Henry loved Jane best of all because she delivered his only heir. Poor little Edward died as a teenage king.

Jane was Catholic and urged Henry to restore his first daughter, Mary, into the line of succession. Jane was probably quite lovely and by all accounts a bit of a looker.


Anne of Cleves
Poor Anne of Cleves she's the "homely one".

Henry didn't meet Anne before he married her. He only saw a portrait of her and thought "she'll do".

Unfortunately the artist who had painted Anne's portrait had spent more time on her dress than her face, possibly because she was "homely". I'm not sure but I think "homely" is the Tudor way of saying "ugly" or at the very least "plain".

I believe Henry was marrying Anne as some sort of alliance with another country (possibly Germany, but I'm not sure).

Luckily for Anne she agreed to a quick divorce and Henry gave her a house and some land and they remained good friends (possibly because she agreed so quickly to the divorce- well who wouldn't agree after seeing what happened to the first two?).


Catherine Howard
Catherine was a teen bride and unfortunately couldn't control her hormones!

Catherine was a bit of a wild child (see more about her below).

Henry was besotted with his beautiful 5th wife but she was besotted with any young man with a pulse and who wouldn't be after marrying a man old enough to be your grandfather with a septic leg?

Like Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard was executed when the King found out about her affairs.

Henry was utterly devastated by Catherine's betrayal although I don't doubt that he probably satisfied himself with a lady-in-waiting or two himself.

Katherine Parr
Katherine Parr is the one I know least about.

I believe she died in childbirth and she'd already been widowed twice when she married Henry.

I've heard that she did a lot of good in healing Henry's family and bringing them all together.

Catherine Howard was Henry's 5th wife. I believe she was 18 when she married him and he was old enough to be her grandfather.

According to my partner, who has read David Starkey's book "Six Wives" and therefore knows more about Henry's wives than me, Catherine Howard was a bit of a wild child and regularly used to "entertain" young gentlemen in her dormitory. This didn't change when she met Henry and apparently she conducted many affairs with younger, more virile, less septic-legged men.

Henry got wind of Catherine's affairs and so ordered to have her executed.

Now the story goes that Catherine, upon hearing her fate, ran down a particular hallway, now referred to as the "Haunted Gallery" towards the chapel where Henry was at prayer, screaming his name and begging for mercy. My partner has informed me that David Starkey doesn't believe this ever happened (killjoy).

Apparently that piece of hallway is still haunted by Catherine's ghost, perpetually running and pleading for Henry's forgiveness.

Take a walk along the Haunted Gallery and you'll find an interesting painting. It's not the painting opposite, but it's similar. In the painting you'll see King Henry with his favourite wife, Jane Seymour, and their teenage son, Edward. The reason this painting is impossible is that Jane died shortly after giving birth to Edward but it just goes to show what was going on in Henry's heart and the family he really wanted.

At the end of Season 2 of The Tudors King Henry shoves his hand into a pie which has bits of swan stuck around it- like it's a pie decorated with swan head and wings and tail. It's disgusting and he ends up with gravy all over his face.

I wonder if this peacock had the same fate as a pie ornament.

It would have been less disgusting to end with Anne Boleyn's severed head dripping with blood.

Anyway...

Apparently a large part of the Kitchens are no longer accessible (perhaps because they are haunted by terrible apparitions! Or maybe because when King William III remodled the palace he accidentally built some walls across doorways) or they've been demolished (again William III's doing!). This is amazing because what is left of the kitchens is pretty vast anyway.

If you look below you'll see a doodled map of the kitchens which shows you the various rooms that are still remaining. These rooms are decorated with some of the original cooking equipment and plastic food.

A lot of the original Palace has been lost due to William III's refurbishment. This has probably made it quite difficult for the staff at Hampton Court to carve out the Tudor exhibits!

William III was king between 1689-1702 and Mary II queen between 1689-94.

From what I can gather, Mary's father was King of England when she married William. When her father was deposed Mary decided she didn't want to rule and so made her husband (William III) king. When Mary died suddenly of small pox she left William on the throne. Her sister, Anne, had more right to the throne than William who Anne hated. She called him "Caliban" after the monster in Shakespeare's play The Tempest!

Mary's sister, Anne, remodelled the Chapel Royal. Apparently she had 17 children and none of them outlived her which meant that particular line to the throne ended with her.

The image opposite is taken from the King's staircase, to see more images of the staircase please look through the images in the gallery further down this page).

The staircase was painted by, Itallian artist, Antonio Verrio to look like a great Roman hall and it's very impressive... if you like that kind of thing *mutters under breath*.

The painting tells the story of a battle between Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar who are competing for a seat at the gods' banquet (pictured on the ceiling above them).

Apparently William III would have identified with Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar is supposed to represent the Roman Catholic James II.

At the top of the stairs you will find the Guard Chamber which is filled with more antique weaponry than you can imagine. The room is enormous and the weaponry is covering the walls, placed in patterns.

This is the sight that would greet people when they entered the King's first Reception Room.

King William would be sat on that throne, on the raised platform, under the canopy.

In this room is a splendid portrait of William on horseback accompanied by some of King Henry's tapestries (thank goodness he didn't throw them out as being too "old fashioned" or something!).

I almost threw a fit when I found out that Queen Mary's apartments were built over the remains of Anne Boleyn's apartments. What?! I know she was executed for being a traitor and what have you but that would have been amazing to see!

Anyway, Queen Mary died with these apartments unfinished. Her sister, Anne, did some of the decorating work but the rooms were finished by George II and Queen Caroline (1727-37).

The ceiling of this bedchamber is painted with a scene from the story of Aurora (goddess of the Dawn) who kidnapped her mortal lover Cephalus. It's interesting to hear about these poems and stories that have inspired the artwork at Hampton Court which were obviously very important back then but of which I know very little.

Prince George and Princess Caroline's portraits are immortalised in the coving above the bed.

There are more rooms in the Queen's apartments filled with objects and tapestries and paintings but I might get RSI if I tell you about them.

Sunshine! Fresh air! How I have missed thee!

By the time you've seen all that historical stuff you will be way too exhausted to look around the gardens.

But never fear! Here be ice cream sellers! Hoorah!

There is a lot of garden to investigate. If you thought the Palace was sprawling, well, you ain't seen nothing yet, Baby. If you're exhausted at this point you can explore the gardens via horse and carriage and give your aching feet a rest!

The image opposite shows the Hornbeam Bower, part of the Privy Garden, which was kept as the private garden of whichever monarch was in power at the time. The Hampton Court guidebook describes this as "an outdoor cathedral, cool and vast".

The Privy Garden has been restored to the state it was in William III's reign. Most of the images in the gallery below are of the Privy Garden.

When King George III decided he wouldn't live in Hampton Court Palace it was divided up into living quarters called Grace-and-Favour homes.

If you did wonderful things for the crown or country then you might just be awarded with one of these homes. The houses were usually awarded to women- who had been widowed, for example, presumably because their husbands had died in wars. This went on until the 1980s.

In 1986 there was a fire in one of the Grace and Favour homes situated above King William's apartments which brought down the ceiling in the apartments and destroyed a lot of objects from the 1700s and, I believed, cost one resident her life.

The end was a terrible tragedy, but just imagine living in one of these homes and having the run of the Palace and Grounds when everyone else had gone home for the day! Amazing!