Hampton Court Palace, Near London

Hampton Court Palace and Grounds in London, Photographic Print
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In 1514, Thomas Wolsey bought the site on the River Thames and planned to rebuild his medieval manor there. The plans rapidly assumed the proportions of a magnificent palace with 280 rooms and spacious grounds surrounding it.

That same year, Wolsey became a cardinal and also King Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor. Some years later he fell out of favour and made a gift of Hampton Court to the king in a vain attempt to soften the king's attitude to him but in 1529 Henry declared all of Wolsey's lands and possessions forfeit and they became the property of the Crown.

Henry immediately began to extend the Palace adding rooms and buildings including more kitchens, library, towers and Water Gallery. Five of the king's six wives lived in the Palace and Anne Boleyn's initials can still be seen in the Great Hall. Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, died here and his fifth, Catherine Howard, was condemned and kept under house arrest here for adultery.

After Henry's death, Princess Elizabeth, as she was then, lived in and was held under guard in the Water Gallery because her sister, Queen Mary, suspected her of being involved in a threat to usurp the throne. When Elizabeth became Queen, it is said that she enjoyed gardening in the beautiful grounds. This was also a place where Queen Elizabeth entertained and held councils including the one that decided on the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

Facade of a Building, Hampton Court Palace, London, England Photographic Print
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When the first Stuart king, James I, ascended the throne, the Palace at Hampton Court still played a central role in the life of the monarch.

Shakespeare and his company performed plays here for the King and his court during the Christmas and New Year celebrations at the end of 1603. As the Great Hall in the Palace is largely unchanged since then, visitors can experience it in much the same way as Shakespeare must have done. It is almost certain that the great playwright and his company stayed in the Palace as there was plague in surrounding villages.

Hampton Court, Surrey
Photographic Print
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In 1604, the James I convened the Hampton Court Conference during which the King James Bible was commissioned. This was a landmark decision as this version of the Bible served the Church of England right into the late 20th century. Even today, many older people believe that it the most beautiful translation of the Bible and far superior to modern one but it was ever thus - what is familiar is always better!

In 1689, the joint monarchy of King William II and Queen Mary II was in place. During this period Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St Paul's Cathedral in London and many other notable buildings, was commissioned to rebuild large parts of the Palace. Less than one hundred years later, in 1760, King George III did not want to use Hampton Court Palace as a residence. Instead the process of splitting it up into 'grace and favour' apartments begins. These apartments are awarded to people by the grace and favour of the monarch.

The Palace's last major brush with history came in 1944 when General Eisenhower used Bushy Park, part of Hampton Court's grounds during Tudor times, as his headquarters and it was there that he planned the D Day Landings for the invasion of Europe.

Hampton Court, 1849 Giclee Print
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Over the centuries, staff, visitors, workmen and residents have experienced strange phenomena for which there is often no practical explanation. Many of these experiences have been recorded and are presented below.

The Haunted Gallery - Catherine Howard
One of the best known hauntings at Hampton Court Palace is that of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of King Henry VIII. In November 1541, Catherine was charged with adultery and placed under house arrest. It is claimed that she broke free from her guards and ran down the gallery to reach her husband and plead for her life. The guards dragged her back and Catherine was later executed at the Tower of London. It is said that a female form, dressed in white, has been seen floating down the Haunted Gallery: 'towards the door of the Royal Pew, and just as she reaches it, has been observed to hurry back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair, uttering at the same time the most unearthly shrieks, till she passes through the door at the end of the gallery'. ( A Short History of Hampton Court by Ernest Law, 1897)

During totally separate evening tours of the palace one evening in 1999, two female visitors fainted on exactly the same spot in the Haunted Gallery approximately one hour apart. Both of them felt frightened and uncomfortable and one lady declined to re-join the tour.

Clock Court - Jane Seymour
Henry VIII's third, and allegedly favourite, wife is said to walk through the cobbled courtyard carrying a lighted taper. She died following complications after the birth of Henry's only son, Edward, in 1537.

Queen Mary's State Bed Chamber,
Hampton Court from
Pyne's "Royal Residences," 1818 Giclee Print
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Sibell Penn - 'The Lady in Grey'
Sibell Penn was nurse to Prince Edward, Henry VIII's only son. She died in 1562 and was buried in Hampton Church. When the old church was pulled down in 1829, Mrs Penn's remains were disturbed and it is said that she returned to the rooms she inhabited during her time at Hampton Court Palace. The sound of a spinning wheel could be heard from behind a wall in the south-west wing of the palace shortly afterwards. When the wall was demolished, a small forgotten room was found, containing an old spinning wheel.

Sibell Penn is the most persistent ghost at Hampton Court Palace. There have been sightings as recently as 1986 when a 'lady in grey' was reportedly seen in various Tudor courtyards and cloisters.

The Wolsey Closet
This room has long been commented on by visitors, warders and other staff as having a "strange atmosphere". A caterer at an evening function refused to enter the little alcove in the room because he felt it was "evil".

A dog has been seen and heard in the room on more than one occasion, and the presence of a dog felt by somebody "sensitive" to such things.

The kitchens from the times of Henry VIII
Copyright Cronwood - the GNFD license

The Kitchens at Hampton Court Palace, extended by Henry VIII in 1529, occupied over fifty rooms and some three thousand square feet. In their heyday they were staffed by 200 people providing two meals a day for the 800 members of the king's court who were entitled to eat there.

Sited on the cooler, north side of Hampton Court Palace, the kitchens were reached through a separate gatehouse and grouped around three courtyards. The gatehouse was occupied by the Cofferer (the kitchen accountant) and his assistants, the Clerks of the Greencloth, who monitored the arrival of all supplies and staff to the kitchens.

The Spicery was situated in the western court and was filled with exotic spices imported from the Orient and Europe, as well as English mustard and herbs grown in the palace's own herb garden. The Office of Spicery was responsible for the huge quantities of fruit produced in the palace gardens each year, including apples and pears from Hampton Court's two orchards.

Kitchen at Hampton Court Palace
© Copyright David Hawgood - Creative Commons Licence.

In the same courtyard as the Spicery was the Chandlery where wax (for candles and tapers) and linen were stored. There was also a Coal House in which charcoal was stored. This provided an alternative source of heat to the fierce wood fires most commonly used by the Tudor cooks.

At the eastern end of the central court was the Great Kitchen with its six great fireplaces. One of these fireplaces retains its spit-racks, but the other five openings would have had similar cooking apparatus. At each end of the Great Kitchen were hatches at which liveried serving men would collect the finished dishes and take them to the Great Hall.

In the Confectory delicate sweet dishes were prepared for the more important members of the Court. It was here that the Awife who made the king's puddings worked - the only woman known to have been employed in the kitchen complex. In the Pastry House both sweet and savoury pies and pasties were prepared in four ovens. The largest of these measured 12'6" in diameter.

Meat stock and boiled meat were produced in the Boiling House in a great boiling-copper. This was on the east wall of the room and had a capacity of about 75 gallons.

Of the three larders in the Tudor Kitchens, meat was hung in the Flesh Larder, fish was stored in the Wet Larder, and pulses and nuts were kept in the Dry Larder. Venison, culled from the Royal Parks, was hung in the Flesh Larder for as long as six weeks before consumption, whilst meat was also supplied from the palace's own pheasant yard and rabbit warren. The Wet Larder could be stocked with fish from the Palace's Pond Garden for consumption on Fridays and during Lent.

A list from the reign of Elizabeth I reveals the quantity of meat cooked in the royal kitchens in one year; 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs and a modest 53 wild boar.

The palace had three cellars. The Wine Cellar was used to store the 300 casks of wine drunk by the Court each year and had a drinking house attached - presumably for wine tasting. Wine and ale for the King and Queen were kept in the Privy Cellar while the majority of the ale drunk by the Court - around 600,000 gallons each year - was stored in the Great Cellar. This had two locks on the door and the keys were held by two different officials for extra security.

Today, the Flesh Larder is stocked with pheasant, rabbits and wild boar and the Great Kitchens are laid out as if for the Feast of St John the Baptist in 1542. Pewter dishes are laden with pies and stuffed carp ready to be carried to the Great Hall.

Hampton Court Hedge Maze
Copyright monkeymagic1975 - Creative Commons license

The Hampton Court Hedge Maze, in Hampton Court's Riverside Gardens, might stand on the site of an earlier maze planted when Cardinal Wolsey owned the property. The present one was planted between 1689 and 1695 by George London and Henry Wise for William III (often known as William of Orange). It is now reputed to be the oldest surviving one of its kind in the world.

Facts
* The area of the maze covers a third of an acre.
* It has half a mile of paths.
* It stands in the 60 acres of Riverside Gardens.
* Originally hornbeam were planted but now they are only found in the centre of the maze. Everywhere else the hedges are yew.
* In 2006, Greyworld put in an audio art installation, Trace which plays different sounds in response to the pressure of footsteps or, on some benches, to somebody sitting down. There are about 1000 different sounds including laughter, whispers, a dog barking and rustling.

Three Men in a Boat in Hampton Court Maze by Jerome K. Jerome
"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but it's very simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get some lunch."

They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very kind of him, and fell behind, and followed.

They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.

The centre of Hampton Court Maze

Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.

"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.

"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked a good two miles already."

Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris's cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: "Oh, impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as she herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory.

"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party, "if you know whereabouts in it we are now."

Visiting the Maze
In fact, this maze is not particularly difficult. The advice is to keep to the wall on the right even if it takes you into deadends, you just follow them back the way you came! Doing this will eventually bring you to the centre, although it is doing it the long way.

Garden, Hampton Court Palace, London Photographic Print
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Hampton Court Palace buildings cover an amazing 6 acres of land. It stands in extensive grounds: the gardens cover 60 acres between the Palace and the River Thames and the parkland covers 750 acres.

The Privy Garden
The first Privy (or private) Garden at Hampton Court Palace was made in the 1530s so that King Henry VIII had a safe, private area away from the business of being king. Over the centuries it changed from a Tudor garden with many statues of heraldic beasts to reflect the changing fashions in garden design. At the beginning of the 18th century the size of the Privy Garden was increased to three acres, the size it is now. It was during the 18th century that the clipped pyramid-shaped yews and round hollies were cultivated and shaped.

Over the next 200 years the very formal 18th century disappeared as trees grew bigger and shaded the flowerbeds, giving it a much more informal appearance. Even the yew and hollies were no longer clipped into shape.

Then in 1995 restoration of the original 18th century design and plants of the Privy Garden was completed and opened to the public. It had taken four years of archaeological and historical research as well as hard work in the garden.

The Tender Exotics Collection
King William III and Queen Mary II, joint monarchs from 1689, were inveterate collectors. Their passion for collecting included tender exotic plants from all over world and these were displayed at Hampton Court Palace. Queen Mary, in particular, loved these plants and she arranged for glass or 'stove' houses to be built in an area in the South Gardens, once the Pond Gardens, the warmest part. They are believed to be amongst the earliest forms of greenhouse used in England.

The collection contained 2000 different species and was so vast that Mary employed her own botanist, Dr Leonard Plukenet, to look after them, including maintaining a detailed, catalogue as the
collection was one of the largest private collections of tender exotic plants in the world.

When Mary died in 1694, William III removed the glass houses and
ordered Christopher Wren to construct the Lower Orangery in 1701-2, later used to house an art collection, Andrea Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar, which can still be seen here today. Eight years later, William died although the collection of exotic plants continued although it became depleted over the years until it died out completely during the First World War, as the war effort and lack of
manpower meant the necessary care and attention was not available.

The collection of exotic plants was reintroduced in 1995 with the restoration of the Privy Gardens so summer visitors can see them. They include orange trees, aloes, agaves and lantarnas, displayed in the Privy Garden as they would have been in the early 18th century.

The Great Vine
This is the oldest and largest known vine in the world. It is more than 230 years old and over 36.5 metres long. The current vine house was built in 1969, and incorporated wrought-iron Victorian supports from its predecessor. The re-building was unique as it was the first
time a glasshouse was built around a plant. Both the frame that supports the vine and the viewing gallery come from an earlier 19th-century wooden vine house.

In 1887 the vine's base measured 4 foot in circumference. Now it measures 12 foot around the base and the longest rod is 120ft.

The vine usually flowers in early May and the crop is harvested in September, taking about three weeks to remove all the grapes. It produces between 500 and 700 bunches of grapes (between 220-320 kilograms), which are black and sweet, had been used by the Royal household as dessert grapes, grown specifically for the table. Today all the grapes are sold to visitors in the Palace shops.

Laburnum Walk in Wilderness Gardens, Hampton Court Photographic Print
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The Wilderness
The Wilderness is not a wasteland or neglected area. It was a place to reflect and wander around. During the reign of William and Mary it would have contained 18ft high hornbeam hedges, with interstices planted with elm.

As well as high hedges, it had secluded benches and winding paths making it somewhere people could go for privacy and where gentlemen in particular could entertain ladies in private.

Sir Christopher Wren drew up plans for William and Mary , for a Grand North Approach to their new Baroque palace. The proposed scheme would have joined Bushy Park with Hampton Court Palace and visitors would have approached the palace through the long avenue in Bushy Park and past the Diana Basin to the Lion Gates. The scheme remained unfinished by the time of William III's death in 1702 but Diana's basin was later completed by Queen Anne although the need to cut costs following William's death meant that Queen Anne was unable to complete the rest of the plans.

The East Gardens
This was an area of parkland during the reign of Henry VIII but was landscaped under the Stuart monarchs and evolved into the Great Fountain Garden under William III with a 13-fountain parterre, framed by avenues of trees. The only remaining fountain today is the East Front Fountain, which once formed the centerpiece of William III's East Front landscape design. The fountain was refurbished in 2002 to provide an alternative display and complement to the Golden Jubilee Fountain in Home Park.

Queen Anne disliked William's layout and replaced the neat box hedges with clipped yew trees, statues and wide lawns.

The Historic Vista of Long Water with Lime Trees
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Home Park
Home Park covers an area of 750 acres and has remained unspoilt since it was first opened to the public in 1894. It has a rich and varied eco-system and provides a habitat for wildlife, including 300 fallow deer (descended from Henry VIIIs original herd), 30-40 Ring-necked Parakeets and horses.

There is also a private golf course and the East Garden is also the venue for the annual RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show - the largest show of its kind in the world.

This is where visitors can see the oldest tree on the Hampton Court Palace estate - the medieval English oak in Home Park, said to be over 1,000 years old.

The historic Long Water Avenue of lime trees was planted in the 1660's by King Charles II as a gift to his new bride, Catherine of Braganza. A major conservation and restoration project to reinstate the historic vista of the Long Water Avenue was completed in May 2004 when HRH The Prince if Wales planted the last of 544 new lime trees that once again flank the central canal as Charles II would have known it.

The Golden Jubilee Fountain, created at the end of the historic Long Water Canal, was inaugurated in November 2002 by HM The Queen. It consists of five jets rising out of the eastern most end of the canal, the largest of which is 30 metres in height.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2002, Hampton Court, England Photographic Print
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The Hampton Court Flower Show Flower show has been held here since 1989 and is the largest of its kind in the world.

It is more inclusive than the Chelsea Flower Show although both are run by the Royal Horticultural Society. Visitors to the Hampton Court Flower Show can buy plants and take them home with them the same day whereas at the Chelsea Flower Show, all visitors can do is place orders to be received later.

At the Hampton Court event, gardeners still build their show gardens and those that are worthy of the honours receive gold, silver gilt, silver or bronze medal certificates. The most popular features of the show according to visitor surveys are the show gardens and floral marquees.

Exhibitors bring every conceivable gardening product known to man to the show to sell. There are plants of all kinds and from all over the world.

In 2007 visitor numbers exceeded 160,000 and, on average, visitors spend about 5 hours at the show. Of course, as well as all the garden related stuff at the show, there are all kinds of places to eat, designed to suit every budget and taste. During show week, visitors consume 31,000 rounds of sandwiches, 41,000 glasses of Pimms, 20,000 glasses of champagne and nearly 80,000 cups of tea and coffee.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2002, Hampton Court, England Photographic Print
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The final day of the show is the most exciting, especially for visitors who like a bargain - and who doesn't? Many exhibitors sell off display plants at low prices. The sell-off starts at 4.30pm on the final day and lasts for an hour until the show closes and all visitors must leave the showground. You will see people struggling to their cars or on to buses with enormous plants or dozens of smaller ones.

During all the five days of the Hampton Court Flower Show, if you buy plants, you don't have to struggle around carrying them or have to return to the car park to put them in your car. Instead, the organisers have a 'plant creche' where you can leave them until you are ready to return to your car. There are also wheelbarrows for you to carry your plants in so you don't have to worry if you've bought too many to carry - and most people do. If you can't push your barrow because it's too overloaded, there are plant porters to help you. It's all very well thought out to make buying plants and gardening products as easy as possible.

I've been to this flower show and to Chelsea Flower Show and I definitely prefer Hampton Court. Chelsea is much posher and more fashionable as well as less crowded but Hampton Court is more fun. Actually being able to buy unusual plants or those you've wanted for a long time is really exciting if you love gardening. I defy anybody to go to the show without buying at least one gadget absolutely guaranteed to make gardening much easier - I don't think I ever used the ones I bought more than once because they were more trouble than doing it the hard way!