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TIME OUT
Imposing opulence
NIVEDITA CHOUDHURI
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Henry VIII spent the equivalent of £18 million on Hampton Court in the 1520s. And it shows even today.
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Photos: Nivedita choudhuri
Majestic façade: Hampton Court and its gardens.
A couple of ladies dressed in long gowns with wide sleeves and intricate embroidery suddenly materialise from behind a huge gate. Some tourists in our group look startled, as if they had just seen the ghosts of Mary Tudor and her more famous half-sib
ling, Elizabeth I. However, the ladies break into cheery smiles and, coming towards us, proclaim that they would be our guides for the day. Welcome to Hampton Court Palace.
Flamboyant Tudor king Henry VIII, who is most associated with this majestic palace, lavished money on fabulous tapestries and paintings, housed and fed a huge court, pursued a succession of wives, political power and independence from Rome here. The Tudors, Stuarts and even Georgian monarchs lived and entertained in this grand palace, which became a telling symbol of the wealth and prestige of those who owned it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the magnificent furnishings and decoration of both the Tudor and Baroque state rooms.
Typical fare
Our first stop was the Tudor kitchens, a living record of the scale of production that was necessary to nourish the court. The kitchens were always busy as meals had to be rustled up daily for a royal household of 1,200 people. Sixteenth century kitchen equipment has been recreated and a sooty fireplace left intact to give visitors a feel of what it was like in those days.
And, what tickled a Tudor’s taste buds? Apparently, 75 per cent of his diet was meat-based and an average man then consumed double the calories an average man does now. Few vegetables were eaten — a couple of cabbages, a sack of onions, celery stalks and some spring onions were displayed on a counter to indicate what was consumed besides meat.
The palace had its origin in 1515 when Cardinal Wolsey began building a magnificent palace on the north bank of the Thames in the parish of Hampton. Henry VIII received the palace from Wolsey in the mid to late 1520s, although the latter retained apartments there until he fell from favour and died subsequently in 1530.
Henry VIII was prolific in everything, from marriage to palace building, and in just 10 years he spent a sum equivalent to approximately £18 million today, rebuilding and extending Hampton Court. The Great Hall in the king’s State Apartments is reportedly England’s last and greatest medieval hall. The room is spanned by a large and sumptuously decorated hammer-beam roof and its walls are hung with Henry VIII’s most splendid tapestry, The Story of Abraham. It’s also one of Britain’s oldest theatres: William Shakespeare’s company, the “King’s Men”, performed for King James I over Christmas and New Year in 1603-04.
We left the State Apartments and ran into an elderly couple who had come with me in the same bus from Leicester. Armed with a plethora of maps, they were looking unhappily at the huge courtyard and the jumble of rooms around it. They stopped me and asked for directions to the Wolsey Rooms: they had got lost and hadn’t made much progress beyond the kitchens.
Henry VIII wasn’t the only monarch to leave his mark on Hampton Court. William III and Mary II commissioned Christopher Wren to transform the palace in the elegant Baroque fashion in 1689. However, Wren’s grand designs were never completed, leaving a palace of two halves; one Tudor, one Baroque.
From the reign of George III in 1760, monarchs tended to favour other London homes and Hampton Court ceased to be a royal residence. It began to be divided up into grace and favour apartments — one of them was home to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, from 1898. Sophia and her sister became active suffragettes, campaigning for votes for women.
It was now time for me to take a breath of fresh air in the superb palace gardens. I stepped into the Great Fountain Garden, which was laid out as a semi-circular park with 13 fountains, only one of which survives. I walked to one end of the estate and into “The 20th Century Garden”, which, perhaps because of its unenticing name or slightly odd location, remains deserted even when the other gardens are thick with tourists. A gardener was busy tending to some plants when I walked in and he didn’t notice me. I walked a bit and then decided to turn back as there didn’t seem to be anyone around. When I returned to the gate, I was stumped. It had been shut and that meant I had been locked inside a huge garden with no one around! I panicked for a few seconds till I noticed a piece of paper that been pasted on the gate and on which the phone number of the palace control room was given. The notice said anybody who had been locked in should call the control room immediately. That probably meant I was not the first person to find myself in such a predicament. I called the number and, thankfully, a staff member arrived in five minutes to let me out. I walked out sheepishly and let myself out of the Home Park, where a lone horse was pulling a carriage with a couple of tourists on it. Anyway, I could breathe freely again. And, to think that five minutes ago I was contemplating climbing a fence to escape if no one turned up to open the gate.
Royal gardens
I stopped next at the Lower Orangery Garden and Terrace, which was built to house Queen Mary II’s exotic collection of rare plants. Orange and lemon trees were popular specimens, as were cacti. One of Hampton Court’s most famous features is the Great Vine, which was planted in 1768 by the celebrated landscape gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown. It continues to produce a good crop every year, and if you are visiting in late August, you can try the lovely, juicy grapes for yourself, on sale in all the palace shops.
I finished my trip with a tour of the Maze, which covers a third of an acre and contains half-a-mile of paths. I didn’t venture too far inside, though. I didn’t want to risk getting lost in the maze like Jerome K. Jerome’s bumbling characters George, Harris and J.
What a fascinating experience it had all been: I had wandered through 60 acres of beautiful gardens, enjoyed fragrant summer roses, marvelled at phenomenal paintings and tapestries and even got locked inside a deserted park. It sure had been a remarkable day.
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