Luke Ballard's Hampton Court Palace

My protagonist, apothecary and elemancer Luke Ballard, would have only been familiar with about half the building we know today as Hampton Court Palace. We can thank William III for two things, one is pulling down the south side of the Tudor palace containing amongst other things the royal apartments of Henry VIII and his descendants, for which I hope his knickers rot in hell, but then he redeemed himself by dying before he could demolish the rest. A good reason to thank the “gentleman in black velvet”, the name given to the mole whose molehill caused William’s horse to stumble and him to fall, resulting in his death some days later. All work on Hampton Court was stopped, which gives us half a Tudor palace, thankfully left intact by the Georgians. William’s initial demolition cut a straight swathe through the building and the new southern palace was built facing the river.

There are few leftovers from the Tudors within the Georgian palace, including the wooden base of the stairs up which the pages brought Henry’s clean clothes each morning. The only remaining glimpse of the royal apartments is the door leading to them from the Great Watching Chamber. Through this, Henry and his close courtiers would sweep out of public gaze. Sweep through those doors today and you would plunge down several metres onto the stairs of the Georgian palace because that is William’s dividing line.

Henry VIII would still recognise his Great Hall, although the Victorians altered the window adornments. When Anne Boleyn was executed, he gave orders for all entwined HA initials to be removed, but one was forgotten and you can still see it today. The Great Watching Chamber was the first of the public rooms and when Henry came to services in the Chapel Royal, he would have come through it.

The Chapel Royal itself is still used today and some of Henry’s marriages were celebrated in the Queen’s Holy Day Closet on the upper floor, shut off from the prying eyes of the people in the body of the chapel. Outside the King’s and Queen’s Holy Day Closets is the “Haunted Gallery”. Legend has it that Catherine Howard, wife No 5, when her “indiscretions” were reported to Henry in his Holy Day closet, escaped the vigilance of her jailers and flew down the gallery towards the King who was in his pew in the chapel. She was captured, but her screams to her husband were heard by everyone as she was dragged back to her apartments. Her ghost reputedly dashes down the gallery in that last desperate bid for freedom. In truth, it is highly unlikely that this happened at all. The modern accepted version is that Henry was out hunting when he was given a letter detailing his wife’s infidelities and not even in the palace, but it makes a romantic story. A far more likely ghostly appearance is in the rooms once belonging to Cardinal Wolsey. Not spoken of openly amongst the current-day warders, there have been known disturbances and sightings in that area.

Go into the ladies’ loos – sorry chaps - in the Base Court and you can see the excavation to a huge conduit, now glassed over. You can see another part of it from the shop under what used to be Anne Boleyn’s rooms. This conduit is large enough to take a man on horseback and I have used it in the Luke stories.

In my world of 1550, of course, Anne Boleyn is still alive and it is her son, Henry who sits on the throne. I have sited Luke’s house and apothecary shop in the Outer Green between the west front of the palace and the Trophy Gate. In Tudor times, the Outer Green contained a Great Bakehouse, a Privy Bakehouse, a Poultry Office with a Scalding House for the poultry, a Knife House and a woodyard which stored wood for fires. I am confident that Luke’s shop would have blended in quite happily.

In the 1550s, Hampton Court Bridge did not exist, but the Royal Mews is still in evidence a few hundred yards down Hampton Court Road. Immediately outside the Trophy Gate was a timber yard, saw pits and a wharf.

Posting a plan of the Tudor palace has copyright problems, but I will try to overcome this in a future post.