Historic Royal Palaces
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Item type:Doctoral thesis, An Archaeological Reconstruction of Thomas Wolsey's Hampton Court Palace(2002)Foyle, JonathanHampton Court Palace began life as a medieval manorial camera of the Knights Hospitaller. Thomas Wolsey leased the manor for 99 years in late 1514. At this time, Wolsey was the newly elected Archbishop of York and a cardinal-in-waiting, but not yet lord chancellor of England. This thesis argues that Hampton Court was almost totally rebuilt for Wolsey to a single and consistent design from January 1515; that it was completed in around 1521, and it was then intermittently refurbished until 1528. Henry VIII took the palace over informally in 1526, then permanently in late 1528. Henry’s own remodelling of Hampton Court between 1529 and his death in 1547 was substantial, and from that time until 1760 it served solely as a royal palace. Hampton Court is therefore a complex, multi-period building, constructed at the crucial point of English history which has been seen as the beginning of Renaissance influence on the visual arts in England. As this, by far the best surviving, Tudor palace was regarded as superlative in its own day, it has the potential to provide a uniquely rich material resource for understanding elite secular architecture of the early sixteenth century in England. However, this potential depends upon thorough methodological analyses. This thesis is borne of a conviction that many fundamental questions about the formal development of the palace remain, because they have previously been answered with assumptions due to the artificial divorce between the disciplines of archaeology and architectural history. As a result, no account of Wolsey’s Hampton Court has yet been produced which convincingly synthesizes a cultural and personal context with comprehensive archaeological evidence. The inherited view of Tudor Hampton Court Palace is that it represents an ‘essentially traditional architectural structure. Renaissance ideas of planning and proportion cannot be said to have determined the design of Wolsey’s house’ (Gunn in Gunn & Lindley 1990: 34). To this ‘far from innovative’ house (ibid.), its famous Italian sculpture was incongruously ‘applied or added onto the surface’ (ibid.). It is usually accepted that the ‘High Renaissance of English Architecture’ (Howard 1987: 184) arrived only in the middle of the sixteenth century, in Somerset House (1547-52) and the final phase of Longleat (1572-) (Howard 1985 vol. I p.3; Summerson 1991: 43-4, 58-61). However, Maurice Howard has emphasised that ‘the proper exercise of the stylistic is essentially dependent on the theoretical, for without the latter, stylistic idiom is simply grafted onto something to which it does not belong’ (Howard 1985, vol. I: 112). Therefore, in order to make valid judgments on Hampton Court’s success as a work of architecture, or as mere building, it is essential to trace evidence for the presence or absence of such theory. The stumbling block is that the palace first requires a faithful reconstruction. In this thesis, the combination of archaeological survey methodologies, interpreted via the contextual and biographical methods of architectural history, reveals a large amount of new evidence for the conception, extent, detail and development of the palace that Wolsey established from 1515- c.21. Many of the salient discoveries are borne of the application of metrology, through which the original methods of geometric and proportional design may be recovered. By tracing and comparing its plan to a new contextual study of English design practices from 1380-1530, it will be seen that Hampton Court was set out according to a geometric skeleton of a distinctive type and complexity, and to a scale unsurpassed in a single work of English domestic architecture at that date. The records of previous archaeology and recent research excavations toward this thesis are shown to confirm Wolsey’s geometric masterplan. Furthermore, new typological survey work is able to separate the palace’s Tudor fabric into distinct phasing through distinguishing characteristics in the work of the masons who successively built for Wolsey and King Henry VIII. Evidence will be presented toward an attribution of Wolsey’s planner as William Bolton, with detailed design by the King’s own Master Mason, William Vertue. This thesis suggests that the palace’s design was in great part a response to the authority of published Italian sources on appropriate accommodation for a cardinal, and on the issues of planning, aesthetics and proportion, which are here demonstrated to have been available to Wolsey’s pro-Roman humanist circle. It is further argued that they brought about a fundamental change in the practice of English elite architectural design in this period. The archaeological corroboration of Vertue’s master plan for Wolsey’s palace provides a sound basis for reading the architectural influences from which this layout was derived. It is here argued that the first-floor hall, and the state chambers beyond it, represent a very early importation of the principle of the piano mobile in England. The level, sequence and volumes of these rooms bear a strong relationship to the contemporary Italian cardinals’ palaces in Rome, the elements of which were summarized in the Curial Humanist Paolo Cortesi’s prescriptive treatise De Cardinalatu (1510). This thesis offers new evidence for Wolsey having built a first-floor great hall; it recovers the form of his cellar and Great Chamber, reveals a completely unsuspected Italianate arcaded gallery in the Inner Court, and revises the original form of his chapel with the implication of an accompanying claustral yard. Beyond Wolsey’s own work, it demonstrates that Henry VIII’s builders recycled much of Wolsey’s building materials in ultimately shaping the remainder of the Tudor palace we see today. From this, there is enough material to propose a radically new reconstruction of the palace at the end of Wolsey’s occupation. Therefore, contrary to the present interpretative emphasis of the palace as a remodelling of an inadequate and incomplete bishop/minister’s palace to superior standards of regal magnificence, Hampton Court will be shown to have been a product of Wolsey’s experience in humanist, collegiate, royal and episcopal circles, which represents an Anglicised interpretation of Paolo Cortesi’s paradigm for a cardinal’s palace. As such, this thesis offers both a clearer depiction of how Hampton Court was first seen and inhabited, and also a major new resource for reassessing the earliest influence of printed books in promoting a ‘Renaissance’ architecture in England.2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, Henry VIII and the Building of Hampton Court: A Reconstruction of the Tudor Palace(1988)Thurley, SimonWhen Henry VIII finally took full possession of Hampton Court in 1529 he inherited a house already much embellished by Thomas Wolsey. In 1515 Wolsey had taken a lease from the Order of St John of Jerusalem on the modest manor house of Hampton Court and during the next fifteen years he turned it into one of the largest if not the very largest house in the kingdom. Attached to Wolsey's lease there is an inventory, and this, together with the results of recent excavation, have revealed much about the earliest house on the site. Wolsey's additions to this house seem to have been undertaken in two distinct phases. The first group of additions (1515-25) included the vast base court, new kitchens and a remodelling of the main first-floor reception rooms. In a second phase (1526-29) another storey was added to the main range of reception rooms for the queen, a new range was built on the south side of the second court, and the chapel was begun. The chapel, it appears, was still under construction when the king began his first building campaign. Eventually it was to be finished with materials that Wolsey had set aside at Sonning in Berkshire, for the building of the chapel at Cardinal College, Oxford.3 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, Antonio Verrio (c1636-1707) and the Royal Image at Hampton Court(2009)Dolman, BrettAntonio Verrio worked at Hampton Court Palace for William III and Queen Anne between 1700 and 1705. This was his last major commission before his death in 1707 and has been dismissed as an inferior programme of decoration, not worthy of much investigation. Edward Croft-Murray's survey work for his Decorative Painting in England did not give much space or consideration to this phase of Verrio's career, and the only academic article on any of the Hampton Court paintings appeared as long ago as 1940. The special edition of Apollo Magazine published in 1994 to celebrate the re-opening of the King's Apartments after the 1986 fire contained chapters on every aspect of William III's decorative scheme except Verrio's murals. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, 'Such costly furniture, such beds of state': Reflections on the Conservation and Redisplay of Queen Charlotte's State Bed(2008-08)Edwards, SebastianThis Summer and Autumn visitors to Hampton Court will have the opportunity to see Queen Charlotte's magnificent bed, from the Royal Collection, for the first time in years as major conservation work reaches completion. This work has a complex and chequered history of its own: what began in the 1950s as good, but old fashioned, restoration work transformed into conservation, only to be interrupted by the devastating fire of 1986. One of the benefits of this drawn-out process is the new information it has produced about the bed's enigmatic past.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Book, Prisoners of the Tower: The Tower of London as a State Prison, 1100-1941(2004)1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Book chapter, The domestic building works of Cardinal Wolsey(1991)Thurley, SimonIn size and magnificence, Thomas Wolsey's domestic buildings outclassed those of his contemporary competitors with the possible exceptions of Archbishop Warham and Edward, duke of Buckingham. In one short essay these buildings cannot be given comprehensive treatment and the discussion below will consider them under three heads. First, a 'History of the cardinal's works' will outline the scope of his domestic building activity; secondly, a more detailed discussion of some of the larger works will highlight certain features common to all his buildings. Finally an assessment of the significance of these building projects will attempt to place Wolsey in the context of his age. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, Getting rid of shallow water(2002-01-20)Impey, EdwardThis article gives a brief account of what may or may not remain the last great event in the Tower's structural history - the draining and backfilling of the moat in the 1840s. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, The Stuart Kings, Oliver Cromwell and the Chapel Royal 1618-1685(2002)Thurley, SimonHistorians of the English court have become increasingly interested in the relationship between court ceremonial and the liturgy of the Chapel Royal. The Chapel Royal (which is capitalized in this article - as opposed to individual chapel buildings which are not) was the department of the royal household that attended to its spiritual needs. It is now accepted that the etiquette of the Tudor and Stuart court owed a great deal to the monarch's public attendance at chapel, and its yearly pattern was heavily influenced by the church year. This recognition places the royal chapels in a central position in the choreography of the court. It also allows historians to view these important buildings in a new light as one of the most important ceremonial spaces in the royal houses, rather than merely an adjunct to the great outer rooms, the presence chamber and privy chamber. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, The Sixteenth-Century Kitchens at Hampton Court(1990)Thurley, SimonThe Tudor kitchens and service range at Hampton Court provide a unique record of the archaeology and organisation of the early Tudor royal household. Recent examination of the buildings and afresh look at the documentation has enabled a comprehensive account of their use and development to be given. It has also been possible to set the Hampton Court kitchens in the wider context of the development of royal kitchen buildings before 1550. It is argued that the plan of Hampton Court was a development of that first introduced into royal buildings by Edward IV at Eltham and subsequently adopted at all royal palaces. The adoption of this plan is attributed to the increased formality and ceremonial of the Yorkist and early Tudor courts.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Journal article, A Reconstruction of Thomas Wolsey's Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace(2002)Foyle, JonathanHampton Court Palace was England's most significant great house of the early Tudor age. From 1515-c. 1521, Thomas Wolsey transformed a medieval manor, situate thirteen miles south-west of London on the north bank of the River Thames, into a palace deemed remarkable - even superlative - by contemporary observer including those cited above. Despite its acknowledged importance, little has been concluded about the form, context, and usage of Wolsey's palace in recent studies. This mainly due to its archaeological complexity, for, only seven years after its initial completion, Henry VIII assumed occupancy and began a process of extensive re-modelling which lasted at least ten years. William and Mary managed to rebuild half of this palace from 1689-94. Consequently, throughout the almost five hundred years since Wolsey's occupation, it has enjoyed a long history of development which has obscured its original form.5