Portable Palaces: Royal Tents and Timber Lodgings

Portable Palaces: Royal Tents and Timber Lodgings

Funded by the AHRC, the project was timed to underpin Historic Royal Palaces’ preparations for the 500th anniversary of the Field of Cloth of Gold in 2020, an event that arguably defined the importance of tents and temporary structures as a tool of European monarchy in the period and as an outlet for creativity in architecture and design. However, the project looked beyond that single event to review the role of the royal tent across the whole period from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I. The project drew upon a rich vein of evidence that includes paintings and drawings, account books, inventories, chronicles, furniture, and surviving fragments said to be from royal tents that has never before been collated and reviewed as a whole. By doing so the project highlighted the important role played by tents in European diplomacy and demonstrated that the Office of Tents and Revels employed renowned craftsmen whose work on temporary structures playfully and experimentally pushed the boundaries of architectural and decorative design at a time widely acknowledged as a great period of development in English architectural history. The experimental archaeology undertaken revealed new insights not only into the tents and temporary buildings themselves but also into the construction, appearance, and use of the great Tudor palaces including Hampton Court and the Tower of London.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    THE TIMBER LODGINGS OF KING HENRY VIII: EPHEMERAL ARCHITECTURE AT WAR IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY
    (2020-09)
    Gregory, Alden
    A forgotten aspect of Henry’s architectural patronage and of the panoply of early modern European warfare is that of the timber lodging. Through two key case studies, this paper explores King Henry ’s timber lodgings and demonstrates that not only did they form an important class of ephemeral architecture that successfully employed innovative technologies to make such structures portable for military campaigns, they were also used in conjunction with the royal tents to provide comfortable and secure battlefield accommodation for the king. The paper recreates their construction, functions, symbolism and elaborate appearance, revealing that the earlier timber lodging comprised a two-chambered wooden building which was painted externally to resemble brickwork and which was used at the sieges of Thérouanne and Tournai in 1513, while the later timber lodging was used at the siege of Boulogne in 1544. Through a close analysis of the surviving accounts for the making of the 1544 structure, the article demonstrates that it was an extravagant and architecturally pretentious building that combined the martial imagery of late medieval Gothic with refined touches of classicism. The paper also shows that the lodging used in 1544 is both recorded in the posthumous 1547 inventory of Henry ’s possessions and appears in the engravings of the Cowdray House murals, held by the Society of Antiquaries of London.