London — Day two
May 27, 2011
On our first full day in London, we braved the Oyster rail system and rode out to Hampton Court, home to Henry VIII, and a few of his wives, in the 16th century, and King William and Queen Mary in the 18th century.
As someone who has long been interested in the saga of Henry and his many wives, I have wanted to see Hampton Court for a long time. The size of the grounds astonished us. The current acreage of the property is about 750 acres (here’s a PDF map of the current property), but the man at the information desk showed us how in Henry’s day he pretty much laid claim to the entire town, about 4 times that amount. And when we started looking at all of the information on the site, it would have been easy to be overwhelmed; there’s so much history on the property that they suggest SIX different tours of the buildings. Clearly, we had a lot of ground to cover.
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We started in the kitchens. The tour was a chance for the food historians on staff (!) to educate the public about the vast quantities consumed by the Tudor court. We learned that Henry’s diet was 75% meat (yeah, that would explain the gout and obesity). And they had all sorts of souvenirs that showed how much was consumed by the court in just one year:
The whole display made me want to go on a diet. Or at least eat vegetarian for a while. |
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Then we moved on to Henry’s apartments. While his privy chamber, or most personal rooms, had been demolished, a great deal of the spaces he’d used were still in immaculate shape.
I stifled some laughs at the displays showing how Henry kept incorporating his new wives into the palace: Henry married Kateryn Parr in this room; he carved Anne Boleyn’s crest into the decoration in that room. I can only imagine how GREAT Anne of Cleves felt when walking past all of this. Poor Anne. |
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The tour of Henry’s rooms led directly into the Georgian wing of the palace, which had been designed for Queen Mary, daughter of exiled King James II, and her husband King William of the Netherlands. I’d had no idea that royals other than the Tudors had called Hampton Court home, and was fascinated by the completely different architecture of this wing.
The rooms had a completely different flow and were just as beautiful as the earlier halls, but in a completely different way. We ended up only going through Mary’s apartments as we’d already been there for three hours and hadn’t even really gone outside yet. |
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The grounds were vast, probably rivaling the gardens at Versailles. With so much to see, I made a quick plan on what to hit. We started by meandering through the formal gardens at the back of the palace. While impressive, they weren’t all that unique from other stately homes of the era. |
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Then we stopped by the real tennis courts. (I had to give Tim something.) Back in the day, Henry played tennis on an indoor court with rules quite different from the USTA standards today. Apparently, people still attempt this awkward game, and we watched a pair serving onto the roof of the court for a little while before continuing to the gardens’ main attraction. |
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The best known part of the gardens (to the English, at least) is the maze. Free to enter and difficult to traverse, the maze was fun to get lost in for a while. By the time we’d found our way to the center, we realized we’d been at Hampton Court for almost 5 hours. It was time to ride the rails back to the city and prepare for dinner at the hotel. |
