July 27: Hampton Court

I have to confess a certain fascination with Henry VIII.  When I was a kid I heard the old Herman's Hermit's song -- "I'm 'Enry the 8th, I am" -- and drove my family crazy singing it around the house.  My mother (a teacher) sat me down and explained to me why it was funny and helped me look up Henry VIII in our encyclopedia.  That led to an ongoing interest in the monarchy and British history, which I've really fed on this trip.  And Hampton Court is one of the prime destinations for Henry VIII enthusiasts.  His story is really a pretty awful one, but I'm grateful to him and to Herman's Hermits because that silly song was the first thing that hooked me into history as stories about real people.

Today I finally visited Hampton Court, a place I've wanted to see for many years, because of its history with Henry VIII and because it sounded like such a huge and beautiful place.  It didn't quite make the cut during the short visit I made to London 5 years ago so it was a priority for this trip and today was the day.  The weather was perfect -- cool enough to be comfortable walking around but no rain.

Hampton Court is about 15 miles from the center of London, but it wasn't hard to get to.  I took a tube to Wimbleton (no tennis courts to be seen from where I was!) and then a regular train the rest of the way, all part of the same web of London transit.  I'm so impressed with London's transportation system.  It may not be perfect, but it's so much better than mass transit in many other cities I've been to.


Like Whitehall Palace, Hampton Court was owned by Cardinal Wolsey before Henry VIII.  Wolsey gave Hampton Court as a gift to Henry, hoping to stave off his downfall, but it didn't work.  Wolsey died on the way to the Tower, where he would most likely have lost his head.

Hampton Court is located on the Thames and can be reached by boat from central London.  That sounded like fun, but it would have cut down on the time I would have to explore the palace. This picture is of a boat arriving later in the day than I did.

It was a quick walk from the train station to the gates of the palace:

And here, finally, is my first view of Hampton Court Palace:

It is an *enormous* building with many, many sections and big courtyards and surrounded by large, beautiful gardens.  I couldn't see it all thoroughly in one day.  If I visit London again some day (which I hope I will) I may have to come back!

Here is one of the many inner courtyards:

One of the first places I visited was the Chapel Royal, which is still in use as a church and owned by the Queen.  Unfortunately, there were no services today but it was open to visitors.  We weren't allowed to take pictures in it, but it was beautiful.  And up in the Royal Pew there was a case with a replica of the Tudor Crown.  The original was worn by Henry VIII and also James I and Charles I, but was broken up and its gems sold during the Commonwealth period.

The chapel had a beautiful ceiling (no pictures allowed!) and I found that many other rooms in the palace had various kind of lovely and interesting ceilings, at least one of which was designed by Henry VIII:

There are several "routes" you can follow through the palace and I didn't have time for them all.  One of the most popular was about Henry VIII and his famous six wives and all of the drama connected with them.  But I liked the fact that another of them was about Henry VIII's earlier life, before he turned into the old fat monster everyone pictures and started cycling through the wives.  This other route had information about the great successes of the first 20 years of his reign.  History and people are complicated and it's good to get a more balanced picture.

However, most people do come to the palace wanting to hear about the six wives and the programming at the palace made sure we got that.  There were actors in costume who drew visitors into the story from time to time.  I joined a group that was led around to different parts of the palace by actors playing the part of courtiers at the time of the arrest of Catherine Howard, Henry's 5th wife, who (unlike Anne Boleyn) probably really did cheat on him.  It was informative and dramatic and at times funny.  This actor played the part of a courtier sent by Henry to investigate the charges against Queen Catherine:

and this was Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law of Anne and a lady in waiting to Queen Catherine, who helped arrange some of the meetings between Catherine and her lover, Thomas Culpeper:

Another actor played the part of Culpeper, but I didn't get a good picture of him.  The tourists as a group played the part of servants in the "Queen's Household" and some people (not me) got drawn aside and given things to do such as answers to give to questions they would be asked during the investigation.  It was a lot of fun but also a little frightening to think about what the real events must have been like.  We were told at the end that both Jane Boleyn and Culpeper were eventually executed for their parts in the whole mess.

I also visited the famous "haunted gallery", which I'd heard of before. 

The story is that Catherine Howard was locked up in a room nearby for a while before she was taken to the Tower.  At some point she escaped and ran screaming down the hall trying to find the king and beg for mercy.  The king, however, had left the castle and the queen was taken back to her room and the rest is history.  There have been reports of her ghost being seen running down the hall.  I heard a tour guide telling a group that some people still say they feel very uneasy in the place, and that records of the first aid people show that more than half of the fainting episodes they've been called to across this huge palace and its grounds happened in that gallery.  I'm skeptical, but it's a fun story to shiver over....

I also visited the palace kitchens and learned a lot about food and food preparation in Tudor times.

And of course I spent time in the gorgeous gardens.  There were flower gardens and a huge working "kitchen garden".  I had lunch in a restaurant there, the nicest restaurant in a tourist attraction that I have encountered in my whole trip, and my salad included produce from the kitchen garden.



I also walked through the famous Hampton Court maze.  It was the first "puzzle maze" in Great Britain; older "mazes" had just one route through, with no choices to make.  I know the trick to getting through a maze and I found the center without a problem, but it did take a while.  Here's a selfie to prove I was there:

It was a great day -- hard on the feet, but lots of fun!