The Banqueting House is all that remains of the royal palace at Whitehall, which was once, at 15o0 rooms, the largest building in the world. Whitehall burned down several times in its history, finally remaining unrestored after 1698 and gradually being subsumbed by other buildings, including Downing Street and much of Pall Mall.
The surviving room is famous for its massive, vaulted ceiling, covered with ornate and beautiful art painted by Reubens, commissioned by King Charles I. Ironically, the monarch was walked through or past the hall on the morning of his execution, in 1649. A pivotal tale in English history, perhaps, but at the end of the day, it's just a building...
Far more exciting was Hampton Court Palace revisited. I'd made a whistlestop journey out here just before moving to Oxford. This time, with Anthony and Nicola in tow, we made a day of it - and still didn't see everything!
What to say about this place (she says, furiously checking back to see what she said last time, in May 2006). Oh, here we go:
"This sprawling masterpiece was started by Cardinal Wolsey, chief advisor to Henry VIII, and like so much of Wolsey's work, taken over by Henry when the good cardinal fell from favour after refusing to divorce the King from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Little remains from Big Henry's time, although his Great Hall - which even with seating for 500, was too small to feed all his staff at one sitting - and nearby reception rooms have been recently restored. The Chapel Royal is larger than many village churches and the kitchens have to be seen to be believed."
I was agog, once again, at Henry's kitchens, and spent far too much time trying to work out the ebb and flow of daily culinary life. I also had a big fat gripe to Ants about how the cafe, just metres from one of the world's most famous kitchens, turns out such crap and modern (and overpriced!) food. Prepackaged sarnies and salads and cake... I don't care if they were made fresh at the palace today, where are the slices of Grete Pye, the quails eggs, herb salads and baked custard tarts that would have been served to the king - and could turn a tidy profit AND make people smile here! It's becoming a regular beef (pun intended) of mine - English tourist attractions do nothing to improve foreigners' perceptions of English food. If only I were allowed a second job...
The best bits, though, were still to come. The Tudor buildings have been progressively expanded over time, by William of Orange, the Georges and others, and these rooms finally show some of the grandeur and ceremony I've seen from Renaissance Europe and had fully expected to find in the palaces of a nation that considered herself great. (I still hold to my theory that any country with as many royal residences as England has could never fit them out as sumptuously as a Versailles, a Schonbrunn or Schloss Charlottenburg. If only the English had learned to bathe! Then they wouldn't have had to flee to new premises every two months to avoid impending outbreaks of disease...)
Anyway, I trawled endlessly through royal suites, wandered the amazing gardens and even found the Royal Tennis court (with people actually playing Royal Tennis on it - cool!). It's probably best explained by pictures...
Above: Hampton Court's exteriors - from Tudor to Renaissance and the lavish gardens.
Below: the famed (and much lusted after) kitchens - check out the size of the spit fireplaces!!!
Cool, huh?
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