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Article reproduced from Calliope (a US-based history magazine aimed at 9-14 year olds), March 2011

Suzannah Lipscomb considers Henry VIII’s many palaces.

Henry VIII, it seems, did everything to excess. By the end of his life, he had married six wives, consumed enough to have a bulging waistline of 54 inches and presided over the complete destruction of 800 monasteries.

His appetite for palaces and possessions appears to tell the same story. At his death in January 1547, Henry VIII owned over sixty great houses and palaces, lavishly furnished with paintings, gold and silver plate, and over 2000 tapestries.

Yet, Henry VIII’s urge to acquire, build, expand and refurbish was not mere egotism or greed. It was considered essential for the King of England to display his princely magnificence and honour. For the first half of this life, Henry did this through spectacular tournaments, festivals, and banquets. Later, when injury and obesity prevented Henry from participating in such activities, he turned his energies towards creating beautiful buildings that testified to his grandeur and majesty.

One reason Henry wanted so many houses was because he never stayed in one place for very long. When the Court was in residence, each palace had the population of a small town – often more than 1000 people. Within a few weeks, the Court would have consumed such vast quantities of food and fresh water that they would exhaust the resources of the area. Meanwhile, the smell of their rubbish and waste was mounting. In the end, the Court needed to move on to another palace simply to escape their own excrement.

Henry VIII spent his childhood at Eltham Palace, which dated back to the 1290s, but by the time he was crowned King in 1509, he favoured the house in which he’d actually been born, Greenwich Palace. Greenwich was on the Thames, which meant it was easy to access, as travelling by boat was far swifter and more comfortable than travelling by road. Greenwich was one of the earliest palaces that Henry expanded, building a magnificent tiltyard for jousting, with viewing galleries, towers and stables. In this arena, he hosted some of his most impressive tournaments and festivals, frequently competing in the joust himself with great success.

But it was mainly in later life that Henry started to acquire and improve palaces – acquire, because many of Henry VIII’s palaces were not originally his at all. Whitehall Palace was previously known as York Place, and was the home of the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. In the first twenty years of Henry VIII’s reign, Wolsey was Henry’s closest friend and adviser, but in the late 1520s, Wolsey fell out of favour because he was unable to complete an impossible task: persuade the Pope to grant Henry a way out of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, so that Henry could marry his new love, Anne Boleyn.

This failure meant that Wolsey was obliged to hand over his great palaces to the king. At Whitehall, Henry dramatically expanded the palace by building, among other things, a Privy Gallery, tennis courts, cockpits, and a tiltyard. Whitehall Palace became the heart of government, and even today, the area of Whitehall in London remains associated with rule and politics. Unfortunately though, we cannot see what Whitehall Palace looked like because it burnt down in a great fire in 1698. Only the Banqueting House survives.

To see the greatest of Henry’s surviving favourite palaces today, we need to visit Hampton Court Palace. Like Whitehall, this had also once belonged to Wolsey, but even whilst Wolsey was in favour, Henry used this palace more and more, and after Wolsey’s demise, it became his first choice of house for entertaining and pleasure. In the 1540s, it was at Hampton Court that Henry celebrated Christmas and New Year, and it was here, to his most magnificent and lavish royal house, that Henry invited a visiting French embassy to impress them with his wealth, power and good taste.

When the Admiral of France, Claude d’Annebaut, arrived in September 1546, he would have seen the splendid castle-like red brick Great Gatehouse, topped with gold domes, rising before him. Through the gates was a huge courtyard, Base Court, which had forty sets of lodgings for guests. It is probably in one of these luxurious sets of double rooms with a fireplace and garderobe (or toilet) that the Admiral would have stayed.

All this had been built by Wolsey, but this was just the start. Henry had spent the enormous fortune of $91,000 (the equivalent of almost $30 million today) on rebuilding and extending Hampton Court. If the Admiral had ventured into the new kitchens Henry had built, he would have seen 200 people scurrying to cook meals for the Court. In the Great Kitchen, six vast fireplaces roasted whole carcasses on spits. In the pastry house, chefs made great meat pies. Freshly slaughtered animals hung in the flesh larder, and fresh fish sat in ice barrels in the wet larder.

It is more likely, though, that the Admiral would have gone into Henry’s Great Hall, and marvelled at its size and grandeur. The incredible hammerbeam ceiling, tiled floor and opulent tapestries would have wowed the visitor, as would have the twinkling blue and gold ceiling of Henry’s magnificent Chapel Royal, the vastness of the tiltyard, the tennis courts, the bowling alleys, and the hunting parks.

Like all Henry’s palaces, including the last one he built, Nonsuch Palace, a name indicating that ‘no such’ palace had ever existed, the architecture and finery of Hampton Court was designed to impress. Perhaps, as his health declined, Henry could comfort himself that at least his palaces were lasting monuments to his prestige and splendour.