Royal Palaces

Hampton Court Palace, on the bank of the River Thames in Surrey, was originally owned by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, one of King Henry VIII's most important advisors. Wolsey transformed an old medieval manor into a magnificent Bishop's Palace that King Henry VIII loved. When Wolsey fell from favour in the 1520s, for failing to secure the King's divorce from Katherine of Aragon, his properties were confiscated and the palace became the King's.

Henry built new apartments for himself and his family and extended the palace further. The King's longed for son, Edward VI, was born in this palace in 1537, and it was where the King's favourite wife, Jane Seymour, died after giving birth to the prince. Her ghost is said to haunt the palace, as is the ghost of the King's fifth wife, Katheryn Howard, who was dragged away screaming by guards after she tried, unsuccessfully, to reach the King to plead for her life.

In the late seventeenth century William III and Mary II remodelled the palace substantially, knocking down the old Tudor royal apartments and replacing them with a new baroque palace. However, much of the Tudor palace survives. including the kitchens, and is open to the public.