Today we travelled outside of London in a different direction from yesterday's trip. Therefore, we departed from the Waterloo Station and saw different suburbs on our way to Molesey, the small town where Henry VIII's Hampstead Court Palace is located. Actually, the palace belonged to one of the king's close advisors, Cardinal Wolsey, first, but Wolsey later handed it over to the king when he had fallen out of favor and was trying to get back into Henry's good graces. Apparently, it did not help much since historians say he would have later been executed if he had not died first.
After our forty-minute train ride, we arrived at the Palace fairly early and ahead of most of the tourists. We began our visit with a tour of the Tudor Kitchens. Many-chambers of various purposes were connected by hallways that were specially designed to serve their own special functions as well. For instance, on passageway was small and almost totally enclosed so as to block the sun and thus keep the passage (and the storerooms on either side of it) as cool as possible. It was like a big Tudor refrigerator. We also saw the enormous hearths where men would turn roasting slabs of meat that would weigh as much as they did. The tour was quite informative and shed much light on the complicated nature of keeping 600 people fed on a daily basis. After this first tour, we visited King Henry's State Apartments, the most impressive being the large Great Hall. It had an impressively high ceiling for its time, and secret doorways were hidden behind tapestries so that servants could slip easily in and out. When King William and Queen Mary moved into the palace many years later, they added on an entirely separate wing, which we also toured. Along with describing the rooms, the audio tour described how William's misanthropic demeanor and lack of popularity with the English people changed the relationship between the nobility and the monarchy in many ways. The activities of court no longer centered so much on the ruling monarch and his or her royal residence, but instead the court spent more of its time at their own homes. Finally, we viewed the part of the palace added by its last permanent royal resident, George III and his wife Caroline.
Here's a view of an section of one of the later additions of the palace:
I posed with some of the palace "locals" in Clock Court at Hampton Court Palace:
After a busy morning, we returned to the town just outside of the palace gates for our lunch. We decided upon a pub called Albion, which has been around since the 1600's. It was a great choice as we were able to get piping hot pies (Michael had a steak pie with ale sauce, and I selected one with chicken, ham, and leeks.), which were warming on what had turned into a bit of a chilly day. We sat in a cozy alcove, and Michael enjoyed a dark ale with his pie. We were glad to have sampled these delicious, traditional English pies though they were quite a caloric indulgence, especially for a mid-day meal. We were also glad that we would be returning to the palace grounds for a walk through the gardens afterwards. Our walk enabled us to burn off a few of the excessive calories.While not as large as the grouds at some palaces, like Versailles, these were quite beautiful and varied. We started our walk in the Tiltpole Garden, which is the area where Henry would host jousting tournaments, watching from one of the towers above the field. The area is now covered with some trees and bushes, but it is fairly easy to imagine how it would have looked filled with soldiers and members of court out for a day of fun. Next, we proceeded to the maze, which was much easier than I expected. Michael and I just always stayed to the right, and we were able to pop out the other side without a problem.
I snapped a picture of Michael pretending to be confused in the maze. Perhaps his brain was overstimulated by too many calories and too much ale at lunch:
Like on many other days, we saw students out on field trips from school, and it was easy to tell them all apart as their uniforms were all distinctive. A group of upper elementary-school-age boys were in the maze with us, and even when we could not see them, we could always here them. They were having much fun pretending to have grenades and other sorts of weapons while on some sort of military mission. Beacuse of their accents, uniforms (longer grey shorts with white shirts and dark, striped ties), and general demeanor ("playing war"), they reminded me of Golding's schoolboys from Lord of the Flies, though because of their chaperones waiting just outside the maze, society still seemed to have a firm hold on them. After successfully navigating the maze, we continued on to the other parts of the gardens, including the ornamental gardens with its orderly yew trees and fountains, the Sunken Pond Gardens, with its enclosed pond-filled spaces, and the bowery, a tree-lined walkway where our tour told us that Queen Caroline and her ladies liked to sew.
I am standing just outside one of the Sunken Pond Gardens:
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Touring the gardens also gave us an opportunity to see the various sides (and additions) of the palace from the outside. Just as we had discovered on the inside, there are certainly many contrasts. Once we had our fill of the grounds, we caught the train back to London, where we are spending a quiet evening packing and relaxing for the next part of our England adventure. We have certainly enjoyed being in London, a city about which Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway said: "In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, the motorcars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands, barrell organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June." We have also had some wonderful moments in London in June.
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