Hampton Court palace

Hampton Court palace (Middx.). Royal residence, situated on the banks of the Thames, 15 miles south-west of London. Started by Cardinal Wolsey in 1514, Hampton Court was confiscated in 1529 by Henry VIII who subsequently added the great hall, and a new court where the present Fountain Court is, and remodelled the Chapel Royal and the Clock Court. The palace was used by Mary, Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, but little further building was done until William III appeared. From 1689 Sir Christopher Wren started work on the new Fountain Court, with its east and south frontages to the garden, and on a new range of the Clock Court. Wren's buildings are classical essays in brick and stone. William Talman completed interior apartments (1699–1702) and helped to lay out the gardens in Home Park and Bushey Park in which Hampton Court is set. Influenced by Le Nôtre in France, Charles II had made a patte d'oie (radiating avenues), and a long canal flanked by double avenues of limes, and King William (aided by Wise and Bridgeman) added the Great Fountain Garden, the Privy Garden, the Great Terrace, and the Chestnut Avenue. Much of this 17th- and 18th-cent. layout remains, together with the magnificent wrought-iron gates made by Jean Tijou in 1689–99 for the Fountain Garden. Externally, Hampton Court is the finest British parallel to a French palace set in a formal garden; internally, the state apartments, with their original decorations and art collections, offer an unrivalled perspective on English royalty from Tudor times to the present.

Peter Willis