The Old Palace of Hatfield: The A-Z of Tudor Places

[Music] hello everyone it's sarah the tudor travel guide here and welcome back to this month's episode of the a to z of tudor places and today we're going to be time traveling to one of the most significant places in the life of elizabeth the first and that is the old palace of hatfield in hertfordshire it was to hatfield that the three-month-old princess was brought from london to establish her first household under the watchful eye of sir john and lady shelton the uncle and aunt of amberlynn some 25 years later it was reputedly while sitting under the gnarled oak tree in the great park at hatfield that princess elizabeth heard of the death of her sister mary and therefore of her accession to the throne of england there had been difficult and dark times but the age of gloriana was about to dawn and it all happened at hatfield so as ever before we explore these momentous events let's just delve a little bit into the history of the old palace well the original manor house at hatfield was actually owned by the bishops of ely and it was sited some half a mile away or so from the current hatfield house and towards the end of the 15th century around the time that the battle of bosworth was being contested between the houses of york and lancaster the then bishop john morton built himself a new episcopal palace adjacent to the parish church which by the way still stands and is incredibly historic in its own right now the location of this palace was key to the site of its construction it lay just to the east of the old great north road which which was the main medieval highway leading north from london and being within a day's ride of the capital it was a convenient stopping off point for the medieval bishops who regularly travel to and from london as business dictated access to the palace was via a gatehouse sited at the top of hatfield's main street and that ran through the center of the village this street was and still is today known as 4th street one of my favorite architectural historians anthony emery in his epic books greater medieval houses of england and wales believes that it was this gatehouse which was the original entrance to the palace and indeed you can access the palace still today from this gatehouse beyond this gatehouse is a victorianized courtyard today and on the far side of that courtyards stands the original west range of the old palace now this west range is believed to have originally comprised of the great hall or banqueting hall as it's known at hatfield now the hall itself is separated by a typical screens passage from other service offices and the kitchens in the northern part of the range which led off the low end of the hall as would typically be expected while the great hall was open to the roof the kitchen end of the range was separated into two floors with as emery calls it an important apartment reached from the newell stair which was built into the side of the main western porch and entrance to the hall in the banqueting hall the original bay window and fireplace which are shown on this plan now on the screen have sadly been lost but the continuous fine chestnut and oak roof of 11 bays still survives now with that description of the hall let's put some events in the context of the place they happened right there in the banqueting hall of the old palace so imagine this just two years before her accession when elizabeth was 22 years old she enjoyed and i quote a great and rich masking in the great hall at hatfield where the pageants were marvelously furnished there were 12 minstrels antiquely disguised with 46 or more gentlemen and ladies many of them knights or nobles and ladies of honor the cupboard in the hall was 12 stages namely furnished and garnished with gold and silver vessels that sounds wonderful doesn't it what a party and you can imagine that if you go and visit the banqueting hall today and in fact there's more because we also hear that on that night a banquet of 70 dishes a void of spices and subtleties were served avoid being a course in our modern day language so goodness me there's a lot to eat so moving on of course in 1558 elizabeth famously held her first privy council in the banqueting hall on the 21st of november just four days after her accession to the english throne and it was during that meeting that she appointed william cecil a secretary of state and it was cecil's son who ultimately exchanged the principal family home of tibbles in essex with the then king james the first in 1607 for hatfield and as a result the cecil family are still the current owners of hatfield house as they have been for the last 400 years incredible so let's return to the banqueting hall we've already talked about the low end and the buildings such as the kitchen which were part of the low end but what about the high end of the posh end of the hall well here a doorway led through into an anti-chamber with a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor and giving access to a principal room sadly from this point forward the appearance of the early tudor house is unclear as the other three ranges thought to have originally surrounded the inner courtyard have been largely lost and today a visit to the present day old palace garden reveals just traces of those demolished wings the state apartments where elizabeth would have lodged during her protracted stays at hatfield were likely to have been in the south wing which overlooked the then formal gardens and they were probably cited at first floor level simon thurley another one of my favorite authors postulated that when the lady mary was sent to attend on her sister in 1533 she would have been accommodated either on the ground floor below her half-sister's rooms or in the guest lodgings in the north range it was in those lodgings that many a tear were shed by mary and because of her intransigence she was ultimately forced to eat her meals in the great hall the banqueting hall with the rest of the household a great indignity for such a proud young woman of royal blood so what more of elizabeth's association with the house what more do we know well as i've already said the princess was first sent to live at hatfield in december 1533 and it would be the beginning of a regular circuit with the princess's household moving periodically between the royal manors and palaces of hunstan and hatfield and hartford the moore richmond palace greenwich and eltham the household that she held of course was befitting her status as princess of wales and managed by an entire staff of nurses courtiers and tutors on her very first visit elizabeth remained at hatfield until the end of march 1534 when she was moved to her father's childhood home of eltom near greenwich and during this time the antagonism between elizabeth's mother amber lynn and the lady mary came to a head now you can hear more about that clash between these two fearsome women in the eltem episode of my a to z of tudor places and the link will be appearing here moving forward with the new act of succession ratified in parliament during the very same month mary was now very clearly the illegitimate daughter of the king her princely household had been dissolved and as a punishment for refusing to accept her father's will she had been sent to serve in her half-sister's household at hatfield and during one of those visits anne tried to extend the olive branch of peace to the willful 17 year old and as we hear from ambassador chapwi who was well informed about the events unfolding in mary's life when the king's ami went lately to visit her daughter she urgently solicited the princess to visit her and honor her as queen saying that it would be a means of reconciliation with the king and she herself would intercede with him for her and she should be as well or better treated than ever lodged somewhere else in the palace mary was having none of it following the defiant lead shown by her mother catherine of aragon she stated that she knew no queen but her mother however she would be grateful if madame would intercede with her father on her behalf according to shapwee the lady repeated her remonstrances and offers and in the end threatened her but could not move the princess the other was very indignant and intended to bring down the pride of this unbridled spanish blood saying she will do the worst she can three years later of course anne was dead and the young princess elizabeth was herself declared illegitimate although she came and went hatfield remained a constant in elizabeth's life and she would return there in 1548 shortly after the embarrassing and highly inappropriate romps with thomas seymour which had resulted in her being sent away from the seymour household at soodley however if the fifteen-year-old hoped that the whole sorry affair would be brushed under the carpet she was to be mistaken thomas seymour who had been like a father figure to her was arrested under suspicion of treason and of having been involved in a secret matrimonial plot to marry princess elizabeth elizabeth was at the old palace of hatfield when the whole affair blew up with the lord protector somerset sending sir robert terret to extract a confession from the 15 year old at the same time her beloved cofferer thomas parry and governess cat ashley were taken to london for questioning it was in her rooms at the old palace of hatfield that elizabeth therefore had her first terrifying brush with accusations of treason the daily questioning by sir robert the pressure to confess the worry about her friends and what others might say to implicate her under duress was a sharp lesson indeed in the dangers of being so close to the throne however of course elizabeth's intellect steered a course through the fire but the heat of those two intense weeks spent at hatfield old palace would shape her forever and according to elizabeth's biographer alison plowden she had changed from a girl into a woman and for better or worse she would never be the same again on her 17th birthday elizabeth finally acquired the manner of hatfield outright however she had had to petition the king her brother not to sell it since the earl of warwick which was edward's original intention clearly elizabeth loved the palace and considered it her home and that it was a home that was worth fighting for throughout her brother's reign elizabeth lived mostly at hatfield with the occasional visit to ashridge and certainly she was in residence through the accession crisis which led up to and followed the death of her brother on the 6th of july 1553. when summoned by john dudley duke of northumberland and head of the royal council to greenwich elizabeth did what any sensible tudor princess would do she took to her bed declaring that she was far too ill to travel she knew that a battle for the throne was about to sweep across southern england and she wanted none of it very wisely indeed she kept her head and she kept her head beneath the parapet as her half sister went head-to-head with the new regime of course it all went badly for northumberland who took down not only his son lady jane gray and her father in the process of pursuing his own unbridled ambition life was to be tricky during the five-year reign of her sister mary elizabeth became whether she liked it or not the focus of protestant plots to unseat the catholic queen and elizabeth once again fell under suspicion after a spell in the tower where she was subject to intense interrogation and then placed under house arrest at woodstock elizabeth eventually regained the trust of the queen and was trusted enough at least to be allowed to return to her beloved hatfield in the autumn of 1555. and from this point forward elizabeth visited the court in london from time to time and although there must have always been some uneasiness between the sisters life did settle down with elizabeth enjoying hunting and walking in the park at hatfield and it was while at hatfield that she began a correspondence and a lifelong relationship and friendship with the man who would be her principal secretary and mentor and friend william cecil mary even visited elizabeth at hatfield in april 1557 extensive preparations were made for her coming and we hear of the great chamber being arranged for the queen he was decorated with a fabulous set of tapestries depicting the siege of antioch one morning after mass we even hear of elizabeth entertaining her half-sister with bear baiting perhaps in the courtyard that still exists today with which their highnesses it is said were right well content the evening's entertainment was a little more civilized by our tastes involving the acting and reciting by the choir boys of sent paul's we also hear of elizabeth playing on the virginals accompanied by one of the choristers but finally the waiting was nearly over for elizabeth she had so far lived a privileged but dangerous life navigating conflict and scandals and accusations of treason all of these played out within the walls of the old palace of hatfield and there was only one thing left for elizabeth to experience and that was triumph and thus on the 17th of november 1558 the 25 year old princess must have been waiting anxiously at the palace only to aware that her sister's health was fast declining and when mary's ring was brought to her as a clear sign that the reigning monarch had died elizabeth's heart must have burst from her chest falling to her knees in sheer relief you can imagine tears must have stung at her eyes as she famously declared it is the lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes now of course if you visit today the main attraction at hatfield is the grand prodigy house built by william cecil's son robert cecil and that dominates the park however as i mentioned above the old west range of the original tudor palace that was home to elizabeth and which contains the banqueting hall also survives now the pretty little knot garden marks out the position more or less of the original inner courtyard around which the four ranges of the old palace were originally sighted so if you are going to go to hatfield by all means enjoy the prodigy house but make sure that you head over to the stables in the courtyard and the garden see if you can get access to the banqueting house and imagine some of those events that i've just described taking place there there is just simply so much judah history that happened on that very spot now here are my top tips visiting hatfield rather than following the signs that take you to the main entrance if you can i highly recommend that you ignore those signs that point towards hatfield house and instead plug old hatfield into your sap nav you'll be taken to the old village find a place to park at the bottom of 4th street and then take a walk up the hill towards the original main entrance and in this way you are walking in the footsteps of the likes of elizabeth the first ann berlin and mary the first as this as i have said would have been the entrance they would have used to access the old palace also as you make your way up fourth street towards the top notice the parish church that lies to your right now if you are visiting you want to pause there for a moment because mary tudor sister to henry viii actually gave birth to her daughter francis at the bishop's palace between 2 and 3 am on the morning of the 16th of july 1517 and two days later the infant was christened at the parish church in contemporary accounts we hear how magnificently the chapel was dressed for the occasion and that lady berlin which was possibly amberlyn's mother was also in attendance right now for my tudor rose rating for the old palace of hatfield and these ratings notes specifically apply to the old palace and not the prodigy house attack field so for historical significance well five tudor roses of course this place was elizabeth's refuge and she lived there over a considerable period of time on and off from being a baby i consider it the cradle of the elizabethan age and as such it gets five tudor roses from me and by the way if you want to read the blog about hatfield just follow the link and that will take you through to the blog article that i wrote on hatfield a little while back so next is authenticity well 3.5 judah rose is here you do get a feel for the original approach and the existence of the west range and it's exactly what you would expect to see from a tudor palace of the first half of the 16th century beautiful red brick and inside the hall the roof is the period but sadly many of the other features have been lost and the hall itself is often dressed for a wedding reception which kind of takes away a little bit of that authentic period vibe now we're on to the wow factor so again i'm giving hatfield the old palace there 3.5 tudor roses again what is there is beautiful to behold but it is just one wing of a palace which once had four arranged around a courtyard and for that reason i have to mark it down but the gardens are pretty and all in all it's a very satisfying place to visit as for accessibility i give it three tudor roses as the old palace is available for hire throughout the year as a venue for corporate and private parties marriage ceremonies wedding receptions etc it's not always possible to view the inside of the old palace on days when it's not in use you then can see the hall via a viewing bay and also access the upper solar which looks down onto the hall tours of the old palace are often also available on the days when it's not in use but my advice is if you're specifically wanting to travel to hatfield to see as much of you as you can of the old palace and that you're not going to be disappointed when you arrive and find it's closed and inaccessible then email hatfield ahead of time at visit us at hatfield hyphen house dot co dot uk and then you can have some guidance as when might be the best time for you to arrange your visit so certainly one to plan ahead for if you want to see as much of the original tudor palace where all the action happened as possible so guys i think that brings us to the end of today's a to z of tudor places thank you so much for joining me i hope you learned a lot more about the old palace of hatfield and are looking forward to your next visit so until next month and next month eta said all that remains for me to say of course is happy time traveling my friends [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Tudor Travel Guide

Views: 23,844

Keywords: hatfield house, Hatfield Old palace, hatfield house england, Hatfield House Uk, elizabeth i, henry viii and his six wives, henry viii, king henry viii wives, king henry viii, tudor buildings, tudor buildings ks2, tudor architecture, Tudor, the tudors, sixteenth century, history, english history, visit england, Visit Great Britain, Great places to visit, hatfield, hatfield house tour

Id: miU6r-UxFCg

Length: 28min 42sec (1722 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020