Back in the US, a once-popular 80s hairstyle has experienced a renaissance in recent years. The "mullet" features a closely-shorn front and sides, with cascading locks of variable length down the neck and back. The result is famously described as "business in the front, party in the back". Let's imagine that King Henry VIII's palaces were a mullet. The Tower of London was the "business" end, where the heretics were burned, the wives were beheaded, and the frenemies were jailed. Hampton Court Palace, about 12 miles upstream from London on the Thames River, is the "party in the back".
Hampton Court Palace was originally built in the early 1500s for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a trusted advisor of King Henry VIII, who (like a lot of people in Henry's sphere) eventually fell out of favor. While Henry never got around to actually killing Wolsey, he did end up taking Hampton Court Palace for himself. From that point on, Hampton Court Palace became Henry's home-sweet-home for hunting, jousting, entertaining, playing tennis, and basically flexing his royal splendor for high profile company.
It wasn't all fun and games at the party end of the mullet, however. Henry VIII's only surviving son Edward VI was delivered here by his third wife Jane Seymour, who died two weeks later from complications. His fourth wife Katherine Howard was also arrested for adultery here and later shipped down the river to The Tower of London to await her beheading. Nevertheless, the vibe at Hampton Court Palace is decidedly "vacation home". The brick facade is impressive from the front and the expansive interior once held at least 30 suites to comfortably house all the King's besties from the Royal Court. The sprawling gardens behind the palace back right up to the river, where you can imagine Henry sailing up and docking after a rough week at the "office".
Apparently, short river cruises are available from different points in London to take you upstream, just like the King might have done, but my family and I just got on the train like a bunch of MPCs and had no problem walking the 2-3 blocks from the train station to the Hampton Court entrance.
After spending half the day there, Hampton Court Palace joined The Tower of London and Kensington Palace on my list of lived-in museums to visit in London for an easily-digestible dose of culture and education. The following are some highlights we enjoyed at Hampton Court Palace.
The Great Hall is exactly what it sounds like--and exactly what you imagine when you picture kings and queens having dinner. Whether it's the Malificent scene in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" or The Red Wedding in "Game of Thrones"--this is where the shit goes down.
The walls are hung with tapestries, the main table is set for dinner with pewter place settings, and the fireplace is stacked with wood in the dead center of the dining room (which totally isn't a fire hazard at all...)
Long banquet tables are set up in columns perpendicular to the main table, where you can take a load off and imagine yourself eating a giant leg of mutton or downing a tankard of room-temp ale before moving on to the next set of rooms. Just remember, if you need a casual backdrop for your next low-key dinner party, this space is available to rent for up to 270 of your closest friends.
The Great Watching Chamber right next door is decorated with medieval tapestries and lined with wooden gaming tables. Despite what the modern set up would suggest, the Great Hall was apparently for the entertainment portion of the evening (ex: dancing, some wild lute playing, perhaps), while the Great Watching Chamber was more of a dining room for the guests. Today, they're pretty protective of the rugs on the wall, so the likelihood of allowing food in that room is about the same as that of my kids being allowed to drink grape soda on the couch. These days, the tables are set up for games instead of feasts and include a set of written directions to help you dive right into a game of ...whatever this is. The games are about as fun as my kids make them look in the photo above, but a good medieval board game is always good practice for the next time the power goes out at home and none of the devices are properly charged...
Henry VIII's Kitchens
A visit to Henry VIII's kitchens features a fireplace large enough to roast a heretic or two and still have room for a Christmas goose (or twelve). They keep the fire going just about every day--and clearly, it shows.
Sample menus read like a fast-track recipe for gout, with meat, meat, more meat, then bread and beer. The guest menu is more diverse than the menu for the help, but I guess it's hard to argue with a boss who lets you drink on the job.
The Tennis Courts
Most of us think of Henry VIII as a big jowly fella sporting tights and a pot-belly, but once upon a time, he was an avid, young sportsman. Tennis was among the sports he was known to enjoy, and tennis-playing at Hampton Court Palace dates back to the original owner Cardinal Wolsey. This Royal Tennis Court was actually built for Charles I in 1625, and real people are still playing on it today. The court is private, so you have to be a member to use it (like these posh people in the picture), but the viewing gallery is open to visitors of the palace most days.
The Maze
Disney World was the first big trip we ever took the boys on when they were 2 and 4 years old. It was a major breakthrough in our young parenting years when we started to see a light at the end of the tunnel. We CAN go to fun places again! While the Magic Kingdom portion of the visit was clearly the highlight for kids, we gave ourselves a single day at Epcot Center and told the kids they'd have to just suck it up in their giant double stroller while mom and dad got drinks in micro-replicas of the world's major cities. In the UK section, they had a Beatles cover band playing in the courtyard with a sawed-off version of an English hedge maze on either side. Ray and I kicked back with a pint and let the boys loose for a half-hour or so, listening to the band and pretending to be in London while the boys' heads popped up periodically above the hedges.
Nearly a decade later, we were actually in London, with kids that were at least as tall as I was and lanky enough to hurdle those hedges back at Epcot. Even so, they still needed a level of activity and entertainment that running around in the bushes could definitely satisfy during a long day of sight-seeing. Lucky for us, Hampton Court Palace is home to the oldest surviving hedge maze in the UK. You can expect it to be a good bit more complicated than Epcot Center's, but if you start shouting and flailing, someone is sure to help you out. I've been known to panic when ordering fast food at a drive-thru, so problem-solving games tend to stress me out a touch. In this instance, I just followed Ray--who's typically my ticket out of the paper bag when I get myself all panicked and confused. The kids branched off on their own and did fine, probably because they were agile enough to scale over the top and squirrelly enough to bust through the bushes if they got stuck. Either way, the maze was an added attraction that felt like coming full-circle from our first tentative family vacation to our recent overseas adventure.
The Gardens
The Privy Gardens behind the palace are the sprawling "backyards" you always see featured in shows like "Bridgerton" and movies like "Dangerous Liaisons", where people entertained themselves by simply walking their happy asses around in a time before screens. Trees are expertly manicured into cones and perfectly round balls, with lines and symmetry that would satisfy even the most intense OCD impulses.
The lush, green grass is as continuous as turf--the kind that makes my kids really want to tackle each other on it. Unfortunately for my boys, the vibe is a little more stroll-y and a lot less NFL. So, no matter what they might think, it's not acceptable to drop kick the low-lying bushes or climb to the top of trees shaped like giant Hershey's Kisses. But the meticulous landscaping does make for some lovely scenery on a sunny day in the UK.
The Great Vine
The Guiness Book of World Records is full of crazy superlatives, like "longest finger nails" and "largest collection of Squishmallows". Hampton Court Palace's claim to Guinness fame as of 2005 is that it officially hosts the "largest grape vine in the world". It was planted in 1768 for King George III and currently has branches as long as 246 feet.
The bulk of it is arranged in a lattice formation that creates its own sunroom adjacent to the Privy Gardens. This particular type of Black Hamburg grape is not great for wine-making (according to the signage at the exhibit), so don't bother checking the gift shop for a bottle of Hamburg to pair with your next slab of New York Strip. But it does make for an impressive display, reminiscent of the extensive grape vines Ray grew up with in his back yard back in eastern North Carolina--home of the muscadine and scuppernong. Chances are, you've never had a glass of those varietals with your steak dinner either, unless you like sweet wines (which I don't). The grapes do smell amazing in the heat of a September afternoon in the waning weeks of summer, when Ray remembers running through the vines taking samples along the way. Those vines were a labor of love passed down from Ray's grandfather to his father, who still tends to the vines, picks the grapes by hand, and sells them out of their driveway every year. The Great Vine at Hampton Court Palace was less of a mom-and-pop operation, but walking under the canopy of a 256-year-old vine can't help but make you think of the people who came before us and marvel at the longevity of the natural world they cultivated.
The Magic Garden
If you're visiting the Palace with young kids, the Magic Garden is a nice Plan B for when they just can't deal with the indoor stuff anymore. My kids are big and even they could not resist running around on this medieval-themed playground after looking at one too many 16th-century tapestries.
The Magic Garden is designed for children 12 and under, but older children are allowed to visit as part of a family group. School groups of older children visiting on, say, a field trip are not allowed to descend on it like locusts, which keeps the level of riff-raff to a minimum. Access to the playground is one of the perks associated with your visit to Hampton Court Palace and tickets for entry are not issued separately. Entrance is permitted on a first-come, first-served basis, so on a busy day, you might have to queue up like it's Studio 54 and wait for the one-in-one-out routine to run its course. Fortunately, that was not the case for us, as we walked right in like VIPs. Once you're inside, there's a "cafe"--which is basically a snack bar--plenty of bathrooms, and tons of space. All the things a family with young children needs after a morning of trying to do something quasi-educational.
Lasting Impressions
We visited Hampton Court Palace midway through our trip on a perfect spring day. If you can get the weather to cooperate, I highly recommend visiting under those exact conditions. If it's rainy or cold, there's still a lot to do inside, but the Gardens and the Maze really add to the experience.
I've already explained that "lived-in" museums are my preference, on the one hand, because I'm an impatient little brat. On the other hand, because the more relaxed nature of walking through a home (albeit a palatial one) allows for moments like the one above. This is my boys, playing a made-up version of "soccer" with the toggle at the end of a string from the shade above them. The window looks out on the Privy Gardens from what used to be the home of kings and queens--and my kids couldn't be less impressed.
Nevertheless, they'll remember being here together in this season of their lives, when anything could be turned into a game if you had the right person to play it with.
Comments
Post a Comment