Hampton Court Palace, Part 2

Here's the rest of my favourite photos from Hampton Court! Also, note a slight addition at the end of the "Part 1" post below.

Georgian courtyard

who knew?

Hampton Court gardens- Great Fountain Garden

gardens by the tennis court

"The Wilderness"

Tudor maze garden- so cool!

swans by the river Thames next to the palace

just outside the palace grounds

the Great Fountain 

in the Great Fountain Garden

in William III and Mary II's apartments

ceiling in Mary II's oratory room

ceiling in Mary II's oratory room

in William III and Mary II's apartments

the King's Guard chamber

in William III and Mary II's state rooms

in William III's ceremonial apartments

key to the State Apartments of William III

looking from William III and Mary II's apartments
out to the Knot Garden

cool display of Henry VIII's family tree, in the
"Young Henry" exhibit

looking out from William III and Mary II's state apartments to
the Knot Garden

It's 5am here and I'm about to leave for a weekend trip to Cornwall. I'll be gone with no Internet access Friday through Sunday, but I'll have some Cornwall photos up on Monday!

Hampton Court Palace, Part 1 (Edited)

from Google Images- Hampton Court and Grounds

On Sunday (Oct 2) my Early Modern Britain history class went on a trip to Hampton Court, about 2 hours away from the castle. Hampton Court was one of Henry VIII's palaces, and remained a royal residence for several ensuing centuries. I've read about Hampton Court so many times in various historical fiction books, plus it's a) a palace! and b) from one of my favourite time periods, so I was extra excited for this trip. It definitely did not disappoint!!

We saw the key areas of the palace with our prof for 2 hours, then had 3.5 to explore on our own. It was great having so much time, but I still definitely could have spent more time there. Good thing I took 500 photos! 

The picture at the beginning of this post is from Google images, because there was no way I could accurately capture from the ground the immense size of the place. There are 1068 rooms! 95 are currently open to the public. There are also 60 acres of gardens. 

Hundreds of people were fed here every day.
The Tudor court consumed 8,200 sheep
in a year! We saw how some of the fireplaces
were built specially large so that whole
animals could be roasted inside them. 

window in the kitchens

we visited on a Sunday, so the chapel was closed due to services.
Apparently it's amazing, but this was as close as we got to it. 

sculpture in the little Chapel Garden

Henry VIII's Great Hall

Henry VIII's Great Hall

Henry VIII impersonator! He had
an attendant dressed in costume too,
clearing the crowd and yelling
"Make way for the King!"

Hampton Court was turned into a palace by Cardinal Wolsey, an advisor of Henry VIII's who achieved incredible status and power during the early years of Henry's reign. He met his downfall in the late 1520s when he failed to arrange a divorce for Henry from his first wife Katharine of Aragon. Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, and needed male heirs, but the legal and ecclesiastical fight with Katharine dragged on, and Wolsey couldn't get the Pope to agree to an annulment.

Two of the main reasons the Pope would not agree to this divorce:

1) Katharine had previously been married to Henry's brother Arthur, so not too many years ago the Pope had had to grant them a special license permitting them to marry; he wasn't about to suddenly say he had been wrong in doing so. 

2) The Pope was under extreme pressure from the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to forbid the divorce. Charles V was Katharine of Aragon's nephew. 

In 1528 Wolsey knew his downfall was being plotted, so he gave Hampton Court to the king as a gift. In 1529 he was accused of treason, but died before he could be executed. 

The Hampton Court website is really good, so if you want to know more, click here!
More photos to come in a later post!

Gillian: To answer your questions- I have no clue what type of column that is. As for the difference between a castle and a palace, I realized I was unable to succinctly describe it; so I turned to Yahoo Answers and found the following explanation, which fits what I know of the subject: 


"A castle is a fortified building or series of buildings designed to withstand enemy attacks and sieges.A palace is a leisure building, designed to maximize the comfort of its inhabitants, and impress the visitors."

Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, and Sightseeing

by Cleopatra's Needle; London Eye in background

On Saturday (Oct 1) I was in London again for two field studies: Trafalgar Square with my British Studies class, and the National Gallery with my Art History class.

We spent an hour at Trafalgar Square while our prof talked to us about the various monuments in the square. Trafalgar Square is at the heart of London, often used for demonstrations and rallies, and represents British imperial and military might. The name 'Trafalgar' comes from the Battle of Trafalgar, a pivotal battle in 1805 between Britain and France which Britain won, thanks to the British hero Lord Nelson.

Nelson's column: landmark of Trafalgar Square.
It depicts the hero Lord Nelson, and the height
of the column equals the height of the mast
of Nelson's ship, the HMS Victory, that he fought
and died on during the Battle of Trafalgar. 

This statue of Havelock was erected by the British people,
out of gratitude for his suppression of the Indian Mutiny
in 1857. However, if his actions had occurred today,
he would have been convicted as a war criminal.
There's a lot of controversy over whether this man
deserves to have a statue among other British
heroes in the square, or whether removing
the statue would be a negative 'erasing'
of British history. Our prof suggested we talk
to people in the square, so I asked 12 people if they
had heard of Havelock; no one had! 

Nelson's Ship in a Bottle

The "Nelson's Ship in a Bottle" artwork (above) is the current piece on display on the Fourth Plinth (the raised stone structure you see below the bottle in the picture). There's a plinth at each corner of the square, and the other three have statues of important imperial and military figures. However, money ran out before a statue could be commissioned for the fourth plinth- so it stood empty for more than 200 years, until in the 1990s it became a high-profile site for temporary artwork. Every 18 months or so a new piece is chosen by a committee; they're often highly controversial, although Ship in a Bottle has been one of the least so (previous pieces include Ecce Homo, Alison Lapper Pregnant, Monument, and One and Other, if you want to do some googling!).

Next to Trafalgar Square is St. Martin in the Fields, a gorgeous church which I got a brief chance to explore during my free time:

I had just over an hour between finishing at Trafalgar Square and having to be back at the National Gallery for my Art History field study. So I walked with some friends to see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey (about 15 minutes away). We ate lunch on the lawn at the Abbey before walking back to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. It was 30 C on Saturday, breaking the record for the warmest Oct 1 in England since record-keeping began 101 years ago! 

I don't have any pictures of the National Gallery, but that was where I spent the following 3 hours- 2 on a guided tour with my class, and 1 on my own looking at other paintings our prof recommended that we see. The size of some of the paintings was overwhelming! I got to see a few famous pieces I had heard of before (Madonna of the Rocks, the Arnolfini Double Portrait, and Holbein's The Ambassadors) and many that I now know to be famous, having learned about them in class (for example, the Wilton Diptych, the Battle of San Romano, and the Leonardo Cartoon).

Archaeology Club

Friday (September 30) was the first chance to participate in the Archaeology club here at the castle. My history prof, who runs the club, led a group of 12 students including myself on a 3-hour hike and dig around the castle estate. We got to see where he has directed previous groups of students on digs around the grounds that revealed a Neolithic settlement, a Romano-British settlement, and an RAF camp from WWII.

What we got to start digging were the remains of a brick wall from an outbuilding from the 1800s. To get there, it took about 25 minutes of walking from the castle, most of it through this massive cornfield (above and below). The corn was about 7 feet high, and we kept losing each other, so it basically became a game of Marco Polo as we all tried to follow each other through this cornfield. There was no path, so everyone was going through with their hands in front of their faces, through what seemed like a never-ending wall of corn leaves.

Once we got to the site, we first had to clear it of a thick layer of stinging nettles, blackberry bushes, and rusted barbed wire (we had gloves, spades, cutters, etc). Here's part of the area we cleared- on the sides you can see what the brush looked like originally, before we removed it.

Here's part of the brick wall, floor, and collapsed roof we were "excavating" once we had cleared all the stuff from on top of it (below). It was pretty informal, no grid markings or anything like that, but we did get to use trowels to clear the dirt away :) Our prof knew where to find this by looking at old maps, but I got the impression that no one else really knew about it and no one really cares, so it's basically being used as a place to teach us and have fun.

brick wall remains, and floor

these were scattered around the site, and include
one of the door hinges from the outbuilding.

previous student excavation of an RAF
camp on the castle grounds during WWII

Sunny Week in East Sussex

road to Herstmonceux village

The last few days have been the warmest yet! Everyone is walking around in shorts and dresses like it's summer, not almost October. It was actually a fair bit colder when we first arrived than it is now.

pathway branching off the walk to the castle;
taken this Thurs, sunny afternoon

On Wednesday, because the weather was so nice, we got to have our Shakespeare class outside in the Shakespeare garden! That was a really nice surprise, and so was the Time Team episode we got to watch in Early Modern Britain history class. Time Team is a popular UK archaeology TV show, and this episode was about excavations of Henry VIII's palaces, including Hampton Court, which we're going to this Sunday! Some of the experts interviewed during the program had job titles that sounded like dream jobs to me: "Buildings Curator, Historic Royal Palaces" and "Research Curator, Hampton Court Palace" for example. 

path to the castle (you can see it on the far right)

along the path to the castle

On Tuesdays, I have a 4-hour break between classes, so two friends and I walked to the village of Herstmonceux, about 40 minutes each way. I had never been there before so I was excited to see what was there, even though I knew it would be small. It consists of 2 convenience stores, 4 restaurants, a hair salon, a post office, and that's basically it. And this is the nearest settlement to us- the bigger town, Hailsham, is even further away.

Here's some pictures from our walk there:

In Herstmonceux proper:

Lastly, a few uniquely British treats in the convenience store!