Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court in the Early Morning

Saturday, April 9

On Saturday morning, we took the train to Hampton Court to see Henry VIII's former palace.  Hampton Court was built by Cardinal Wolsey (Henry's chief advisor until he fell out of favor because he couldn't arrange the divorce from Katherine of Aragon).  Henry basically took it from him later.  Henry built up the palace, and then it was rebuilt by William and Mary, who hired Christopher Wren to do the work.  A lot of the older parts of the palace disappeared during Wren's reworking of the place.  The Court hasn't actually been used as a palace in quite a while.

Hampton Court is an interesting palace; it has been kept more like it was in the times of William and Mary, and they use actors to play the roles of characters like Henry VIII,  but the most beautiful part of it was the gardens.

We toured the Tudor part of the palace in the morning with our regular British Life and Culture guide Molly Rumbalo.  The clock dates from the Tudor times.  It tracks time, the phases of the moon, the signs of the zodiac and the months of the year.  Quite an accomplishment for the 1500s. Then we had lunch down in the kitchens.  They've tried to make the dining area feel a bit of the way that the old court might have felt.  After lunch we looked at the new sections of the court that William and Mary built and then moved outside.

The Lunch table--note the wood plates and old fashioned bowls

Standing in front of the fireplace in the kitchen

Hope liked the dragons in the garden

Did you know that Henry VIII played tennis?  The game is a bit different.  It's hard to see through the screen, but the court is thinner and has a series of lines that provide different scoring.  It's also walled in on three sides and plays a bit more like squash.

Outside, the grounds are just beautiful.  The arbor above seemed to go on forever and there were gorgeous flowers everywhere.  We told Hope these could count as her bluebonnet pictures for the year.

Finally, there is the famous maze.  Hope's pondering which fork to take here.  We found that this maze (one of the largest in existence) was not simple to solve.  The final picture shows the group after we conquered it.  You can get a bit of an idea of what it looks like.  The maze was taller than any of us, very thick and had quite a few places to choose directions.  It could have been worse, but it wasn't easy to be in the middle of it trying to figure out which way to go.

We conquered