Images: remains of Tudor brickwork from lodging wing (now rose garden); exterior of medieval hall build by Edward IV; plan of site with 20th century rebuilding superimposed in shadow (from site map at Eltham palace). (Photos: C.A. Stanford)
Acquired: 1509 (by inheritance)
Eltham was one of the major palaces large enough to contain the entire Henrician court. It contained a great hall in which court servants were expected to dine, as well as numerous lodgings for staff and offices, besides a suite of rooms for the king and another for the queen. It was a “standing house,” that is, one that retained the majority of its furnishings permanently.
Edward IV had built a new great hall at Eltham in the 1470s, with an impressive hammerbeam roof and large bay windows; much of this still survives. By Henry’s day, however, the palace seemed old-fashioned and additional building works were undertake in brick. The most notable of these was a large chapel with upper floor “holyday closets” for the king and queen, but substantial lodging and chamber blocks were also added in this era. The king even had a nearby hill flattened to improve the views from his windows. The lodging arrangments were “stacked” (that is, king’s on one level above the queen’s), which by 1530 had fallen out of favor with Henry, and so in later years Eltham was used chiefly as a nursery palace.
The Tudor portions of the house were not incorporated into the 1930s design made by Seely and Paget, when the property was remade into a mansion for Stephen and Virginia Courtauld, although sections of the walls remain visible in the grounds. The site is now part of English Heritage.
*Click here to see the women vendors that worked at this site.