London has never been a royal city. Unlike many capitals, it was shaped by its merchants and inhabitants rather than its monarchs. But that doesn’t mean it lacks a royal story—it’s just that the kings and queens who ruled England left their mark in unexpected ways. In the 13th century, English kings made Westminster their permanent base.
They built a great palace and abbey here, and today the abbey still stands as the spiritual heart of the kingdom. The palace next door burned down in 1512 and eventually became the seat of Parliament. Its official name is still the Palace of Westminster, and at its center is the Royal Norman Great Hall, begun in 1097. A small fragment of that original palace survives as the Jewel Tower, built in 1365 to hold the king’s furs, jewels, and gold vessels.
It’s now managed by English Heritage. The last king to live at Westminster Palace was Henry VIII, who moved his residence a few hundred yards north in 1530 to found Whitehall. In its day, Whitehall Palace was the largest in Europe, covering 23 acres. Today, only the Banqueting House remains, built in 1619 in a classical style by Inigo Jones for James I.
But beneath the Ministry of Defense and even below 10 Downing Street, remains of the Tudor and Stuart palace still lie buried. In the Middle Ages, royal palaces had hunting parks attached to them, and Whitehall was no exception. St. James’s Park, Green Park, and Hyde Park were all originally Henry VIII’s private hunting grounds.
Set among them was a second palace built by Henry VIII in anticipation of Anne Boleyn giving him a son and heir: St. James’s. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this was the residence of the heir to the throne. Today, for the first time in 200 years, it’s again the home of the Prince of Wales.
The Queen also had her own special palace in the center of town. It was Denmark House, named after James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark. Today, it’s known by its original name, Somerset House, and is an 18th-century building. But beneath its courtyard lies the brickwork of the ancient London house of the Queens of England.
Both Whitehall and Somerset House were built on the river, the only fast and reliable way to get anywhere in those days. In the winter months—except when the river froze—kings and queens used it to move between their suburban palaces. In the east was Greenwich Palace, after Whitehall the largest royal residence. It fell out of use after the Civil War, and in 1694 William III founded a naval hospital there for veterans of Britain’s naval wars.
Despite this, two of the original royal buildings still survive. First, the Queen’s House, a beautiful pavilion designed by Inigo Jones for the wives of James I and Charles I. From it, Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria could watch courtiers hunt in Greenwich Park. The colonnades were added later, and it’s now part of the Maritime Museum.
The second royal survivor is a wing by the river that was also part of a royal palace. It was started by Charles II in 1664 but never completed. When Sir Christopher Wren designed the Royal Hospital, he carefully incorporated it into his new design. He was also instructed to leave the view from the river to the Queen’s House open, which is why the two parts of the naval hospital don’t join up.
In the west, there were two large houses used by the court in the winter months. Almost completely lost now is Richmond Palace. Bits of its outer court, including its gatehouse, are still to be found on Richmond Green. Some 17th-century houses built for royal servants survive, too.
But further upstream is the most magnificent of them all: Hampton Court. Acquired by Henry VIII from Cardinal Wolsey in 1530, it was turned into the Tudor and Stuart’s favorite country pleasure palace. Set in acres of parkland and gardens, it was eventually rebuilt in the 1690s by King William III. Furthest west of all is Windsor Castle, consistently favored and occupied by our monarchs.
In the upper ward, the present royal apartments still occupy buildings that are at their core 600 years old. All these palaces could be reached by river, the royal family’s favorite means of travel until the 1580s. After that date, they started to travel by coach. A palace that fell from favor because it wasn’t on the river was Eltham.
Its great hall, built by Edward IV in 1479, made it one of the largest and most important royal houses. Henry VIII abandoned it for Greenwich because Greenwich was easier to get to. In the summer, the court moved away from these vast, sprawling complexes and went in search of hunting in the countryside. In the reign of Henry VIII, there were over 60 royal palaces, and most of these were only visited occasionally by the king when he was on his summer progress.
It’s interesting to consider how Henry VIII could have amassed so many houses. Some, like the manor of Byfleet, had been royal for hundreds of years. The house on the site now is 17th-century, but it’s built on the foundations of a palace belonging to the Black Prince. But these hereditary palaces were in a minority.
Most of Henry’s houses were acquired in the period 1530 to 1545. Some were acquired during the dissolution of the monasteries, like here in Canterbury. St. Augustine’s Abbey was one of the many monasteries that the early Tudors had regularly stayed in on their summer progresses.
Henry simply converted it into a royal residence. The Tudor brickwork on the nave of the abbey was once part of the king’s palace. Another house that had been a monastery was the royal manor of Dartford in Kent. Only the gatehouse survives of this once very large royal palace, which is now sadly surrounded by a bleak industrial estate.
While Dartford is a ruin, the former nunnery of Syon House in Isleworth now belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. At its dissolution in 1539, Henry VIII acquired it and turned it into one of his houses. At his death, his body rested here on its way up the Thames from Whitehall to his tomb at Windsor Castle. Another way Henry acquired houses was to persuade people to give them to him.
After a struggle at which the Archbishop complained that the house would be too small for him, Thomas Cranmer gave him Knole in Kent. It’s now a National Trust property. Among the alterations the king made was this splendid outer courtyard for his guests. Sometimes the king would acquire a house by exchange.
One such mansion was the house of Sir Thomas Poynings, Westenhanger in Kent, now almost on the long straight at Folkestone Racecourse. Poynings was forced to exchange his castle with the king at a very unfavorable rate. The king needed the house as a staging post to get to the coast. Apart from the few winter months when the royal court was in London and staying at its suburban houses like Hampton Court, it was on the move in the countryside, traveling between its houses by barge and cart.
For many who lived in London with the Tudor monarchs away, London hardly seemed like a royal city at all. Henry VIII acquired so many houses that it was all his successors could do to keep them standing. Many were simply given away. Tittenhanger in Hertfordshire was sufficiently far from London that in 1521 it was used as a refuge by Henry and his court to avoid what was called the sweating sickness.
Later, the house was used to house Henry’s children, but it was given away by the king in the last months of his life. It has subsequently been rebuilt and today stands surrounded by encroaching industry. Also in 1521, Henry acquired Penshurst in Kent, still one of the most beautiful medieval mansions in England, complete with its great hall. Henry’s son, Edward VI, gave it away early in his reign to Sir William Sidney, and it still belongs to Sir William’s descendants today.
The story of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire is a little more complicated. Originally, it was one of the Bishop of Lincoln’s houses, but Henry VIII managed to get the bishop to hand it over to him in 1538. Only the great red brick hall of the original palace survives. Built in 1480, it became the principal home of Princess Elizabeth.
And here she heard that she was going to become Queen Elizabeth I. The house we see today was built after the queen’s death by her minister, Robert Cecil. He gained Hatfield by swapping houses with James I. And Cecil’s descendant, the Earl of Salisbury, still lives here.
Although so many of Henry VIII’s palaces were sold off or given away, until the 1690s English monarchs seemed content to live in the old Tudor buildings, making some minor modifications. But with the accession of the Dutch king, King William III, everything changed. William was an asthmatic, and the damp air of Whitehall disagreed with him. He immediately decided to move out of Whitehall and build two new houses.
The first was in a small village called Kensington. There he bought a house from the Earl of Nottingham and proceeded to convert it into what is now known as Kensington Palace. William was at war in France and Ireland and had little time to supervise building. So much was left to his English queen, Queen Mary II.
She supervised Kensington and, crucially, his new country seat, Hampton Court, with Sir Christopher Wren. She supervised the construction of a new block of royal apartments and started work on fabulous new gardens. This avenue, the Chestnut Avenue in Bushy Park, was planted in her lifetime, but she died in 1694 with nothing much completed. It was left to William after 1700 to finish the new state apartments and to lay out the fabulous Privy Garden on the south.
The king also laid out Home Park, where the central canal or long water had been made by Charles II. William added avenues radiating out from the east front of the palace. In the gardens to the south, he built himself a Thames-side banqueting house where after dinner he could retreat with close friends and eat sweetmeats. In the pond gardens nearby, William and Mary displayed their famous horticultural collection gathered from all over the world.
It was in Home Park that William III’s favorite horse, Sorrel, threw him after falling into a molehill. William died a few weeks later at Kensington Palace. Hampton Court was also popular with George II, who spent much time here while he was Prince of Wales. His presence attracted friends and courtiers to the nearby towns and villages, most famously his mistress Henrietta Howard.
In 1723 she started to build this gem-like villa, Marble Hill, at Twickenham to be near her royal lover. The house today is in the care of English Heritage. During the 18th century, most European capitals acquired spectacular new royal palaces set like a jewel in the center of the city. Not so London.
In 1698, Whitehall Palace burned down, and the monarchy moved its principal seat to St. James’s. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are known all over the world for being botanical and for being gardens, but they’re rarely thought of as being royal. But George II and George III were very fond of Kew.
And the skeleton of the gardens there are the remains of a royal pleasure ground. Several palaces were planned and built in Kew Gardens, but today only two remain. In a remote corner is Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, a charming cottage orné built by George III’s queen for tea parties. The other is Kew Palace.
Kew Palace, sometimes known as the Dutch House after its style of architecture, was leased from a London merchant by George II’s Queen Caroline in 1728. For a brief period around 1802, it actually became the principal country seat of the monarchy as all George III’s other palaces were being rebuilt. This was a source of horror to many. How could the king of England—which at this time included most of America—be living in St.
James’s Palace and the Dutch House? To many, it was a disgrace. Perhaps the person who felt this most of all was the Prince of Wales, the Prince Regent. He’d started to build himself a palace on the road that is today The Mall.
Carlton House took 30 years to build and was the most lavish and remarkable house of its day. But when George came to the throne as George IV, Carlton House was demolished, and these two great terraces designed by John Nash were built on its site. The columns from the old Carlton House facade were carted away and used to hold up the portico of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. To replace Carlton House, George turned to the house which his parents had bought at the end of The Mall.
It was called Buckingham House. He obtained permission from Parliament to rebuild it at a cost of no more than £200,000. In the end, George IV’s new project cost a staggering £700,000, and even then he didn’t live long enough to see his palace finished. What we see today has been somewhat altered from George IV’s time.
Originally, a triumphal arch was positioned in front of the palace. This was removed in 1851 and placed at the northeast corner of Hyde Park. It is today Marble Arch. After the death of Queen Victoria, it was decided to build a national memorial for her.
The memorial was to be a new setting for Buckingham Palace designed by the architect Sir Aston Webb. First, there was The Mall, a new road 115 feet wide, making a processional route between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. At one end was Admiralty Arch, and at the other the enormous Victoria Memorial statue with its gardens and gates. To complete the scheme, Aston Webb refaced the main facade of the palace in 1913 in Portland Stone.
The 20th century has seen the contraction of the London residences of the royal family to Windsor Castle and the area around The Mall. Before her recent death, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother lived here in Clarence House. This had been built by John Nash for George IV’s brother William, later William IV. The Queen lived here before she came to the throne.
And in 1953, the Queen Mother moved in. Long gone are the days when the royal family moved by barge between the great palaces on the river. From the coming of the railways, it wasn’t long before stations were built at the principal royal palaces. At Hampton Court, a small Tudor-style station was built in 1847 to bring tourists in from Waterloo.
The Royal Train took over from the Royal Coach just as the coach had taken over from the Royal Barge, and Victoria station, close to Buckingham Palace, became the Royal Terminus. For the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910, an emperor, an empress, seven kings, more than 20 princes, and five archdukes were welcomed here. Later in the 20th century, the royal family traveled by air with the Queen’s Flight based at Northolt, and by helicopter from Buckingham Palace Gardens. In some ways, Buckingham Palace and The Mall are unimpressive considering the power of 19th-century Britain at the peak of its empire.
Compared to the Louvre and the Tuileries in Paris, London seems hardly royal at all. But this is entirely consistent with London’s history. London is primarily not a royal or governmental city like Washington in the USA, for example.
London has always been about business and making money, and no amount of state intervention will ever change that.
