Nonsuch & Whitehall: The Lost Palaces of England

Whilst the world is familiar with Palaces in England such as Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, there are other Palaces throughout history which have been lost. Today I thought we would look at a couple of the most beautiful Palaces of England which are sadly no longer around for us to visit . . .

Nonsuch Palace

Started in 1538 after the birth of his long-awaited heir Edward, Henry VIII personally designed the palace which became known as ‘Nonsuch’; the name created for the simple reason that there had never been another building like it before in history. It was unusual in design with tall octagonal towers at the corner, over 700 stucco plaster panels of Roman Emperors, Gods and Goddesses adorned the external walls and it was on an enormous scale.

In 2011 model maker Ben Taggart created a replica 1:75 size scale model of Nonsuch using over 50 years of research from an Oxford Professor, Martin Biddle.

(photo credit: Daily Mail article 2011) 

The Palace was systematically demolished in the 17th century in an incident which I’m sure would have caused Henry VIII to have one of his infamous fits of rage had he been around to see it. Charles II gave the Palace to one of his mistresses and allowed her to dismantle the Palace to pay off gambling debts . . . thank god they created the ‘listed building’ system eh?


Palace of Whitehall

The Palace of Whitehall officially dates from 1530 and was created such by Henry VIII who died there in 1547. The Palace sat in the centre of London along the banks of the Thames and at the height of its use it was the largest Palace in Europe with over 1500 rooms and covering about 23 acres, larger than the Palace of Versailles and the Vatican.

(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

It began life as York Place, the once home of Archbishop Cardinal Wolsey up to 1530 when Henry VIII removed the cardinal from power and seized York Place for the crown. Henry employed architects and amended the building adding and building upon it, the name changing to Whitehall due to the colour of the stone used for the buildings.

James I greatly added and amended the Palace in the 1620’s adding Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House. By this time the Palace resembled a small town rather than one single Palace due to the different architectural buildings.

The Palace had a sad ending with two fires, one in 1691 and the second larger fire in 1698 which destroyed almost all of the buildings save for the Banqueting House (still standing today) and Henry VIII’s Holbein Gate which was later destroyed in the 1700’s.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit more about the lost Palaces of England, an addendum to my recent post about England’s Lost Country Houses. Let me know on my Facebook page or in the comments below if there are any particular topics you would like me to write about.