V

It has been seen that Hampton Court Palace has associations—often peculiar and intimate associations—with our monarchs for close upon three hundred years. In the first two chief courts, in the Great Hall, the kitchens, the old cloisters, and the courts along the north side of the building, it is not a difficult effort of the imagination that is required to make us see it as it was in the brightly-attired days of Tudor splendour and lavishness; to make us realize the arrival in one of the courts of some noble company, when the great Cardinal was entertaining and when King Henry was setting forth hunting; to make us realize the hurrying of the cooks and their minions in the corridors and cloisters about the great kitchens, the knots of idlers and retainers in the lesser courts. In the later portions of the Palace, the Fountain Court and the State Chambers, we may, “with the mind’s eye”, see something of the more formal brightness of a later day, may see the beaux and beauties of the early eighteenth century promenading or “taking tea” with “proud Anna whom three realms obey”.

The casual visitor to Hampton Court probably carries away two or three definite impressions of the place, of a medley of decorated chimneystacks, of warm red brick, of cool quadrangles, of broad lawns and blazing flower beds, of an outlook over a boat-dotted river, of galleries filled with a bewildering succession of old paintings, of tapestried walls—and of the whole set amid stretching tree-grown levels. It is, however, necessary to know the place closely to appreciate it fully—it grows upon one, as the saying is; we should have seen the homely court of the Master Carpenter as well as the stately Fountain Court, the sculptures in the gardens as well as the encyclopædic clock, the kitchens as well as the picture galleries, to have lingered about the Wilderness in the spring as well as to have seen the Broad Walk in the blaze of summer, to have visited in some of the residences as well as to have passed through the public galleries, to have been about it at all seasons and not merely to have scampered through it as the central incident in a half-day’s excursion. It is, indeed, properly a place for restful enjoyment rather than for hurried sightseeing; though a hurried glimpse may well prove a provocation to further visits and more leisurely inspection.

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FOUNTAIN COURT

Perhaps in beginning a ramble about the Palace and its grounds it may be assumed that most people arrive by railway at the station which, though it is in East Molesey at the Surrey end of the bridge, takes its name from the palace on the Middlesex bank. This means that they enter it—as also do those who journey from London by tramcar—at the Trophy Gate, and have before them at once, at the end of a broad gravel walk, the Outer Court and the rich red-brick medley of the Tudor buildings, to which the eye is led by the severely plain row of low barracks on the left, and a row of fine elms along the towing path on the right. Here, at the west front, the recently-cleared moat at once attracts attention. Until within the past year or two the gravel forecourt extended right up to the palace walls, but excavation revealed that the course of the moat, and the very walls of the moat, and the old bridge approach to the Gatehouse were still plainly traceable. The rubbish with which long since the moat had been filled—possibly when William the Third made his alterations to the Palace, or perhaps even earlier—was cleared away, the brick sides revealed, the bottom of the moat neatly turfed over, and a parapet with shield-bearing heraldical beasts erected on either side. These heraldical beasts, it must be admitted—whether a restoration in accordance with an old design or not—tend to spoil the approach to the Great Gatehouse, for the whole would have gained in dignity had they been omitted and the plain low castellated wall remained unadorned. The similar banner-bearing heraldical beasts along the roof of the Great Hall look far better on the skyline—but their fellows on the eyeline below mar the dignity of the approach considerably.

The beautiful red brickwork, the various castellated turrets, and the clusters of decorated chimneys, with the quaintly carven beasts seemingly toboganning down the gables of the wings, together form a fine example of Tudor architecture, though the appearance would have been still better had the Gatehouse when restored in the eighteenth century been kept to its original proportions, and had the leaden cupolas not been removed from the many turrets. Two or three of those turrets that remain in other parts of the buildings retain their cupolas, to indicate how fine must have been the whole effect before any had been removed. In the wall of either tower of the gateway is to be seen a terra-cotta medallion portrait of one of the Cæsars, others of which will be noticed in the succeeding courts.