Tudor Palaces and Houses

Hampton Court Palace (1515 onwards). The great house that Cardinal Wolsey began and then gave to Henry VIII in 1525, in a desperate attempt to stay in the King's favour, has undergone many changes since the 16th century. Christopher Wren rebuilt the south and east ranges for William and Mary between 1689 and 1694, and the Palace contains some remarkable Tudor work, notably Henry VIII's hammer-beamed Great Hall.

Longleat House, Wiltshire, which was completed in 1580, exemplifies the confidence of Tudor craftsmen in a society that was more stable than that of their medieval ancestors. It looks outwards rather than in on itself, whilst classical detailing such as the pilasters that flank the expanses of glass, and the roundels carved with busts of Roman emperors, show that Renaissance ideas were creeping slowly into Britain during the mid 16th century.

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire (1591-97). This is the archetypal late-Elizabethan house: tall, compact and beautiful. It was designed, probably by Robert Smythson, for Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury who was better known as Bess of Hardwick. Her descendants, the Dukes of Devonshire, made Chatsworth their principal seat, and left Hardwick more or less unscathed. A remarkable survival.

Whilst Elizabethan houses in England concentrated on the conspicuous display of wealth, Scotland saw the building of castles and fortified houses continue well into the seventeenth century. In fact, fortification became a style in its own right, and the turrets and strongly vertical emphases of Scottish Baronial houses mark one of Scotland's most distinctive contributions to British architecture.

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Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1300