Qualla: Hampton, London https://qualla.com/hampton-london en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Hampton, London https://qualla.com/hampton-london Hampton, London: Introduction https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey thought he was building his country house. In 1514 he took a lease on a Hampton estate the Knights Hospitaller had owned for nearly three centuries, and over the next fifteen years he turned it into the grandest private residence in England - more rooms than the king's palace, finer tapestries than the king's tapestries, a kitchen large enough to feed a small army. By 1528 Henry VIII had noticed. By 1530 Wolsey was dead and the king owned the palace. By 1689 William and Mary had hired Christopher Wren to redesign half of it. The village of Hampton, on the north bank of the Thames just east of Sunbury, has spent five hundred years watching kings and queens come and go through the gates of what is still called Hampton Court Palace.

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Image: Mike Pennington | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hampton, London: Before the Palace https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Dnwinterburn, CC BY 3.0. Hampton existed long before any cardinal noticed it. The Anglo-Saxon village clustered around the small hillock where St Mary's Church still stands, at the intersection of the Windsor-Kingston road and the road north to Twickenham. The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded forty-one vil...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-before-the-palace.mp3 0:06 2 full Hampton, London: The King James Bible Conference https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the Christmas of 1603, the newly crowned James I moved his entire court to Hampton Court Palace to escape an outbreak of plague that had ravaged London through the summer - and had killed ninety-nine of the one hundred and nineteen people who died in Hampton itself that year. ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-the-king-james-bible-conference.mp3 0:06 3 full Hampton, London: The Maze https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sometime around 1690, William and Mary's gardeners planted the hedge maze that still confuses visitors today. It is the oldest surviving hedge maze in the British Isles - a third of an acre of hornbeam hedges arranged in a trapezoidal layout, with twisty walks and dead ends, desi...

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Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-the-maze.mp3 0:06 4 full Hampton, London: The Waterworks https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Motmit, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1852 Parliament passed the Metropolis Water Act, which made it illegal for water companies to draw drinking water from the tidal Thames below Teddington Lock. The water below the lock was filthy with London's sewage; cholera epidemics had killed thousands. Three water companie...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-the-waterworks.mp3 0:06 5 full Hampton, London: Tagg's Island and the River https://qualla.com/hampton-london/ Photo credit Jonathan Cardy, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Thames at Hampton bulges around three small islands. Tagg's Island, the largest, was named after Thomas Tagg, a Victorian boat-builder who established the first boatyard on its eastern end in 1866. In 1913 the impresario Fred Karno - born Frederick Westcott, the man who first...

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Image: Jonathan Cardy | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/s/hampton-london-wp/gcps-hampton-london-taggs-island-and-the-river.mp3 0:06 6 full