Qualla: Kings Langley Palace

Kings Langley Palace: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cnbrb, CC0. There was a lion. There was a camel. There was a young king who loved music and horse racing and the company of one particular man, and who kept all three at his country palace west of the Hertfordshire village now called Kings Langley. Almost nothing remains. The site sat empty for centuries, then served as a Rudolf Steiner school until 2019, and even that has now closed. But beneath the grass, beneath the gymnasium that once stood here, archaeologists found the cellars of a vanished royal household, the place where Edward II reburied the man he loved after Parliament had him beheaded.

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Image: Cnbrb | CC0

Kings Langley Palace: Eleanor's Estate

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The story begins not with Edward but with his mother. In 1276, Queen Eleanor of Castile acquired the manor of Langley from a forest that stretched, unbroken in those days, from London out to Berkhamsted. The land was thick with deer and already held a hunting lodge from the reign...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Kings Langley Palace: The King Who Kept a Lion

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hale, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Edward II inherited Langley outright in 1302, he made it the centre of a court that scandalised his realm. He brought in musicians. He raced horses. He assembled a menagerie that, in addition to the usual hounds and hawks, included a lion and a camel - exotic creatures wande...

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Image: Graham Hale | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kings Langley Palace: Plague Capital

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Cox, CC BY-SA 2.0. Langley outlasted Edward II. His grandson, Edward III, gave the palace its most famous moment when, in July 1349, with the Black Death tearing through London, he moved the entire royal court out to Hertfordshire. For a brief, terrified period, the seat of English government was K...

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Image: Nigel Cox | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kings Langley Palace: The Rubbish of Royalty

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hale, CC BY-SA 2.0. A fire damaged the palace in 1431, and though repairs followed - including bricks fired by William Veyse, the king's own brickmaker, drawn from a kiln at le Frithe near St Albans - Langley's days as a court were ending. The last recorded official banquet here came in 1476, hosted...

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Image: Graham Hale | CC BY-SA 2.0

Kings Langley Palace: What the Spades Found

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hale, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1970, archaeologists excavating the site of the Rudolf Steiner School discovered something extraordinary beneath the gymnasium floor: a vast medieval wine cellar, built around 1291 to 1292, sitting on the west side of what had been the kitchen court. Just east of it, they foun...

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Image: Graham Hale | CC BY-SA 2.0