Qualla: Palace of Whitehall https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Palace of Whitehall https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall Palace of Whitehall: Introduction https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit en:User:ChrisO, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 4 January 1698, a servant in an upper room of the Palace of Whitehall hung wet linen around a burning charcoal brazier to help it dry. The linen caught fire. The flames spread through the largest palace in Europe - more than 1,500 rooms, sprawling across 23 acres along the Thames - and raged for fifteen hours before they could be stopped. The next day the wind picked up and reignited the fire farther north. John Evelyn wrote in his diary on 5 January: "Whitehall burnt! nothing but walls and ruins left." Christopher Wren, ordered by William III to save what he could, focused his efforts on the architectural jewel of the complex - Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622. The Banqueting House survived. Almost nothing else did.

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Palace of Whitehall: From York Place to Royal Residence https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit Antony van den Wyngaerde, Public domain. The palace had begun centuries earlier as York Place, the London residence of the Archbishops of York. Walter de Grey bought the property soon after 1240 and expanded it. Edward I stayed there while work continued at Westminster. By the time Cardinal Wolsey took it over in the ea...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-from-york-place-to-royal-residence.mp3 0:06 2 full Palace of Whitehall: Where Tudors Married, Lived, Died https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit Edward Matthew Ward, Public domain. Henry VIII married two of his wives here: Anne Boleyn in 1533 and Jane Seymour in 1536. He died in the palace in January 1547. The body of Elizabeth I was brought up the Thames by barge from Richmond in March 1603 to lie in state. The hall hosted, in 1611, the first known perform...

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Image: Edward Matthew Ward | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-where-tudors-married-lived-died.mp3 0:06 3 full Palace of Whitehall: The Largest Palace in Europe https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit Martin Beek, CC BY 2.0. By 1650 Whitehall was the largest complex of secular buildings in England. The 1,500 rooms had been built piecemeal over more than a century, in many styles and many sizes, so that the palace looked, contemporaries said, more like a small town than a single building. Courtiers we...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-the-largest-palace-in-europe.mp3 0:06 4 full Palace of Whitehall: Two Fires and an Empty Skyline https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit Dough4872, Public domain. The first fire came on 10 April 1691. It started in the apartment once used by the Duchess of Portsmouth and damaged the older palace structures, though the state apartments survived. Some historians have noted, perhaps darkly, that the burned-out sections gave the rest of the co...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-two-fires-and-an-empty-skyline.mp3 0:06 5 full Palace of Whitehall: What Survived https://qualla.com/palace-of-whitehall/ Photo credit Dough4872, Public domain. Today the Banqueting House is the only complete building of the old palace still standing on Whitehall, restored but recognisable. Other fragments are buried in the modern buildings around it. A tower from the covered tennis courts Henry VIII built is incorporated into the Old Tr...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/palace-of-whitehall-wp/gcpv-palace-of-whitehall-what-survived.mp3 0:06 6 full