Qualla: Richmond Palace

Richmond Palace: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Sometime around Christmas 1497, the corridors at Sheen Palace caught fire. The king, Henry VII, barely made it out alive; one passage nearly collapsed onto him. His mother Margaret Beaufort and his wife Elizabeth of York were carried free. All but one of the royal children - including a six-year-old prince who would later become Henry VIII - were rushed out of the burning halls in the arms of nursemaids. Tapestries burned to cinders. Crown jewels were lost. The bedding, much of it cloth of gold, was destroyed. The Italian diplomat Soncino, sending the news back to Milan, reported that the king did not seem much bothered. 'He purposes,' Soncino wrote, 'to build the chapel all in stone, and much finer than before.' That offhand sentence is, in a way, the founding charter of Richmond Palace.

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Image: Public domain

Richmond Palace: A Name Changed by Royal Command

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Slater, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before he became king, Henry Tudor had been Earl of Richmond. In 1500, with construction underway on the new palace at Sheen, he ordered that the town surrounding the royal manor change its name to Richmond, in honour of the earldom that had been his. The locals kept calling it S...

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Image: Amanda Slater | CC BY-SA 2.0

Richmond Palace: Elizabeth's Favourite Room

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. For five generations, Richmond was where the royal family went when they wanted to be away from London without being far from it. Henry VIII celebrated Christmas at Richmond with Catherine of Aragon at the start of 1510, twelfth night brought into the hall by an artificial mounta...

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Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Richmond Palace: Cromwell's Yard Sale

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wenceslaus Hollar, CC0. Charles I owned Richmond before he became king and began to build his famous art collection there. Like Elizabeth before him, he loved hunting, and in 1637 he carved out a new royal park - now simply called Richmond Park - which still holds descendants of his deer, free from hunt...

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Image: Wenceslaus Hollar | CC0

Richmond Palace: Sir John Harington's Innovation

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris mcdonn, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tucked into Richmond's strange legacy is one of the more unexpected English contributions to domestic comfort: a flushing lavatory. Sir John Harington, godson of Elizabeth I, designed the device - he called it the 'Ajax,' a pun on 'jakes,' the period word for a privy. He installe...

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Image: Chris mcdonn | CC BY-SA 3.0

Richmond Palace: What the Thames Kept

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndyScott, CC0. Three pieces of Richmond Palace survived the great dismantling. The Wardrobe building, which once housed the royal robes, is now a Grade I listed private house. The Trumpeters' House, where the heralds had their quarters, is Grade I as well. The Gate House, built in 1501 with Hen...

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Image: AndyScott | CC0