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Background
Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, was arguably the greatest of Henry VIII's building projects. Built on the location of Cuddington, near Epsom, the church and village of Cuddington having been destroyed and compensation paid to create a suitable site. Work started on 22 April 1538, the first day of Henry's thirtieth regnal year, and six months after the birth of his son, later Edward VI. Within two months the name 'Nonsuch' first appears in the building accounts and the structure was substantially completed by 1541 but would take another five years to complete. As the Royal Household took possession of vast tracts of surrounding acreage, several major roads were re-routed or by-passed to circumvent what became Nonsuch Great Park.
The palace was designed to be a celebration of the power and the grandeur of the Tudor dynasty, built to rival Francis I's Château de Chambord. Unlike most of Henry's palaces, Nonsuch was not an adaptation of an old building; he choose to build a new palace in this location because it was near to one of his main hunting grounds. The palace cost at least £24,000 (a king's ransom at the time) due to its rich ornamentation and is considered a key work in the introduction of elements of renaissance design to England.
Archeology
Only about three contemporary images of the palace survive, and they do not reveal very much about either the layout or the details of the building. The site was excavated in 1959-60. The plan of the palace was quite simple with inner and outer courtyards, each with a fortified gatehouse. To the north, it was fortified in a medieval style, but the southern face had ornate Renaissance decoration, with tall octagonal towers at each end. The exterior and outer courtyard were quite plain, but the inner courtyard was decorated with breathtaking stucco panels moulded in high relief.
Following the digging of the trenches in WW2, it was reported that pieces of pottery had been discovered in the area, later found to be from the site of the palace.citation needed An outline of the site layout was also visible from the air, which allegedly provided additional evidence in the search for the location of the site. The 1959 excavation of Nonsuch was a key event in the history of archaeology in the UK. It was one of the first post-Medieval sites to be excavated, and attracted over 60,000 visitors during the work. This excavation led to a major set of developments in post medieval archeology.1
Through the ages
The palace was incomplete when Henry VIII died in 1547. In 1556 Queen Mary I sold it to the 19th Earl of Arundel who completed it. It returned to royal hands in the 1590s, and remained royal property until 1670, when Charles II gave it to his mistress, Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine. She had it burnt down around 1682-3 to pay gambling debts. Some elements were incorporated into other buildings, for example the wood panelling can still be seen today in the Great Hall at Loseley Park. No trace of the palace remains on its site today but some pieces are held by the British Museum. There is, however, a discernable rise of land where the old Cuddington church used to be, before it was demolished to make way for the palace. Nonsuch Palace should not be confused with Nonsuch Mansion, which is at the east of the park nor its associated banqueting hall whose foundations are still visible to the south east of the palace site.
See also
- Artists of the Tudor court
- Nonsuch
- The fictional city of Ankh-Morpork has a Nonesuch Street, likely named after this palace
- Loseley Park
Notes
- ^ David Gaimster. "Great sites: Nonsuch Palace". British Archeology. Retrieved on 2006-12-31. "In 1959, the year Martin Biddle first excavated Henry VIII's vanished palace of Nonsuch in Surrey, the concept of post-medieval archaeology was virtually unknown. Within a decade the subject was established with its own academic society, and post-medieval sites were being investigated and rescued in their own right. Today the subject is routinely taught at universities, and archaeologists are increasingly specialising in the period which spans the transition between medieval and industrial society."
References
Books
- Dent, John [1962] (1970). Quest for Nonsuch, 2nd Edition. ISBN 0091051401.
- Biddle, Martin [2005]. Nonsuch Palace: The Material Culture of a Noble Restoration Household., 1st Edition. ISBN 9781900188340.
External links
- Better version of the Hoefnagel engraving
- All three images, the last after much had been burnt down
- An account of the excavation of Nonsuch Palace
- Loseley Park
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