+4 photos"Catherine Howard's ghost is said to still run screaming through the Haunted Gallery, just as she did in 1541 when guards dragged her from Henry VIII's chapel door. Staff have reported the sound of running footsteps and a woman's scream — always in the same corridor."
About
Hampton Court is two palaces fused into one — and the seam is visible if you know where to look. Tudor brick gives way to Wren's pale Portland stone as you move from Henry VIII's Great Hall to William III's Baroque state apartments, and the effect is like walking through a door in time. One half is all dark wood and hammer-beam ceilings; the other is gilded symmetry and formal gardens stretching to the Thames.
Cardinal Wolsey built it to be the finest house in England, then Henry VIII took it from him — along with everything else. Six of Henry's wives knew these rooms. The astronomical clock in Clock Court still tracks the hour, the day, the month, the phase of the moon, and the state of the tide at London Bridge, just as it has since 1540. The kitchens, enormous enough to feed a court of 600, are the best-preserved Tudor kitchens in existence.
Lose yourself in the oldest surviving hedge maze in the world, planted in 1700. Walk the Privy Garden where William III took his morning air. Stand in the Great Hall and look up at the tapestries — they're from the Story of Abraham, woven in Brussels in the 1540s, and they've hung here since Henry himself put them up. In a country of grand houses, Hampton Court is the one that feels most lived-in, perhaps because, in some ghostly sense, it still is.
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Getting There
Terrain & Accessibility
The palace has extensive step-free routes through the State Apartments and ground-floor Tudor rooms. Lifts provide access to upper floors. The gardens and maze are on flat ground with gravel paths (wheelchair-friendly, though the maze paths are narrow). Free wheelchairs available from the Information Centre. Audio-described and BSL tours offered.
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