Palace of Whitehall
The Palace of Whitehall – also spelled White Hall – at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, with the notable exception of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Henry VIII moved the royal residence to White Hall after the old royal apartments at the nearby Palace of Westminster were themselves destroyed by fire. Although the Whitehall palace has not survived, the area where it was located is still called Whitehall and has remained a centre of the British government.
"York Place" redirects here. For the street in Edinburgh, see York Place, Edinburgh. For the tram stop, see York Place tram stop.Palace of Whitehall
c. 1240, 15–17th century
1698 (due to fire)
White Hall was at one time the largest palace in Europe, with more than 1,500 rooms, before itself being overtaken by the expanding Palace of Versailles, which was to reach 2,400 rooms.[3] At its most expansive, the palace extended over much of the area bordered by Northumberland Avenue in the north; to Downing Street and nearly to Derby Gate in the south; and from roughly the elevations of the current buildings facing Horse Guards Road in the west, to the then banks of the River Thames in the east (the construction of Victoria Embankment has since reclaimed more land from the Thames)—a total of about 23 acres (9.3 ha). It was about 710 yards (650 m) from Westminster Abbey.
Destruction[edit]
By 1691 the palace had become the largest and most complex in Europe. On 10 April a fire broke out in the much-renovated apartment previously used by the Duchess of Portsmouth, damaging the older palace structures, though apparently not the state apartments.[20] This actually gave a greater cohesiveness to the remaining complex. At the end of 1694 Mary II died in Kensington Palace of smallpox, and on the following 24 January lay in state at Whitehall; William and Mary had avoided Whitehall in favour of their palace at Kensington.[21]
A second fire on 4 January 1698 destroyed most of the remaining residential and government buildings.[22] It was started inadvertently by a servant in an upper room who had hung wet linen around a burning charcoal brazier to dry.[23] The linen caught fire and the flames quickly spread throughout the palace complex, raging for 15 hours before firefighters could extinguish it. The following day, the wind picked up and re-ignited the fire farther north. Christopher Wren, then the King's Surveyor of Works, was ordered expressly by William III to focus manpower on saving the architectural jewel of the complex, the Banqueting House.[23] Wren ordered bricklayers to block up the main window on the building's south side to block the flames from entering. Around 20 buildings were destroyed to create a firebreak, but this did little to inhibit the westward spread of the flames.[24]
John Evelyn noted succinctly on 5 January: "Whitehall burnt! nothing but walls and ruins left."[25] Besides the Banqueting House, some buildings survived in Scotland Yard and some facing the park, along with the so-called Holbein Gate, eventually demolished in 1769.[26]
During the fire many works of art were destroyed, probably including Michelangelo's Cupid, a famous sculpture bought as part of the Gonzaga collections in the seventeenth century. Also lost were Hans Holbein the Younger's iconic Whitehall Mural, including his Portrait of Henry VIII[27] and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's marble portrait bust of King Charles I.[28]