I have been calling myself an amateur historian ever since I managed to find a potentially lost manor site and had the manor site, and my name as finder, listed by English Heritage a few years ago. So if that is not enough evidence that I have a good eye for these things, then here’s another little tale. My knowledge comes from reading about everything when I visit historical places, then reading everything about the place after I have visited it, studying places all the way back to their origins and finding out about life, about the people who lived there through time and how they’ve lived. So after a life time of this curiosity, as that is all it really is, I spot things, things that look different.
In this tale the unusual thing I spotted was a rectangular pond at the edge of Kew’s ‘village’ green.
A pond on a village green is normal, you might be saying?
Yes it is, I answer, but not the shape. That is the thing. Ponds usually have curved banks. It’s unusual enough for me to think it was more than just a normal pond on a village green. But then there’s this concrete ramp, what was that about? And concrete isn’t old… BUT THE SHAPE – my mind continues to tell me.
When I say village, of course Kew village was long ago subsumed into the heart of London. However, the ancient green, where once residents would have grazed livestock, and cut down hay to feed animals through the winter months, or perhaps used the hay to stuff mattresses or lay across mud floors to carpet their houses, survives. Possibly the green survived, (or was re-established as there are a lot of lines on the image below) because the gates to Kew Palace stand at one end.
The pond is positioned at the edge furthest from the palace and closer to The Thames.
At first, when I saw the concrete ramp, I thought it was something to do with river. Opposite the pond, there’s a road of old houses that were used by people who worked on the river, and the river bank is only a couple of hundred meters further on.
BUT THE SHAPE – my brain kept saying. Because I have only ever seen that shape of pond when the pond was a medieval fish pond. Monasteries particularly used to create and maintain fish ponds because in the medieval period there were many days when religious fasts meant people could only eat fish (usually two days of the week, and during lent and on many saints’ days). So, to ensure there was enough fish to feed everyone at these times they bread fish in a pond at the site. Often they largely contained eels, as eels are large and fleshy and more able to feed a quantity of people.
My mind kept telling me this pond looked very like an ancient fish pond as I walked along the road. Then I saw a board, so of course I had to look, and when I walked around the corner and saw what the information board said… I was once again very impressed by the instinct of the voice in my head. 😀
In the summer I spent a couple of nights in London, staying near Kew Palace and Gardens, just on the other side of what was once the green of Kew village. I have wanted to visit Kew for years. Even though I don’t write regency romance now I have been fascinated by history since my childhood and I will never rid myself of my amateur historian, the draw of wanting to know how people lived historically, what happened and why will never leave me. I love research and investigating, looking for clues of the things that aren’t generally known. Many of the things I discovered would have once upon a time crept into my regency stories because I do love hiding true aspects and moments within my fiction, and you never know there maybe a time-slip thriller in the future to incorporate some of the things I found out so I will keep some things to myself.
I was very surprised by the size of Kew Palace, the home of King George III and Queen Charlotte (now of Bridgerton storytelling fame). The palace is more like a Manor House in size and nature. Not at all palatial, and yet the park around the house that is now Kew Gardens, is palatial. That is because the main house at Kew that was originnaly used by the Royal family, known as The White House, was rented as a holiday home. A little like the royal family use Balmoral now, the Royal family would spend their summers at Kew escaping London life for the summer season. The White House fell out of use and became derelict, but the property ‘little kew’ continued to be used by the Royal family.
What became Kew Palace, once the land had been purchased by the Royal family, was a much smaller house that had stood in the grounds of The White House. Kew Palace was King George III’s childhood school house, and also where he sent his sons to learn after they were seven years. The following article about the governess King George III and Queen Charlotte employed mentions that from the age of seven a separate household was established for young princes.
As a child, King George III, with his brother, was taught by a tutor in the house for long days from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. But as heirs to the throne they had to be knowledgable, capable and wise in numerous subjects.
Kew Palace gardens, as with all the older palaces, in or around London, run up to the bank of the Thames. It was the position along the river which probably made the Royal family decide to rent a property in Kew. It was a popular, a fashionable, area for the wealthy from the 1600s. Allowing them to escape the sickness harboured in the narrow London streets. And, of course, in the 1500s and 1600s rivers were like motorways. Rowing boats were the quickest form of travel over longer distances, because narrow and often muddy roads were slower to navigate for carriages and carts and even on horseback. Officials and family could easily travel up the river and then return to the City of London, to Westminster, or continue upriver to Hampton Court Palace or Windsor Castle. and yet be close enough should they need to return to parliament or to undertake business.
You can see in this image below, on the opposite bank, older houses still have their steps leading down to the river where they would have called over one of the many ferrymen who rowed boats on The Thames in river in the same taxis now operate on the roads.
There are some images of historic paintings on this site where you can see just how many boats were on the river on a daily basis even in the 1700s.
I was very lucky when I visited Kew Palace to have a one to one tour of the areas of the building people don’t usually see. The historians know very little about the history of the property, other than it was previously developed as a Silk Merchant’s home in 1631, a man who would have also valued access to the river. This was the house King George II and Queen Caroline rented, they turned it into a more modern property for the time and later purchased the land. It became a palace when it became the property of the crown. But In the attic and the basement you can see hints of the house that became a palace and clues that a house stood here before 1631.
This paint work was found beneath other layers of paint in the attic, in the position where a Tudor staircase must have been removed during the 1700s renovations.
I have seen this approach in somewhere much closer to where I live and in a much more humble abode. The Merchant’s House in Marlborough Hight Street was built after the English Civil War, and when you walk around that house you will see that they painted everything at that time, one room has the walls and even the door painted in a striped pattern that matches the fabric on the chairs.
On the wall there, opposite the staircase, is also a painted stair rail. It is not as glamorous as the one painted in Kew Palace above, though, so perhaps that is a hint that the London silk merchant had more wealth to make a greater impression with.
The image below is of the house in Marlborough, which was also owned by a silk merchant, who did travel to Venice for his silks so he was not poor. He may well have known the London merchant as there would have only been a few trading routes for silk. The staircase leads from the shop up to the drawing room and dinning room above, and then up to the bedrooms. I can only imagine then, if the house at Kew was grander how much grander would it have been, if not a palace, nor to the standard of a stately home then what was the middle ground.
There was a further mystery in the cellar, which I was told was not used for storage during the period the Royal family lived there, and has very unusual architecture that was described as earlier than 1631. Even though historians know a Tudor property was updated in the Georgian period, they have not identified when a well was incorporated into the house and in use. There is no access to the well from the house above. Nor do they know why the arches are so unevenly built, and crossed. They only thing people do know is that an old iron door means there was something or someone owners of the house wanted to keep safe down here.
I have a couple more stories to share about Kew Palace, so more next week.
Author, Jane Lark's stories 