Historic Palaces | Author, Jane Lark's stories

I’ve been meaning to post this little story for over a year and not found time, but now I have time! So here you are. Before you read on, though, it might be worth stepping back to read my post about Kew Palace that was a house initially rented and then bought from a silk merchant and turned into a palace.

This story flows from that of Kew Palace because when I stayed in Kew last year to explore both the palace and gardens – which I have now fallen in love with and already visited once more since – on the way home I decided to visit another period property that was open to the public, Ham House. Only to discover that Ham House had been owned by the Royal family until 1600s, and in an odd opposing point was given to courtiers by Charles I. It would have made a much smarter home for The Royal House of Hanover had they returned to this house rather than moving in basically next door.

Ham House and Kew Palace are literally ten minutes apart by car, so isn’t it odd that one Royal, Charles I, rented out his property on this area of the bank of the Thames and then the Hanovers, George II, came along and rented the estate almost next door.

One of the things I found so charming about Kew was that it was such a humble place for a palace, and they had even toned decoration down from the former 17th century decoration. As I said in the Kew post, in areas not in the family spaces open to the public, there’s a wall painting that indicates a smarter but still not that grand decoration before it became a palace.

And then I walked up to through the gates of Ham House… This is what I had expected to see inside Kew Palace.

Ham House is palatial.

William Murray who was given Ham House was a very close friend of Charles I from childhood onwards. It was in 1626 when Charles I was aged 25, that he gave his friend William Ham House and the surrounding lands. The property had only been built in 1610. It sits just along the river Thames from Hampton Court as well as Kew, and as travelling by boat was often the quickest option at the time it would have made it easy for the King to reach his friend from Hampton Court or from the old Palace at Whitehall (that no longer exists) in London.

William and his wife Catherine, then spent a lot of money decorating the house, and much of the decoration they commissioned and the items they bought 400 years ago are still adorning Ham House today.

Even as I waited in the porch for the house to open for the day, I noticed the art work on the plaster in the porches. Murals that sought to create views within the porches. The fashions were to paint every space possible until the 1700s – inside and outside.

Then I walked into the hall, and saw the ceiling and wall paintings that were as good as any painting you would hang on a wall. This was a space you could imagine a royal family living in.

Ham House is a fantastic time capsule of pre English Civil War times. With the sort of decoration I expected to find inside Kew Palace, with plenty of gilding. It also made me smile when I saw the staircase was a wooden version of the one that had been painted onto the wall to save money in the behind the scenes spaces in Kew Palace.

The Ham House staircase

The remnant of the wall aspect of the staircase in kew Palace before it became a palace

This makes me wonder if the silk merchant who owned Kew Palace before the Royal Family, had this painted decoration done to match his grander neighbours’ actual staircase.

What a fantastic gem of a house, though, and such a surprise settled in between Kew and Hampton Court. My mind was spinning with imaging how life flowed along that little stretch of the river Thames in the 15th-19th Centuries. So many stories in there… One day I’l write at least one story about this fascinating period. I did have one particularly good idea but I will keep that to myself. 😉

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. 😀

Hee. Hee. Hee.