Short answers, pulled from the story.
The site was acquired by the diocese around AD 1200, though Archbishop Anselm had a house there a century earlier. Its location on the south bank of the Thames was chosen for its proximity to the royal court and government seat at Westminster.
Morton's Tower is the massive five-storey brick gatehouse that forms the main entrance to Lambeth Palace. It was built by Cardinal John Morton and completed in 1495, originally housing eight lodgings for the Archbishop's household.
Lambeth Palace Library is the official library of the Archbishop of Canterbury, founded by Archbishop Richard Bancroft in 1610. It describes itself as 'the largest religious collection outside the Vatican,' holding manuscripts dating back to the 9th century, archives of the archbishops from the 12th century, and more than 120,000 printed books. A new purpose-built reading room designed by Wright and Wright opened in 2021.
A previously unknown crypt was discovered during renovation works in 2016, containing 30 coffins. Among them were the remains of five archbishops of Canterbury: Richard Bancroft, Thomas Tenison, Matthew Hutton, Frederick Cornwallis, and John Moore, as well as John Bettesworth, Dean of the Arches.
Archbishop William Juxon chose a late Gothic hammerbeam roof to evoke High-Church Anglican continuity with the old faith, serving as a visual statement that the Interregnum was over after the English Civil War. The choice was particularly pointed because Charles II's brother was an avowed Catholic. The diarist Samuel Pepys described the result as 'a new old-fashioned hall.'
The oldest surviving structure is the 13th-century chapel, built in the Early English Gothic style and dating from around 1230. It was bombed in World War Two, leaving only the walls standing, and was subsequently restored in 1954-55 and again in 1986-88.