Hatfield House

• 1. An Estate and Its Legends

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  Hatfield House stands on the eastern side of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England. An oak tree in the Great Park is said to mark the spot where Elizabeth Tudor first learned she was queen. That tradition has circulated for centuries. It is also, historians note, almost certainly untrue. Mary I died in November, and Elizabeth is unlikely to have been sitting outside beneath a tree in that season. Yet the story endures. Hatfield has a gift for accumulating legend. A much older palace stood on this site before the Jacobean house visible today. The people who lived in those buildings, and the events that unfolded there, raise questions that still reward examination. Who built the original palace, and what happened to it? Why did one of England's most powerful ministers tear most of it down? And why does this house, centuries on, still seem to attract history to itself?

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• 2. The Cardinal's Palace

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  Cardinal John Morton built the first great house at Hatfield in 1497. Morton served Henry VII as Archbishop of Canterbury and as his principal minister. His palace comprised four wings arranged around a central courtyard. The parish church of St Etheldreda's in Old Hatfield served the palace alongside the village community. Henry VIII seized the property during his appropriation of church holdings. His son Edward VI spent part of his youth at Hatfield. So did the future Elizabeth I. Henry's eldest daughter Mary spent a particularly difficult period there between 1533 and 1536. She was required to wait upon the infant Elizabeth as punishment. Her offence was refusing to recognize Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn and his accompanying religious reforms. The palace that a cardinal had built to serve the church had become, within a generation, a place of royal compulsion. Mary would go on to become queen before her younger sister. But the palace was about to stage another chapter in Elizabeth's story, one that came close to ending her prospects entirely.

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• 3. Elizabeth Under Pressure

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  In 1548, when Elizabeth was fifteen years old, suspicion fell upon her at Hatfield. She was suspected of having secretly agreed to marry Thomas Seymour, a match that carried serious political implications. Edward VI's agent, Robert Tyrwhit, arrived at the house and seized both Elizabeth's servants and her household goods. He then subjected her to a formal interrogation. Elizabeth met each challenge with wit and defiance. She held her ground throughout Tyrwhit's questioning. Seymour was put to death in 1549, convicted of numerous other crimes against the crown, and the immediate crisis passed. After two months of imprisonment in the Tower of London by her sister Mary, Elizabeth returned to Hatfield. In November 1558, she held her first Council of State in the Great Hall of the old palace. The house today still holds objects that carry her memory. These include a pair of gloves and a pair of silk stockings believed to be the first of their kind in England. The Rainbow Portrait hangs in the Marble Hall. The library holds a twenty-two foot long illuminated parchment roll tracing her ancestry back to Adam and Eve. The collection she left behind at Hatfield is substantial. The house that contains it, however, is not the palace she knew.

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• 4. Cecil's Commission

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  King James I inherited the palace at Hatfield along with the English throne but took no particular liking to it. He included the estate in the jointure of his wife, Anne of Denmark. In 1607, James resolved the matter by trading the property to his chief minister, Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, in exchange for Theobalds. Theobalds had been the Cecil family seat, on a site that now forms part of Cedars Park in Broxbourne. Cecil was known for his enthusiasm for building. He wasted little time demonstrating it at Hatfield. In 1608, he demolished three wings of the old palace and redirected the bricks into the structure that would replace them. He appointed Robert Lemynge to oversee the construction. Simon Basil, the royal surveyor, contributed to the project, as did Inigo Jones, who visited the site in October 1609. The house was completed in 1611. Among its original Jacobean features is a Grand Staircase richly carved in wood. The private chapel also contains a rare stained glass window that has survived intact. One wing of Morton's original palace survived Cecil's demolitions. It still stands today, a short distance from the Jacobean house, the last survivor of what was once a substantial royal complex.

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• 5. Tradescant's Gardens

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  John Tradescant the elder shaped the 42-acre gardens at Hatfield in the early years of the seventeenth century. Tradescant traveled through Europe with the specific aim of finding plants and trees not yet cultivated in England. What he brought back transformed the character of the grounds. His designs incorporated orchards, fountains, scented plants, water parterres, terraces, herb gardens, and a foot maze. The 18th century brought neglect. Restoration work began in Victorian times and has continued under the current Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury. The wider grounds of the estate have served purposes well beyond the ornamental. During World War I, an area was excavated and fitted with trenches, craters, and barbed wire to replicate conditions on the Western Front. The purpose was to test the first British tanks. The only surviving Mark I tank was placed at Hatfield in 1919 to mark this connection. It remained there until 1970, when it was moved to The Tank Museum in Bovington. A more recent addition to the grounds reflects a different kind of memorial. The Rhodesian Light Infantry Regimental Association placed a statue called the Troopie on the estate. The association cited the long connection between the Cecil family and Southern Rhodesia. Around its base is a roll of regimental members who fell in the Rhodesian Bush War. One inscription reads: In reconciliation and hope for future peace in Zimbabwe.

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• 6. A House of Recovery

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  During World War II, Hatfield House became the headquarters of Britain's first Civil Resettlement Unit. These units were created to assist repatriated British prisoners of war in returning to civilian life. The choice of Hatfield was considered especially appropriate. Those administering the program believed that the grandeur and open space of the estate would benefit the men passing through. On the 12th of July 1945, the king and queen came to visit the CRU at Hatfield. The visit attracted considerable press attention. Hatfield's position as headquarters of Britain's first such scheme made it a visible part of the national effort to help men who had endured captivity find their way back.

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• 7. On Screen

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  Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes used Hatfield House in 1984. Dozens of productions have followed. Batman was filmed there in 1989. Orlando used the estate in 1992. Shakespeare in Love arrived in 1998. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory filmed at Hatfield in 2005. Elizabeth: The Golden Age brought its Tudor resonance to bear there in 2007. Sherlock Holmes used the house in 2009, and Paddington was filmed on the estate in 2014. The Favourite, in 2018, made particular use of the interiors. Bridgerton and Enola Holmes, both from 2020, are among the most recent productions to appear in the credits. The Crown, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, My Week with Marilyn, and V for Vendetta are among many others across the decades. Robert Cecil's house, completed in 1611, is still being selected as a filming location more than four centuries after he built it.

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