A Space I Love Series 2 – The King’s House with Alden Gregory

Historic Royal Palaces Podcast

Historic Royal Palaces

London, Palace, Tower, Historic, Conservation, Royal, Lecture, Learning, Kensington, Hampton, Kew, Banqueting, History, Court, Of, House, Palaces

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome back to series two of A Space I Love.

In this six-part mini-series, we’re back exploring a selection of treasured spaces in our palaces with the people who know them best, our curators.

In this first episode we’ll follow Alden Gregory behind-the-scenes into the King’s House at the Tower of London, a place that is intimately connected with the Gunpowder Plot, and the interrogation of Guy Fawkes.

Please be aware that this episode contains themes of torture, death and execution, which some listeners may find upsetting.

For more on the Gunpowder plot you can listen to our previous episodes on the plot from November 2022, or visit:

https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/guy-fawkes-and-the-gunpowder-plot

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello listeners, welcome to this new mini-series on the Historic Royal Palaces podcast.
0:06.0	I'm Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator, and in this six-part series, our curator's team will be venturing into some of our favourite spaces in the palaces.
0:15.0	Now, my colleagues and I have chosen these spaces especially in the hope that we can transport you to some of our favourite moments in history.
0:22.6	So please get ready to escape to the past with us.
0:30.6	So we're here outside the King's House at the Tower of London.
0:34.6	We're in the south-west corner of the Tower of London. It's a pretty
0:39.5	grey, drizzly, mild, damp day. I think the perfect day for experiencing the Tower of London
0:47.0	in all its gloom and sombreness. And we're looking up at two ranges of a timber framed building.
0:56.0	It's a sort of typically Tudor-looking building with its exposed timber braces,
1:01.0	the kind of black and white architecture of Tudor villages around the country.
1:07.0	But of course we're on the edge of London here.
1:10.0	So this is the sort of house that
1:13.5	once upon a time before the Great Fire of London probably characterise a lot of London's
1:19.1	streets. And this is the best preserved and the last surviving timber frame on this scale, timber
1:27.0	framed house on this scale,
1:28.3	anywhere in London.
1:30.3	The Great Fire of London didn't quite reach the walls of the tower.
1:34.3	The firebreak of Tower Hill protected this house and others like it that formerly stood at the tower.
1:42.3	But it represents, I think, a type of London house that was destroyed in that horrible event.
1:48.4	If you can hear a lot of background noises on this recording, the tower is open today.
1:55.1	Next to me is a guardsman.
1:57.2	The King's house has a permanent guard on it because this is the home of the constable of the tower,
	...

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