Hampton Court Palace - Tudor vs Baroque
Historic Royal Palaces Podcast
Historic Royal Palaces
4.7 • 701 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hampton Court is a palace of two halves and countless stories. But which side is best? The Tudor half displays all the court intrigue of the dynasty it's named for, and yet the Baroque side is no less dramatic, holding the stories of the Restoration, Glorious Revolution, and Georgians within its decorative walls.
Join Tracy Borman and Gareth Russell on a private tour of this palace of two halves, as they each make their case for which side is best. The Tudor, or the Baroque?
Find out more about the story of Hampton Court Palace.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello listeners. Today you are in for one of the biggest treats ever on the Historic Royal |
| 0:11.5 | Palace's podcast because I am being taken on a tour of the world's greatest palace of |
| 0:18.3 | Cork by none other than Gareth Russell, |
| 0:23.0 | historian, broadcaster, genius, actually, and he knows all about this palace because he has |
| 0:30.0 | spent an awful lot of time here researching and writing his incredible book, The Palace. |
| 0:36.9 | So I can't wait to dive in. Let's go. |
| 0:39.0 | I feel that I don't need to dive in. Let's Court today because he is somebody who knows this palace inside out. |
| 0:57.0 | And he is of course our podcast favourite, Gareth Russell. |
| 1:01.0 | Gareth, I am going to say welcome to Hampton Court. |
| 1:03.0 | Thank you very much. It does feel sometimes like I'm here as often as the ghosts. |
| 1:07.0 | So just sort of lurking somewhere. It's gorgeous. |
| 1:10.0 | And you spent so much time here |
| 1:12.1 | when researching your book, The Palace, from the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 years of history at |
| 1:18.8 | Hampton Court. And we're going to be walking through some of those years here this morning. But where |
| 1:23.7 | we are now, we're facing the sort of the classic Tudor view, aren't we, of the palace? Because it is a palace of two halves. Yes, it really is. And also, let it never be said that we don't bring immersive history to our listeners. There is some restoration work being done on the Great Gatehouse. So imagine there the sounds of hammers of yesteryear, because for much of its history, Hampton Court was a building site, at least early on. |
| 1:46.0 | And the great builder was Cardinal Woolsey. So we're, as you say, looking at the great gatehouse. |
| 1:51.4 | And it was built to impress. Willsy was a man who didn't do anything by halves. |
| 1:57.7 | More is more, I think, was his motto when it came to decorating. |
| 2:01.6 | And you have this looming, gorgeous red brick gatehouse that was designed to advertise to everyone around it, the wealth of the King's Chief Minister. |
| 2:10.6 | So from the get-go, Hampton Court is designed to be a place that impresses and overalls in equal measure. |
| 2:18.3 | And it certainly still does today. Now we have this scaffolding across the Great |
| 2:23.3 | Gatehouse, but with this wonderful illustration of what it would have been like in Woolsey's |
... |
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