The Queen's House: a Stuart palace by the Thames
Designed by Inigo Jones in 1616, the Queen's House was the first classical building in England. Its symmetrical shape was very different from the rambling red brick palaces people were used to, and it was sometimes called the 'White House'.
Why was Greenwich chosen as the site for the Queen's House?
Long before the time of the Stuarts, Greenwich had been a popular place with the royal family, who liked to escape the dirt and noise of London. It was easy to travel to Greenwich because it was beside the River Thames and the park was used for hunting deer and hawking. The riverside Tudor palace at Greenwich was one of the favourites of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
Why was the Queen's House built?
The Stuart connection began with King James I who was living in the old riverside Tudor palace. He wanted to build another palace for his wife, Anne of Denmark. Anne did not intend to live in the house, but she wanted somewhere she could use for entertaining her friends with parties, dancing, music and dramas.
Who was asked to design the house?
Inigo Jones, an architect who had also designed dramas for the royal family was asked to plan the new house. He used ideas from buildings that he had seen in Italy in his design. One problem for him was that the building had to go across the main Deptford to Woolwich road, which ran through the middle of the royal grounds. To solve this problem, Jones planned the house as a huge capital letter H, with the road running under the centre of the H. The new building was to be like a huge bridge, so that the Queen and her friends could go from one part of the grounds to the other without crossing the road in public. Work on building the house started in 1616.
Did Queen Anne use the house in the way she had planned?
No. She died three years after work started on the house, when it was still unfinished.
What happened to the Queen's House after Queen Anne died?
For several years, work on the unfinished building stopped, but then it was given to Henrietta Maria. She was the French wife of the new king, Charles I, who was the son of James I and Anne. Inigo Jones was finally able to finish the house for Henrietta. The outside may have been completed in 1635, the inside during the following four years. The house included a balcony so that the Queen and her ladies could watch the riding and hunting that went on in the park.
What was the inside of the house like?
The first room that visitors would have come into was the Great Hall, designed by Inigo Jones as a huge cube. It had a black and white marble floor. The wooden balcony running around it at first floor level was sometimes used by musicians. On the ceiling of the Hall were paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, father and daughter artists from Italy. Henrietta loved to collect paintings, statues and furniture and she filled the House with beautiful things. The House was not intended to be a comfortable home, but a formal palace to impress visitors from home and abroad with the power and wealth of the royal family.
Like Anne, Henrietta Maria loved dancing and music. She asked people to write special dramas for her, called masques. Masques were dramas that told a story, often about good and evil, using music, poetry and dancing. The Queen sometimes liked to act in these plays herself, and this was one of the things that made her unpopular with Puritans who thought it was wrong for women to take part in performances. To the queen, however, the house was her 'House of Delights'.
What happened to the Queen's House during the Civil War?
Queen Henrietta escaped to France while the Civil War was being fought in England, and it was there that she heard the news that her husband had been executed. Many paintings and statues were removed from the house while she was away. Henrietta did not go back to England during the eleven years that the country was without a royal family, but after her son Charles II was restored to the throne, she finally returned from exile and came to live at the Queen's House in 1662.
Did the Queen's House change during the time that Henrietta was living there?
Yes. Instead of the building being laid out as a giant capital letter H, two extra bridge rooms were added so that the shape now became a square. Queen Henrietta Maria also invited a French garden designer called Le Nôtre to improve the gardens around the house. Fountains, which have now disappeared were also built in the gardens.
Henrietta Maria returned to France for the last years of her life, and after she left, the Queen's House was not lived in by any other members of the royal family. In 1690 it became the official home of the Ranger of Greenwich park. However, when a new hospital for sailors was built on the site of the old Tudor palace, Queen Mary insisted that the view from the Queen's House to the River Thames should be left clear and not blocked by the new buildings, and this view continues to the present day.