It’s hard to believe today but if you went back to the 13th century – you would have found something very different at Hampton Court Palace. No magnificent complex of Tudor and Stuart buildings but a medieval manor run by the Knights Hospitaller – under the direction of the Priory at Clerkenwell, which was the de facto headquarters of the Hospitallers in England.
Hampton Court had been a manor owned by Sir Walter de St Valery – according to the Domesday Book – after which he went off on the First Crusade with Robert of Normandy – the eldest son of William the Conqueror. To get the Norman genealogical connections right – Walter was the grandson of William the Conqueror’s aunt and the family came from Saint Valery sur Somme in Flanders.
He came over with the Norman conquest in 1066 and picked up two estates – Hampton and Isleworth as well as some bits of Suffolk. Walter probably never lived here with his main residence being on the other side of the English Channel and in 1237, the estate was donated to the Knights Hospitaller.
FIND OUT MORE: Difference between the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller
The Knights Hospitaller at Hampton Court
So, what were they up to at Hampton Court? Well, like the Knights Templar they were running what were basically agri-businesses all over Europe to fund their crusading activity in the Holy Land – and elsewhere.
In 1338, the Hospitallers conducted an audit of their properties in England and the manor of Hampton had 800 acres of arable land, 40 acres of meadow, pasture for 24 oxen, 18 cows, 10 store cattle and 2,000 sheep plus a fishpond and a pigeon house. And this was quite a thriving operation – not a backwater. It also functioned as a kind of hotel for noble guests on their way to Sheen Palace during the reigns of Edward the first, second, and third – plus Richard the second.
The community at Hampton Court was apparently mixed – men and women – the women were nuns – and the lay people would have been mainly non-knights – that is ordinary brothers and serfs working the land. I’m told that the bell which hangs over the astronomical clock is the oldest artefact at the palace and once hung over the Hospitallers’ chapel.
In recent years, human remains have been found in Chapel Court – north of the present Chapel Royal – which are believed to be those of either Hospitallers or those who worked for them. And by the time of the Tudors – the Hospitallers had leased out the buildings to private landowners. Under King Henry VII, they had granted an 80 year lease to the king’s Lord Chamberlain, Sir Giles Daubeney – and after he died, it was acquired by a certain Cardinal Wolseley – and the rest is Tudor history…
Watch a recent talk I gave to the Friends of Bushy and Home Parks history society in February this year to get the full picture.
