Palace of Beaulieu
The Palace of Beaulieu (/ˈbjuːli/ ⓘ BEW-lee) or Newhall is a former royal palace in Boreham, Essex, England, north-east of Chelmsford. The surviving part is a Grade I listed building. The property is currently occupied by New Hall School.
History
The estate on which it was built – the manor of Walhfare in Boreham – was granted to the Canons of Waltham Abbey in 1062.[1] After various changes of possession, it was granted by the Crown to Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond in 1491. By this time, it had a house called New Hall.[2][3]
In 1516, New Hall was sold by Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne Boleyn, to King Henry VIII for £1,000.[n 1] The king rebuilt the house in brick at a cost of £17,000.[4][n 2] He gave his new palace the name Beaulieu, meaning "beautiful place" in French. The name expressed Henry's desire for fine things, though the name change did not outlast the century.
On 23 July 1527 Henry's court arrived at Beaulieu on his summer progress, staying, unusually, for over a month in the company of a large number of nobles and their wives, including Anne Boleyn's father who had been created Viscount Rochford, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquess of Exeter, the Earls of Oxford, Essex, and Rutland, and Viscount Fitzwalter. It was here that Henry devised a scheme to allow him to cohabit with his intended successor of Queen Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, by obtaining a Papal bull that declared Henry's marriage to Catherine invalid, effectively allowing him to commit bigamy by claiming he was technically unmarried in the first place. This plan was dropped when Cardinal Wolsey discovered the plan, though Pope Clement VII did, in fact, issue a bull to the same effect that December.[5]
In October 1533, the daughter of Queen Catherine,
After Anne Boleyn was beheaded and Henry married
were among her principal places of residence.Earls of Sussex and Buckingham
Queen
In 1622, Robert Radclyffe, 5th Earl of Sussex, sold the house to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham for £30,000. James VI and I visited in September 1622. It was said that Buckingham's improvements to the house were directed by Inigo Jones.[8]
During the
New Hall in the 18th Century
Benjamin Hoare acquired the property in 1713, but it was in a poor state when purchased in 1737 by John Olmius, elevated to the peerage as Baron Waltham in 1762, who demolished and rebuilt much of the former palace. The north wing was left largely untouched and forms the present house. John was succeeded in 1762 by his son Drigue who died childless in 1787, aged 40, when New Hall devolved on his sister, the Honourable Elizabeth. However, she died the same year and her husband John Luttrell, later the Earl of Carhampton, took on the Olmius name; but, already owning the Carhampton estate including Painshill, he sold New Hall in 1798.
The purchasers in 1798 were the English nuns of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, who opened a Catholic school there the following year. New Hall School remains a school to this day. The Royal Arms of Henry VIII are in the school chapel. In 2006 a book, New Hall and its School, was published by Tony Tuckwell.[10]
The Beaulieu name is now remembered in the name of the nearby housing estate, Beaulieu Park, Boreham.
In February 2009, Channel 4's
Notes and references
Notes
- RPIin 2012 money or £5,440,000 on the basis of average earnings
- RPIin 2012 money or £102,000,000 on the basis of average earnings
Citations
- ^ Charter of 1062 ref: S 1036
- ^ Historic England. "New Hall, Boreham (1000207)". Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Retrieved 4 June 2012.
- ^ Historic England. "New Hall (Grade I) (1338404)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
- ^ Maurice Howard, The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and politics 1490-1550 (George Philip, 1987), p. 205.
- Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise And Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge University Press 1989).
- ^ David Starkey, The Inventory of Henry VIII, vol. 1 (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1998), 341-343.
- ^ Neil Younger, 'Drama, Politics, and News in the Earl of Sussex's Entertainment of Elizabeth I at New Hall, 1579', The Historical Journal, 58:2 (June 2015), pp. 343–366.
- ^ Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, 2 (London: Colburn, 1849), pp. 322, 331, 333, 335.
- ^ New Hall in 1669 - a view by Magalotti
- ISBN 978-1872979021.
- ^ Time team dig historic school Archived 21 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine