Plates 2.41-2.42: Palace of Beaulieu
Objects: Plate 2.41 shows the north façade of New Hall in Essex, also known as Henry VIII’s Palace of Beaulieu; Plate 2.42 offers a view into the internal quadrangle onto the south range of the palace, which contained the hall and the chapel. Originally part of Waltham Abbey’s holdings, the manor at New Hall passed to the crown in the early fifteenth century, and was later given by Henry VII to Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond. It descended to Thomas Boleyn in 1515; Henry VIII purchased it in 1517 and began making improvements. New Hall ceased to be a royal residence in 1573, when Elizabeth I granted the house to Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, who remodeled the building. By the early eighteenth-century, New Hall had fallen into disrepair. At the time of the prints’ publication in 1786, the entire façade of New Hall recorded in Plate 2.41 had been demolished, and all that remained was the south range depicted in Plate 2.42.
Transcription:
Plate 2.41: A View of the Front of the Palace of Beaulieu, common call’d NEW HALL, in Essex, built by K: Henry VIII.
G. Vertue, del
Sumptibus Soc: Antiquar. Londini.
Publish’d as the Act directs 24 Ap.1 1786.
Plate 2.41 includes a scale.
Plate 2.42: The inside Prospect of the Court, the Chappel, & the Hall of Beaulieu.
G. Vertue, del.
Sumptibus Soc: Antiquar. LONDINI.
Published as the Act directs 24 April 1786.
J. Basire sc.
Label on Plate 2.42: a / The Chappel Window
Original Explanatory Account: Click here to read the original explanatory account for Plates 2.41-2.42.
Commentary by Dylan Wayne Spivey: The manor of New Hall, in Boreham, Essex, originally part of the holdings of Waltham Abbey, became property of the crown in the early fifteenth century. However, Henry VII gave it to Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, and a license to crenellate the house was granted in November 1491. Henry VIII visited New Hall first in 1510 and again in 1515, and, after the house passed to Sir Thomas Boleyn later in 1515, Henry purchased New Hall from Boleyn for £1,000 (Thurley 1993, 44). Henry, who had been impressed with the beauty of the site, called the palace “Beaulieu,” and he “greatly adorned and improved” the quadrangular house (Morant 1768, I.490). Fires at Westminster and the Tower in the early years of his reign left Henry VIII in need of additional accommodation, and so both New Hall in Essex and Bridewell Palace in London were built, totaling £39,000 (James 1990, 156). Henry was a prolific builder, and, as Richard Gough remarks in the “Account” accompanying the prints, “There was hardly an agreeable situation within 30 miles round his capital which he did not convert into a palace for himself, or a nursery for his children” (1786, 1).
During the reign of Edward VI, New Hall was the favorite residence of his half-sister, Princess Mary (later Mary I), and was occasionally used as a retreat by Elizabeth I, who built the series of apartments on the garden front (History of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre 1848, 58-9). New Hall ceased to be a royal residence when, in 1573, Elizabeth granted the house to Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, who remodeled the building and constructed the South Range around 1575 (Colvin 1982, 172-75). However, by the early eighteenth-century New Hall had fallen into disrepair, and by 1738 the north façade, recorded in Plate 2.41, had been pulled down (Pevsner and Radcliffe 1965, 94). In 1798, when the house was purchased for two thousand guineas for the nuns of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, all that remained of New Hall was the south range, which was depicted in the view through the courtyard in Plate 2.42. Thus, when the plates of New Hall were published on 24 April 1786, they offered a view of a Tudor palace which had largely been lost, reflecting the Society of Antiquaries of London’s (SAL) preservationist aims.
Plate 2.41 shows the north elevation of New Hall, or “A View of the Front of the Palace of Beaulieu, commonly call’d NEW HALL in Essex Built by K. Henry VIII,” with its complex roofline of ogival and crocketed gables and crenelated parapets, punctuated by numerous and variously decorated brickwork chimneypieces. The image is framed to the left of center to focus on the principal spaces of the palace, with the terminal wall of the leftmost wing of apartments abutting the bordered picture plane while, at the far right, the stable block is somewhat abruptly bisected by it. The building, which varies in height from two to four stories, is arranged around a roughly symmetrical crenelated central core which surrounds the internal courtyard. At the center is the great gateway, built by Henry VIII, with two prominent towers, perforated on the second floor by grand, double height glazing. Above the pointed arch of the main entrance gate are carved Henry’s arms, supported by a lion and griffin. As the “Account” records, beneath this was an inscription which read: “Henricus rex odabus, rex inclitus armis, Magnanimus gruxit hoc opus eximium.” ([Gough] 1786, 3).
Plate 2.42 shows “The inside Prospect of the House the Chappel & the Hall of Beaulieu.” Though originally quadrangular in plan, only the range visible in this plate of New Hall survives. Though only six can be seen in this view, the south range of New Hall is composed of seven symmetrical bay windows with an entranceway in the central bay. Visible on the left is the chapel, whose painted glass window is labeled in the plate, and shown on the right is the hall, whose classically aediculated doorway contrasts with its tracery windows and crenelated parapet. As Plate 2.42 reveals, classical details had begun to be introduced into Tudor architecture, and the Society’s interest in recording New Hall may have also been, at least in part, to demonstrate this early adoption of classical forms. As the “Account” suggests, “The splendid taste in architecture, a composition of Roman and Gothic introduced by Italian artists, which first made its appearance among us in the reign of Henry VIII discovered itself in the number and variety of palaces erected by that magnificent monarch” ([Gough] 1786, 1). Here, classical details have been introduced to the Tudor structure in the entrance to the south range. The doorway is framed by Roman Doric columns which support an entablature with carvings between the metopes. Above is the inscription to Elizabeth I and the arms of England, and the bay is crowned by a sundial beneath a segmental arched pediment bearing the date 1660. The roof is lined with a plain, uncrenellated parapet, punctuated instead by pinnacles in the form of classical pedestals carved with garter stars and topped with balls, in the manner, though very fancifully, of a classical attic. Just as with Plate 2.41, Plate 2.42 records the heraldic information carved above its entrance.
Genealogy and New Hall
The text of this inscription is transcribed in the especially fulsome explanatory account of New Hall which accompanied the plates. Reproduced very closely from the Society’s minutes from 16 March 1786, Gough’s “Account” chronicles in detail the history of the house, noting the various hands through which it passed (SAL Minutes XXI.179-89). Beginning with the most prominent occupant of the site, King Henry VIII, the “Account” notes that the house was purchased by the monarch from Richard Fitz James, Bishop of London, “by virtue of the will of Thomas Boteler [Butler], earl of Ormond; or, as others say, by exchange with Thomas Bullen [Boleyn], earl of Wiltshire” ([Gough] 1786, 1). Thus, the account links the palace not only to Henry but to the family of his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
Prior to its purchase by Henry VIII, New Hall had been one of manor houses in the possession of the monastery of Waltham. During the reign of Edward II, New Hall was given to Sir John de Shardelow and his family by the abbot in exchange for the two manors in Epping known as Copped-Hall and Shingled-Hall. However, just over two decades later, Sir Thomas exchanged New Hall and its associated properties with Sir Henry de Coggeshall for his seats at Bradeker and Holkham, in Norfolk. New Hall then passed to Coggeshall’s son, William, and then to his brother, Thomas, who left the house to his son thirteen-year-old son, Richard. New Hall continued to be passed through various family lines until, in the fifteenth century, it ultimately “fell to the crown; whether by forfeiture, during the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, or otherwise, Mr. Morant could not determine” ([Gough] 1786, 2). Philip Morant (1700-1770), who Gough cites here and elsewhere in the explanatory account, was an important eighteenth-century antiquarian who, in 1768, published an extensive History and Antiquities of the County of Essex. Like the Society’s, Morant’s aims were ambitious and typified the project of the eighteenth-century antiquarian. As Rosemary Sweet has observed, “much antiquarian literature concerned either a specific locality—a town, a parish or a county…” (2004, 5). This narrowness of scope was part of the criticism of antiquarian by the historian because it “did not yield so readily lessons of broader application…” (5). However, this commitment to locality was intimately tied to the preservationist impulse of the SAL, and certainly related to another of the Society’s goals: publishing a facsimile edition of the Domesday Book, which had been an important resource for Morant’s History of Essex.
After its relinquishment to the crown, New Hall came into the possession of the Butler family. James Butler was ultimately beheaded for his support of the house of Lancaster in 1460. However, his family was rewarded for this support when Henry VII took the throne and subsequently granted New Hall to James’s brother, Thomas, later granting him a license to crenelate. Thomas Butler was survived by two daughters, and his oldest, Margaret, was married to Sir William Boleyn. New Hall then passed to their son, also named Thomas, the father of Anne Boleyn, from whom Henry purchased the house in 1517.
The lengthy explanatory account published alongside the plates of New Hall reveals that the SAL was as interested in heraldry and the lineage of the many owners and occupants of the building as they were in its architecture. In addition to the genealogical narrative the account traces, the text also provides a list of the various arms and devices to be found amongst the carvings at New Hall. In addition to engravings of two coats of arms from New Hall, there are engravings for four heraldic devices which are found on the fabric of the building. Sweet has noted that details such as heraldic glass or, in the case of New Hall, carved arms and devices, “could provide valuable genealogical information, which could even be produced in courts of law” (2004, 242). As the “Account” makes explicit, the introduction of new armorial devices reveals the various architectural interventions of its successive inhabitants, “in whose time by these arms we may conclude some additions were made to this mansion…” ([Gough] 1786, 5).
In addition to this expansive text, the “Account” of New Hall contained illustrations of several of the significant carved arms and devices which adorned the palace. Below two coats of arms are illustrated the chained bear, the crest of Dudley, Earl of Leicester; the chained griffin; the crowned Rose of Henry VIII; and the crowned pomegranate of Catherine of Aragon. The explanatory account of New Hall is therefore unique within the context of Vetusta Monumenta as the first, and perhaps only, such account to include illustrations, noting that the armorial and heraldic devices were engraved based on drawings first made by the artist George Vertue “at the same time that he made those of the house” ([Gough] 1786, 6). Along with the drawings which form the basis of these engravings in the text and the plates themselves, which are still held by the SAL today (SAL Prints and Drawings before 1750, fols. 19-20, 23), are sketches of two portraits of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (SAL Prints and Drawings before 1750, fol. 21). The sketches were made by Vertue from the portrait panels which formed part of the composition of a painted glass window originally installed in Waltham Abbey before being relocated to the private chapel at New Hall. This window was originally given as a gift to Henry VII by the Magistrates of Dort in Holland, and the window was saved after the Dissolution by being moved to New Hall. In 1737, John Olmius inherited New Hall and set about demolishing the chapel. However, he too saved the window, and it was eventually sold to the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. The SAL had already voted to engrave the East Window of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and James Basire was commissioned to create the engraving after the original drawings made by Vertue (see Plate 2.26).
Representation
What makes the plates of New Hall truly remarkable, however, are the artistic conventions of the engravings. Unlike the more conventional, topographical plates depicting other Tudor Palaces, such as Richmond (Plate 2.23), Nonsuch (Plate 2.24), and Hampton Court (Plate 2.27), New Hall is shown abstracted from the landscape. The Thames, which was of vital importance to England and to the crown, was accordingly represented in the depictions of Richmond and Nonsuch. The river served an important purpose in the processional court that Henry established, and the riverfront location of Richmond and Nonsuch palaces, as well Henry’s other principal residences at the Tower, Westminster, and Hampton Court, was central to their function. New Hall, by contrast, did not share this proximity to the Thames. However, to suggest that the exclusion of located, geographical details in the plates of New Hall owes merely to the fact of its location is unsatisfactory. Indeed, in addition to their abstraction, the plates are also noteworthy for their shifting perspective. Vertue’s drawings are not rendered in the similarly abstracted orthographic projection that would come to dominate architectural prints in the eighteenth-century, nor in the topographical tradition of Wenceslas Hollar, upon whose drawings the engravings of Richmond and Nonsuch palaces were based. Rather, the unusual perspective and dislocation, characterized by the extreme shifts in the angles of the walls and rooflines, is surprisingly evocative and impressionistic.
As Martin Myrone has argued, from their revival in 1717, the SAL was an organization committed to producing and circulating printed images of architecture and artifacts of antiquarian and historical interest. The SAL understood the instructive capabilities of the printed image, and “the graphic arts served antiquarianism broadly in the terms offered by post-Lockean epistemology, which placed and emphasis on the primacy of vision in the acquisition of knowledge as all the more natural, spontaneous and efficacious by comparison with the repetitious exercises of bookish learning” (Myrone 2007, 102). Understanding the image as a form of visual information, the SAL issued plates as both an artistic record and act of preservation and as active components in the dissemination of antiquarian knowledge. In this way, Vertue’s graphic conventions as a line engraver, which offered great and detailed expressive capabilities, was especially suited for the visual project of the SAL. The exactness of Vertue’s representations, compared by commentators such as Revered Gilpin to the work of Wenceslas Hollar, was antithetical to the picturesque and composed views preferred by the artist (Myrone 2007, 109). Thus, the oppositional relationship between artist and engraver is analogous to that between the historian and the antiquary.
Curiously, however, these plates of New Hall diverge from the topographical exactness exhibited by the plates of other Tudor palaces issued by the SAL. Plate 2.41 is composed with a decided asymmetry, particularly when compared with the topographical drawing of New Hall made by an artist in the retinue of Cosimo de Medici III who traveled through England in 1669 and recorded his visit to the palace. The manuscript, the text of which was prepared by Count Lorenzo Magalotti, is now in the Laurentian Library in Florence, but the account was transcribed and published in London in 1821, and it included copies of the original drawings. Yet, Vertue’s drawings for New Hall are stylistically similar to his other antiquarian drawings, such as those made of the Whitehall and Kings Street Gates (Plates 1.17-1.19), which perhaps offer idealized restorations of the structures. Moreover, Vertue’s drawings of New Hall are also reminiscent of his engravings made after earlier images, such as that of Sandal Castle (Plate 2.11), which is based on a sixteenth-century survey drawing and retains its perspectival irregularities. These earlier pictorial representations allowed the SAL to record in print other lost royal residences, and Vertue’s drawings of New Hall may thus offer an idealized restoration of a building already facing demolition while also evoking artistically the impending loss.
It may be impossible to determine precisely why Vertue chose to represent New Hall in the manner it appeared in the engravings, or why the tower-like structure protruding from behind the left tower of the gateway appears to have been left unfinished (though this might record the state of demolition and alteration at New Hall when Vertue visited in 1731). However, the distinction between non-antiquarian works of art and antiquarian drawings, such as those by Vertue, is an important one. The abstract presentation of New Hall is suggestive of its treatment not as an extant palace but as an architectural artifact for examination. For a record of a building which had largely been destroyed, topographical and perspectival exactness seems to have been abandoned in favor of abstraction, or perhaps even of a medieval conception of space and representation. In addition to these two plates, which provide a visual record of one of Henry VIII’s palaces which was being significantly altered and reduced, “The Plan of New Hall in Essex” in pen and wash (now in the British Library) seems to have been produced at around the same time, c. 1730-37, possibly also at the behest of Olmius (Cartographic Items Maps K.Top.13.27). This potentially related image is inscribed with a short history of the house, and offers a detailed floorplan of the quadrangular palace.
Perhaps because it has been largely lost, New Hall has been often overlooked among the palaces of Henry VIII. However, architecturally, New Hall is an excellent example of Elizabethan architecture with a fine carving of the arms of Henry VIII ("Boreham" 1921). Additionally, Howard Colvin has observed parallels between New Hall and Richmond and has highlighted New Hall’s characteristic Tudor Gothic brickwork (Colvin 1975, 174). Today, all that remains of New Hall is the south range shown in Plate 2.42. The magnificent north façade, including the great gateway of Henry VIII, was demolished in the early eighteenth-century. By the end of the century, the remaining portion of New Hall passed back into ecclesiastical ownership when it was purchased for the Order of the Holy Sepulchre who have occupied the building until now. The building was badly damaged in 1943 and was then significantly repaired (Pevsner and Radcliffe 1965, 94-5). It now houses New Hall School, a Catholic co-educational boarding and day school.
Works Cited:
"Boreham." 1921. In "An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex, Volume 2, Central and Southwest." British History Online.
Colvin, Howard, ed. 1975. The History of the King’s Works, Vol. 4. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
[Gough, Richard]. “Vol. II Plates XVI. XLII. New Hall, in Essex.” 1786. In Vetusta Monumenta, Vol. 2.
James, Thomas Beaumont. 1990. The Palaces of Medieval England c.1050-1550: Royalty, Nobility, the Episcopate and Their Residences from Edward the Confessor to Henry VIII. London: Seaby.
Morant, Philip. 1768. The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex. London.
Myrone, Martin. 2007. “The Society of Antiquaries and the Graphic Arts: George Verue and His Legacy.” In Visions of Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London 1707-2007, edited by Susan Pearce. London: The Society of Antiquaries of London.
Pevsner, Nicolas and Enid Radcliffe. 1965. The Buildings of England: Essex, 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
A Short History of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre … With an Account of the English Community of that Order Established at New-Hall, in Essex. 1848. London: Richardson & Son.
Society of Antiquaries of London. 1754-. Minutes of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries.
------. 1718-. Minutes of the Society’s Proceedings.
------. Prints and Drawings, Prints and Drawings Before 1750 [196h], fols. 19-21, 23.
Sweet, Rosemary. 2004. Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: Hambledon.
Thurley, Simon. 1993. The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life 1460-1547. New Haven: Yale University Press.
“Vertue’s Note Book A.w. (British Museum Add. MS. 22042).” 1937-38. The Volume of the Walpole Society 26: 93-114.