Highlights
The highlights of Eltham Palace fall into two clear groups: the surviving medieval palace, dominated by Edward IV's Great Hall, and the 1930s Art Deco house built for Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. This magazine-style guide picks out the five rooms and views most visitors regret missing, in the order they work best on a normal circuit.
01
Built 1475–1483 for state occasions, the Great Hall's hammerbeam roof spans 11 metres unsupported and is the third largest in medieval England. The stained glass and minstrels' gallery were reinstated in the 1930s by Seely & Paget based on antiquarian drawings.
02
Rolf Engströmer's 1936 entrance hall is a domed rotunda lit by a concrete oculus. Its blackbean and Australian walnut marquetry panels depict figures and landscapes from Italy, Sweden and Kew Gardens — one of the most photographed rooms in any modernist house in Britain.
03
Peter Malacrida's onyx-lined bathroom is finished in gold-leaf mosaic with a lion-mask tap dispensing water into an alcoved bath. Above the bath sits a Classical figure of Psyche in a niche; the whole room is a single decorative composition.
04
The Courtaulds' pet ring-tailed lemur, brought back from Madagascar and named Mah-Jongg, had his own centrally heated bedroom painted with a bamboo mural. A ladder connects it to the flower room below — one of the few purpose-built primate rooms in a Grade II* listed English house.
05
The stone bridge over the moat, dating from about 1400, is the oldest working bridge in London still carrying visitors. Beyond it lie 19 acres of gardens laid out for the Courtaulds in 1934, including the sunken rose garden and rock garden.
For deeper reading, see our Art Deco interiors guide and the wider gardens page.
See the Great Hall first if you enter from the visitor centre — it is the largest single room and the best introduction to the medieval palace. Then move into the Courtauld house through the connecting doorway. The circular entrance hall is best seen with morning daylight through the dome.
Allow at least 75 minutes for the Art Deco house on a first visit. There are 18 designed rooms open to the public across two floors, and the included audio guide runs to about 90 minutes if you listen to every entry.
