History
Seven hundred years, in one address.
Eltham Palace is a royal manor first granted to the Crown in 1305 and rebuilt in stages by nearly every medieval king until the reign of Elizabeth I. It was one of only six royal residences large enough to hold the entire Tudor court, was the childhood home of Henry VIII, fell into ruin after the Civil War, and was rebuilt in 1936 by Stephen and Virginia Courtauld as a private Art Deco house grafted onto the surviving Great Hall.
Timeline
1295
The manor of Eltham is granted to Bishop Antony Bek of Durham, who begins fortifying it.
1305
Bek gives Eltham to the future Edward II. It becomes a royal residence and remains so for three centuries.
1350s
Edward III adds a chapel and lodgings; Eltham is used to host visiting monarchs including John II of France, held prisoner here.
1475–1483
Edward IV builds the Great Hall with its hammerbeam roof — the third largest in medieval England.
1499
Erasmus and Thomas More visit the eight-year-old Prince Henry (later Henry VIII) in the Great Hall.
1516
Princess Mary, the future Mary I, is born at Eltham.
1590s
The court abandons Eltham for Greenwich and Whitehall; the palace is downgraded to a hunting lodge.
1648
Parliamentary surveyors during the Interregnum record the palace as ruinous. Timber and stone are stripped for other buildings.
1828
Restoration of the Great Hall roof by Smirke prevents collapse; the Hall spends most of the 19th century as a farm barn.
1933
Stephen and Virginia Courtauld take a 99-year lease from the Crown Commissioners.
1936
Seely & Paget's new Art Deco house is completed, joined to the restored Great Hall.
1944
The Courtaulds leave Eltham after wartime damage and hand the site to the Royal Army Educational Corps.
1995
English Heritage takes over management; a major restoration of the interiors begins.
1999
The house re-opens to the public in its Courtauld-era condition.
The medieval palace, 1305–1600
Eltham became royal property in 1305 when Bishop Antony Bek of Durham gifted the manor to Edward, Prince of Wales, later Edward II. Its position on high ground twelve kilometres east of Westminster, with clean air and good hunting in the neighbouring Great Park, made it a preferred residence for royal children throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Edward III kept the captured French king John II here in comfortable captivity in 1364; Richard II held Christmas courts here in the 1380s; Henry IV was married to Joan of Navarre in the chapel in 1403.
The most important surviving building — the Great Hall — was built by Edward IV between 1475 and 1483 to host his court on state occasions. Its hammerbeam roof, spanning eleven metres unsupported, is the third largest medieval hall roof in England, after Westminster Hall and Christ Church, Oxford. Edward's son Edward V was never crowned; his brother Richard III used Eltham briefly; and by 1499 the palace was full of children again, when the seven-year-old Prince Henry — the future Henry VIII — was living here with his sisters.
Decline, 1600–1900
By the reign of Elizabeth I, the court preferred Greenwich and Whitehall, both with direct access to the Thames. Eltham was downgraded to a hunting lodge. During the Interregnum, Parliamentary surveyors valued the site for demolition; timber, lead and stone were removed, and by the Restoration much of the palace was gone. The Great Hall itself was leased as a barn, its floor lowered by ploughing and its roof braced with rough timber. Only Robert Smirke's restoration of 1828 stopped it collapsing.
The Courtauld years, 1933–1944
Stephen Courtauld, a director of the Courtaulds textiles firm and a passionate mountaineer, and his wife Virginia — an Italian-born Romanian aristocrat who had been born Virginia Peirano — took a 99-year lease on the ruins in 1933. They commissioned the young architects John Seely and Paul Paget to build a modern country house on the footprint of the demolished royal apartments, keeping the Great Hall as a linked wing. The design was self-consciously modern in plan and services (underfloor heating, a centralised vacuum system, telephones and clocks in every room), but historicist enough on the exterior to keep the Office of Works satisfied.
The interiors were the work of a group of continental designers: the Swede Rolf Engströmer, who designed the marquetry panels in the circular entrance hall; the Italian Marchese Peter Malacrida, who designed Virginia's gold-mosaic bathroom and bedroom; and the London decorator Gordon Jenkin. The Courtaulds' pet ring-tailed lemur, Mah-Jongg, had his own centrally heated room. Bomb damage during the Blitz forced the family to leave in 1944; the site was handed to the Army as a training college.
English Heritage, 1995–present
English Heritage took over management of Eltham Palace in 1995 and led a major campaign to restore the Courtauld interiors, which had been repainted and subdivided for institutional use. The house re-opened to the public in 1999. In 2015 the guardianship was extended to include the gardens, which have since been re-planted to their 1930s design. See our highlights guide for a room-by-room walkthrough, or read the story of Henry VIII at Eltham for a closer look at its Tudor years.