A monastic property on the route between London and Dover converted into a royal residence entered through a handsome gatehouse.
Much of the annual itinerary of English medieval kings was made up of stays in the houses of bishops and abbots. When Henry VIII started the suppression of the monasteries this meant that a large number of houses formerly visited by the royal household were at risk of being lost to him and his successors. As a result a careful and scientific process was commissioned to identify former monastic property that would be taken into royal ownership and converted into royal residences.
A group of former monastic houses that lay on the route between London and Dover were chosen for conversion because they were crucial staging posts on the way to the south coast and amongst these Canterbury was the most important. At Canterbury there was a monastic cathedral and the priory of St Augustine and it was the Abbot’s house at St Augustine’s that Henry VIII appropriated. Henry VIII had been a regular visitor there in the 1520s and work had even been undertaken at his expense to make the lodgings suitable for his court.
In 1538 work started on the new royal residence which was entered through the handsome gatehouse, that still survives. Opposite this was the Abbot’s guest hall and this, and all the buildings to its south, became the King’s lodgings. The abbot’s private chapel and his privy kitchen simply became the king’s. For the queen a new suite of rooms were built at right angles to it containing three chambers with bay windows; these were her presence, privy and bed chambers. Both suites of lodgings were approached by a stair.
Henry used the house a few times but, in 1558, as part of her policy to reduce her maintenance liabilities, Elizabeth I leased the residence to Henry Lord Cobham. She visited the house several times on progress, once staying for nearly a fortnight. James I granted it to Edward Lord Wooton in 1612.
It was still standing after the Restoration and Charles II lodged there on his way to London but it fell into disrepair in the 18th century. The ruins of the abbey are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site managed by English Heritage.