Kingston upon Hull was chosen, in 1539, as one of the twenty five sites in England that Henry VIII would fortify against attack by the Papal powers of Europe who wanted to use military force to bring England back into harmony with Rome. During two visits to the city in 1541 the king devised a scheme of fortification encircling the town with walls and towers.
Henry stayed at Hull Manor, a town-centre house that he had originally granted to a favoured courtier, Sir William Sydney, but that he had re-acquired, by exchange, in 1538. It was a brick built courtyard house of the sort favoured in the 1530s. It had a great hall and a suite of lodgings for Sydney. At first the king’s architect, John Rogers, assumed that the king would want to keep the bones of the old house adding a suite of rooms for the queen. He was wrong. After his visit in 1541 the king instructed Rogers to do away with the great hall and build a processional staircase up to the royal lodgings. These were to be arranged round the inner courtyard so that they met at a corner with conjoined bedrooms.
The house, sadly, is long gone but Rogers’s plan for it survives in the British Library drawn in ink on a large sheet of vellum this brings back to life a little known and long lost royal residence.