Few people have heard of Oatlands Palace. After the Restoration of 1660 it was demolished so thoroughly that nothing remained other than a few garden walls. Today its site is covered by a housing estate. But in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century Oatlands was as well known as a royal palace as Hampton Court.
Oatlands had originally been built by Sir Bartholomew Read a fabulously rich London Goldsmith and sometime Master of the royal Mint. Read had died in 1505 and it seems as if his nephew, the heir to the house, didn’t live there and allowed Katharine of Aragon to use it when out west. So by the late 1530s, with Katharine dead (and replaced by successive queens) Oatlands had already been used as a royal house.
Henry VIII capitalised on this precedent and incorporated Oatlands into the most ambitious architectural master plan of his reign. His principal out of town house was to be Hampton Court, Nonsuch was to be the residence of the Prince of Wales and Oatlands was to be purchased and rebuilt for the queen. The three houses were to be linked by hunting grounds.
In December 1537 the king acquired Oatlands from Read. So keen was the king to start work that preparations had made by his architects for several months. In the end he was to spend £17,000 converting the house into a royal palace. £17,000 on a conversion was a huge sum when a courtier could build a large modern house from new for £15,000.
Unusually at Oatlands the king’s and queen’s apartments were in the central range between the two main courtyards meeting at the central gatehouse. Bay windows looked from the king’s and queen’s rooms into the outer court; they had to be fenced off to keep nosey courtiers from peering into the innermost royal rooms. The queen’s lodgings were larger than the king’s as befitted her house. On the north side there were two amazing long galleries each terminating in a tower. These looked out south onto the privy garden and on the other side had panoramic views of the park.
The best view, however, was gained from a prospect tower that stood over the house on its west. This was a unique structure approached by a broad spiral stair that led to a completely glazed polygonal chamber in the sky. From here there were 360 degree views of the hunting lands around. This allowed the queen’s ladies to enjoy the chase from the comfort of the palace while for the men in the field the crystal chamber, topped with gilded vanes and flags, formed a homing beacon after a hard day in the saddle.
At the time of Henry’s death Oatlands was classed as a ‘standing house’, this meant that it was one of the few that was kept permanently furnished in readiness for the king. Elizabeth I used Oatlands for short summer breaks but under James I the house, once more, took on its original purpose. It was granted to Anne of Denmark, his queen, in 1611 and was used almost every summer for hunting trips. Anne commissioned Inigo Jones to modernise the interiors, most of which were more or less as Henry VIII had left them. The Tudor furniture was thrown out and brand new beds, tables and chairs were commissioned; silk wall hangings were woven and panelling replaced with designs of a more contemporary feel.
After Anne of Denmark’s death in 1619 James continued to use Oatlands for hunting trips so much so that he had his bedchamber rebuilt to make his visits more comfortable. Yet it was in the reign of his son that Oatlands had its golden age.
On his accession in 1625 Charles I made Oatlands over to his queen. Henrietta Maria was a French Princess who essentially regarded English taste in interior decoration old fashioned and provincial. She refitted her London residence, Somerset House, and soon did the same at Oatlands. Her architect was Inigo Jones who replaced the remaining Tudor chimneypieces with more modern ones in a French style and redesigned panelling and door cases.
New hangings and furniture were ordered for the royal lodgings. Perhaps the most important improvement was in Henrietta Maria’s gallery where, on the ground floor, a series of stucco frames designed by Jones framed views of her other houses, such as Pontefract castle, Eltham Palace and Oatlands itself. When she had finished Oatlands was the most modern and comfortable of all the royal country houses. As a result it became the usual summer residence of the Stuart Court between 1635 and 1642.
The civil war was disastrous for England’s royal palaces. Outside London only Hampton Court was to be kept. All the other palaces were to be sold to pay off parliament’s debts. Most were simply auctioned for their building materials and this was the fate of Oatlands. By 1660 all that remained were the garden walls.