On Friday the 1st of October Year 7 went on a very interesting trip to Hampton Court Palace. The morning started in a rainy way but by the time we got there it had stopped. We got off the coach and had a short walk to the gates. We had to get wristbands to be allowed inside the building so we went to the reception to get them.
We started off in the Base Court. The entrance was massive and grand but very old. The palace was 507 years old! We looked at the water fountain which supplied the palace with water. We were all quite hungry so we went to have lunch. After lunch we went into the Clock Court where they had a giant clock which would tell the time, the day and the month. After that we went to Henry VIII’s apartments. Did you know that Henry VIII was a nice person before he had his jousting accident? He was at a jousting tournament when he was trying a new suit of armour. Unfortunately he didn’t put his visor down and was hit in the head, knocked off his horse and crushed by it. After that he went crazy and he was in pain for the rest of his life.
There is a rumour that there are ghosts in Hampton Court Palace, like the ghost of Jane Seymour. She died giving birth to hers and Henry’s son; it’s said that her ghost appears on the anniversary of her death.
In the apartments and kitchens there would be giant fire places to keep them warm. The fires in the apartments would keep the whole floor warm sometimes. The kitchens were gigantic – the fires were so big that they would char the whole wall up to the roof. They would put whole pigs on the spats and chickens and sometimes they would even put a whole cow on! The kitchens would get super hot so it was very hard to work there all the time, they would have to serve 1600 meals a day – that is 584,000 meals a year!
Henry VIII had so many palaces because you could only stay in one palace for a few weeks. This was because the toilets were only holes in the ground but that’s only for the king and queen! The other people would have to go to the toilet in a trench outside the palace! So the palace would stink after a week or two.
Did you know that Henry VIII had a servant wipe his own bottom because he was too fat to do it himself. Unbelievably people would want to do that because you would be close to the king and the royal family. He also had to be winched up the stairs and onto his horse when he wanted to go for a ride!
It was a very good trip and I learnt a lot!
