Evidence is not quite clear as to the exact delimitation of Cardinal Wolsey’s work and the work of King Henry VIII. Certainly the great gate house at the west front (before the lamentable restoration of 1773) was Wolsey’s, together with the great base court, the old kitchens, the shell of the Chapel, the hall on the site of the present hall, and the Clock Court on its east and south sides. Taken together, Wolsey’s and Henry VIII’s work constitute the last great piece of traditional mediæval building in the native English style executed by English craftsmen of 16th-century England, uninfluenced and unimpeded by foreign standards.
The only record of foreign workmanship in the Tudor Palace is the work of Giovanni di Majano, an Italian, who carried out the splendid ceramic roundels,
of Roman Emperors, inserted in the turret towers of the gateways.
We know definitely that the Great Hall was Henry VIII’s work; also the great Watching Chamber adjacent to the hall. The decoration within the Chapel structure (erected by the Cardinal), the Chapel Cloister, the buildings north of the North Cloister and east of the old kitchens, and the state apartments round the old cloister green court, were all the work of the King. These Tudor state apartments, probably the only buildings of their kind in the world (on the site of the present buildings which surround the Fountain Court), are irretrievably lost to us as a result of the work of Sir Christopher Wren when he undertook the rebuilding of Hampton Court Palace for King William and Queen Mary between 1689 and 1723.
THE GREAT HALL, HAMPTON COURT: PENDANT IN NO. 3 BAY, SOUTH SIDE.