Welcome back to the Tudor History & Travel Show: Travel Essentials! Travel Essentials provides inspiration for planning your next Tudor trip. For those of you who like to touch your Tudor history, we share all the information you need to get out on the road to see and experience Tudor places. Our top tips help … Read more
In this blog, we will be visiting the most prestigious religious institution of Tudor London: the Charterhouse. Its Tudor history embraces piety, bloodshed, triumph and treason as men of God, and men of power came and went, shaping not only its history but the very fabric of the building. Thankfully, today, some of the original … Read more
The 30 November (2020) sees the 490th anniversary of the sad demise and death of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey at Leicester Abbey. This followed his arrest for treason at Cawood Castle in North Yorkshire earlier that month. To commemorate this event, The Tudor Travel Guide team are holding a virtual summit over the weekend of the … Read more
The summer, Tudor progress was a near annual event in the royal, Tudor calendar. If a Tudor king or queen wanted to show themselves to the people and connect with their subjects throughout the kingdom, they needed to travel, and travel they did, moving regularly, whether for political reasons, to hunt, for pleasure or necessity. … Read more
Gainsborough Old Hall, in Lincolnshire, has been described by the renowned architectural historian, Anthony Emery, as the most complete courtier house of the period in England. It is a splendid monument to one man’s ambitions and accomplishment, across one of the most turbulent periods of English history. Furthermore, it became the home of Katherine Parr … Read more
Following Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, on Whitsunday 1 June 1533, my Lady Marquess of Pembroke was finally crowned Queen of England. It came about as the result of a historic love that had torn the court, and the country, apart. The aftershock would not only profoundly impact people’s lives but that of the nation as … Read more
?Eltham was a once-great medieval palace. During the Tudor period, it was home to the likes of Prince Henry (the future Henry VIII) and his sisters, Margaret and Mary, (both future queens of Scotland and France, respectively). Sadly, through the sixteenth-century, Eltham Palace fell from favour. It was ultimately abandoned and left to decay, falling … Read more
A little later than scheduled, on 8 or 9 July 1535, Henry VIII set out from Windsor Castle in Berkshire on what would become one of the longest and most politically significant progresses of his reign: the 1535 progress. Anne, still the king’s ‘most dere and entierly beloved lawfull wiff’, was at his side, as … Read more
Acton Court is an exquisite example of a courtier’s house from the early Tudor period. I will say more about it in a moment, but probably the thing that makes Acton Court stand out is the fact that the house is in a raw state, which makes it one of the most authentic Tudor properties … Read more
Thomas Wolsey was a lucky man. Accused of treason, he narrowly avoided Henry VIII’s ‘justice’ on the scaffold and instead died of natural causes at Leicester Abbey on 29 November 1530. Earlier that month, Henry VIII’s once all-powerful minister had been arrested on charges of high treason at his archepiscopal palace of Cawood, near York. … Read more