Palace of Placentia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Palace of Placentia was an English Royal Palace built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in 1428, in Greenwich, London on the banks of the River Thames. The Palace was demolished and replaced with the Greenwich Hospital in the late 17th century.
[edit] History
Duke Humphrey was Regent during the rule of Henry VI, and built the palace under the name Bella Court. In 1447, Humphrey fell out of favour with the new queen, Margaret of Anjou, and was arrested for high treason. He died in prison - Shakespeare says he was murdered - and Margaret took over Bella Court, renaming it the Palace of Placentia, sometimes written as the Palace of Pleasaunce.
The Palace remained the principal Royal palace for the next two centuries. It was the birth-place of King Henry VIII in 1491, and figured heavily in his life. Following his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Placentia was the birth-place of Queen Mary Tudor (later Queen Mary I) in February 1516. After his marriage to Anne Boleyn, his daughter, later Queen Elizabeth I, was born at Placentia in 1533, and he married Anne of Cleves there in 1540. A tree in Greenwich Park is known as Queen Elizabeth's Oak, in which she is reputed to have played as a child.
Both Mary and Elizabeth lived at Placentia for some years during the 16th century, but during the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Queen's House was erected to the south of the Palace. Placentia fell into disrepair during the English Civil War, serving time as a biscuit factory and a prisoner-of-war camp. In 1660, Charles II decided to rebuild the Palace, engaging John Webb as the architect, but the only section of the Palace to be completed was the east range of the present King Charles Block. The rest of the palace was demolished, and the site remained empty until construction of the Greenwich Hospital began in the late 17th century.
The Hospital housed 2,710 inmates in 1815, but the number of in-patients began to decline from 1849, and by 1869 they had left the main building. The complex became the Greenwich Royal Naval College in 1873, when the naval college was moved from Portsmouth. The Royal Naval Hospital Greenwich continued as an institution, and today still grants pensions, funded by the rental which the trustees receive from the occupiers of the Greenwich site, to seamen, marines, and their widows, and educates their children, especially by funding the Royal Hospital School.
After 1873, the main buildings were used by the Royal Navy for a variety of purposes, chiefly technical training. In later years the buildings were however more extensive than the navy required, even though the Joint Services Defence College was also a resident, from 1983. In 1995, it was announced that the Royal Navy would vacate the remaining buildings after the Joint Services Defence College closed in 1997.
The buildings were handed to the Greenwich Foundation on 6 July 1998. They have arranged for the leasing of the parts of the site to long-term tenants.
| Royal Palaces and residencies in the United Kingdom | Image:Royal Standard of England.svg |
|---|---|
| Occupied: Bagshot Park | Balmoral Castle | Buckingham Palace | Clarence House | Gatcombe Park | Highgrove | Hillsborough Castle | Holyrood Palace | St. James's Palace | Kensington Palace | Sandringham House | Thatched House Lodge | Windsor Castle | |
| Historical: Palace of Beaulieu | Beaumont Palace | Bridewell Palace | Brantridge Park | Cadzow Castle | Cumberland Lodge | Dunfermline Palace | Eltham Palace | Falkland Palace | Fort Belvedere | Hampton Court Palace | Kew Palace | Linlithgow Palace | Marlborough House | Castle of Mey | Nonsuch Palace | Osborne House | Palace of Placentia | Queen's House | Richmond Palace | Royal Pavilion | Savoy Palace | Tower of London | Palace of Westminster | Palace of Whitehall | Woodstock Palace | |
