I have to hold my hands up to the fact this
blog isn’t mine – but made up of extracts from a series of blog posts of someone
I always wished had been a closer friend, but who left us two years ago. I have
not forgotten Caroline Riikonen, who wrote some lovely articles based on the
historical houses she visited in and around London. Caro gave her
friends pseudonyms which add to the character of her prose, and here she
describes with her usual charm her visits to the Banqueting House in Whitehall.
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| Banqueting House Circa 1810 |
It has been several years since the
Brimstone Butterfly has alighted at the Banqueting House, Whitehall. Recently I
had another chance to see Inigo Jones' masterpiece. On my very first visit as a
schoolgirl I witnessed with awe my friend Cristobel mount the English throne
until I launched a coup d'état and told her to get off as I wanted a turn
sitting on the red velvet chair beneath its canopy of state.
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| Ceiling |
Henry renamed the palace Whitehall and set about
enlarging the palace and pleasure grounds to include a cockpit, bowling green
and tennis court. I was once fortunate enough to view an extant turret and
walls of the double storey covered Tudor tennis court, complete with large
leaded window, concealed within a modern office complex. That was when modern
Whitehall regularly threw open its doors to the public as part of the London
Open House weekend.
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| Undercroft |
When it came to holding grand receptions, the Stuart kings wanted to announce to the world at large the arrival of a new dynasty on the throne of England. The first structure King James I had built was destroyed in a fire so he commissioned his surveyor of works, Inigo Jones, to come up with a new design. The Queen’s House at Greenwich for James’ wife, Anne of Denmark was also inspired by Inigo Jones' visits to Italy and that great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.
Jones’ double cube Banqueting House is
two stories high, 110 feet in length and 55 feet wide. The pillars of the
undercroft bear the weight of the Hall above which owes more to Ancient Rome
and Greece than to the medieval Great Halls of England with their hammer beam
roofs and gothic windows. The exterior was refaced with Portland stone in the
19th century but in keeping with Inigo Jones’ original design.
Unfortunately this meant that the effect of three different hues of stone on
the façade as planned by Inigo was lost forever.
The Banqueting House was completed by
the end of March 1621, its undercroft the scene of raucous drinking parties
between James and his male favourites and hangers-on. One pastime they would
not have indulged in would have been cadging a smoke off one another. James was
a virulent anti-smoker and even published a pamphlet lambasting the habit in
1604 called
“A Counterblaste to Tobacco” in which he roundly condemned the weed
as being:
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| James I |
The upper hall, reached by a flight of
elegant stairs, was the scene of more sedate pastimes such as grand receptions
for foreign ambassadors and masques, the early mixture of opera, dance and
theatrical spectacle so beloved by the Stuarts . It was also where hoi polloi
got the chance from the upper gallery to gawp at the king dining in public. To
ensure they stayed at more than arm’s length the gallery could only be accessed
by separate external stairs. In more recent years an internal staircase was
built to link the ground floor of the hall with the gallery but it was not open
to the general public when I popped by.
Inigo Jones found himself roped in to
produce stage designs for court masques in collaboration with the noted
playwright Ben Jonson. A recurring theme was the world plunged into chaos
until the Stuart monarchs restored harmony and order to the world; a conceit
which found expression in the ceiling panels.
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| Charles I |
King Charles I, son of James I,
commissioned Rubens in 1635 to glorify his father and the House of Stuart in a
sequence of 9 paintings which culminated in a central painting showing James
ascending into Heaven. Other panels signified the union of Scotland and England
with the accession of the Scottish Stuarts to the throne of England or else
promoted, in allegorical form, the divine right of kings.
It can be no coincidence that
Parliament chose to erect a scaffold outside the Banqueting House upon which to
execute King Charles I on Tuesday 30th January 1649. The hapless monarch was
forced to walk under the Rubens ceiling which exalted his own family and the
divine rights of kings before stepping out of a window on the second story
to face his own frail mortality on the block outside. With the execution of the
sovereign and the earlier execution in 1645 of the king's own Archbishop of
Canterbury, William Laud, Dr Juxon discreetly retired into private life.
Following the Restoration he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by the late
king's eldest son, Charles II. .
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| Charles' I Execution 30th January 1649 |
With the return of King Charles II to
the throne the Banqueting House was again used for royal receptions. John Evelyn described a less than happy visit to the Jacobean undercroft on
19th July, 1664 where he took park in a lottery with Charles II, his wife
Catherine of Braganza and his father's widow, Henrietta-Maria:
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| John Evelyn |
"To London, to see the event of the
lottery which his Majesty had permitted Sir Arthur Slingsby to set up for one
day in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, I gaining only a trifle, as well as
did the King, Queen-Consort, and Queen-Mother, for nearly thirty lots; which
was thought to be contrived very unhandsomely by the master of it, who was, in
truth, a mere shark."
The Banqueting House stopped being used as a reception saloon and became instead the Chapel Royal after the rest of the palace of Whitehall burnt down in 1698. In the late 19th century it was in danger of being divided up. Fortunately it was spared such a fate and became a museum instead, which itself closed in the 1960s. Nowadays, like so many other historic buildings, the Banqueting House pays its way by serving as a stylish venue for concerts, conferences, weddings and receptions.
The Banqueting House, Whitehall is to be found opposite Horse Guards Parade, though
it is probably best neither to attempt to sit on the throne nor smoke a pipe
lest you attract your own counterblast from the staff on duty.
Caro’s Blog is still live and can
be found here
