Hampton Court Palace Gardens and Hampton Court Park *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

The first buildings at Hampton Court were owned by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem who had acquired the Manor in 1236. It became the centre for their agricultural estates, farming to raise funds for military activities in the Holy Land. The level parkland of Hampton Court was enclosed in the early C16th when Sir Giles Daubeney, Henry VII's Lord Chamberlain, leased the property in 1505 and enclosed over 120 hectares of farmland for a deer park with rabbit warrens. Following Sir Giles's death in 1508 Cardinal Wolsey (1475-1530), Archbishop of York and Henry VIII's chief minister, leased the property and transformed it from 1515 onwards, building Hampton Court Palace and developing formal gardens. When he fell from favour in 1528 it was relinquished to Henry VIII and both palace and gardens then developed from 1530, establishing Hampton Court as a show place for English gardening. Henry VIII made Wolsey's gardens into the Privy Orchard, added the Great Orchard in parkland to the north and the Tiltyard to the west of these, with the Privy Garden to the south of the Palace extending to the Thames with a mount and banqueting house. Lesser gardens and an orchard extended beside the Thames. 52 hectares of the Course was taken out of the parkland and walled by 1537; stretches of wall from these features survive today.

There was no significant building by Edward VI, Mary I or Elizabeth I although they visited regularly. James I hunted in the park; Charles I was imprisoned here after Civil War and the palace was put up for sale in 1652. Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II visited and built his mistress a set of lodgings at south-east corner of palace. In 1661-2 Charles II developed the Long Water with flanking double avenue leading from the semi-circle on the east front of the Palace, the work executed by Adrian May. When William III and Mary II came to the throne the Palace was enlarged by Sir Christopher Wren in 1689-94 and the estate remodelled in Baroque style. In the late 1680s work was begun by Guillaume Beaumont on the Wilderness north of the Palace, the site of Henry VIII's Great Orchard. George London developed the Wilderness and Tiltyard with formal layouts from 1689 onwards, including the Maze planted in 1702 in the north-west part of the Wilderness. The paths of the Maze are nearly half a mile long in all. London also developed the Great Parterre or Fountain Garden to designs by Daniel Marot, which was modified in 1699/1700, again in 1707 when box embroidery of the parterre was replaced by grass and the semi-circular canal with arms to north and south was added in 1711 when Queen Anne was monarch. The Broad Walk, extending north-south along east front of the palace, runs parallel with the north and south arms of the canal, this development matched by the creation of the Chestnut Avenue in Bushy Park (q.v.), which was aligned on the Lion Gates in the north wall of the Wilderness. At the north end of the Broad Walk is the Royal Tennis Court built in the 1620s. The Privy Garden was given a formal parterre in c.1689, enlarged c.1700, and its outlines survive beneath C19th shrubbery. Jean Tijou screens were designed for the Great Parterre in 1699-1700 extending south-east from the south end of Broad Walk to an oval bowling green. Four pavilions by Christopher Wren were built c.1701 at the south-east end of the green, one of which survives. The Wilderness House was built in c.1700 as the Master Gardener's house and survives almost unchanged. Among its illustrious residents was Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, Master Gardener from 1764.

In the C18th, although Charles Bridgeman was Royal Gardener from 1728 and made surveys of the gardens he does not appear to have made significant changes to the gardens. Among his works Capability Brown planted the Great Vine west of the Pond Gardens. This vine came from a cutting from the Black Hamburgh Vine at Valentines Park (q.v.) in Redbridge. The next period of extensive development was in the mid-C19th with bedding schemes in the Fountain Garden, which continued through the C20th with massed bedding/foliage displays and borders in different parts of the gardens, particularly notable of these being the herbaceous borders along the Broad Walk, rose gardens in the Tiltyard, formal bedding in the enclosed gardens south of the Palace and east of the Privy Garden. The Knot Garden was laid out by Ernest Law in 1924, while 3 Pond Gardens by the Banqueting House have later C20th planting set in the C17th/early C18th garden areas.

The Wilderness contains a remarkable variety of ornamental trees and shrubs. Replanting lime avenues was undertaken from 1986 onwards. The loss of trees was considerable in the October 1987 storms. By 1992 the Privy Garden was extremely overgrown and restoration began to recreate the layout of William III's design of 1702.