Britain’s seven greatest Tudor sights, according to a historian

With Wolf Hall returning to the small screen this week, I predict a sudden revival of the Tudor aesthetic. Sadly, I don’t imagine that men will suddenly don doublet and hose, but the relentless beauty of the architecture and interior decor will drip its way into our collective subconscious and, before long, you’ll find yourself longing to visit one of these gorgeous Tudor mansions. So where should you go for the most interesting houses and the best Tudor stories? These are my favourites.

Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire

This is the only Tudor castle in England in which you can stay the night, perhaps even sleep in the very bedchamber that housed Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn for 10 days in 1535. The castle was built by Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, in 1511 to resemble a medieval fortress, with a portcullis, crossbow loopholes and gun ports.

It was intended to be bigger than Hampton Court and a quasi-regal palace fit for the most prominent nobleman in the land. It has one complete great tower, an inner court with elaborate oriel windows overlooking the privy gardens, and the best original Tudor chimney stacks in the country. But you can also see the overgrown remains of a north range of lodgings, where fireplaces in the walls sit forlornly, still unused. What at first glance looks like ruins, is in fact a Tudor building site, for the castle was never finished.

Thornbury tells a story about Tudor England through its very stonework. Its apparently defensive capabilities convinced Henry VIII that Buckingham intended to use it as a base to launch a coup. The Duke was accused of high treason and was executed on Tower Hill in 1521. Building works abruptly ceased. The contrast between the magnificent completed apartments at Thornbury, and the abandoned north range, speaks poignantly of the Tudor penchant for cutting glittering lives short.

Though Thornbury Castle is now a hotel, you can also see the interior by booking for lunch, dinner or afternoon tea.

Penshurst Place, Kent

One of the locations for the first season of Wolf Hall was the gorgeous manor house at Penshurst, which belonged to both the Duke of Buckingham, and the darling of the Elizabethan court, Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney’s grandfather, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had put Lady Jane Grey on the throne and his uncle, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was Elizabeth I’s favourite, so Sidney came from the highest echelons of Tudor society.

Sidney himself was famed and feted as the perfect courtier-poet, before dying in battle at the age of 31. You can see the strawberry blonde Philip, in a fashionably huge ruff, in his portraits at Penshurst.

The house has a wonderful medieval hall, with 14th-century eavesdroppers – wooden peasant figures hanging from the ceiling as if waiting to catch a word – and exquisite 16th-century tapestries. There are also all manner of Tudor treasures, like a black lute and a lead bust cast of the head of Elizabeth I from the effigy on her tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Penshurst Place has now closed for winter, but will reopen for 2025’s February half term. Tickets for its mini panto, held in the medieval Baron’s Hall, are on sale.

Montacute House, Somerset

This spectacularly grand and beautiful mansion, another Wolf Hall filming location, is an Elizabethan prodigy house, wrought of glittering glass and honey-coloured stone, and built (by Sir Edward Phelips, the Speaker of the House of Commons from 1604 to 1611) in an E shape, in deference to the Queen’s name. Inside it retains its magnificent classical chimneypieces and original panelling.

Today it is an outpost of the National Portrait Gallery and houses some of the best portraits of the Tudor age, including some of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt; Queen Jane Seymour; Sir Thomas More; Queen Catherine Parr; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary, Queen of Scots. There is also the famous Armada portrait of Elizabeth I, where, dripping with pearls (a symbol of virginity) and precious stones, she sits triumphantly before a backdrop of scenes showing the defeat of the Spanish fleet.

A far more rudimentary piece of art, a plaster panel in the Great Hall, is also fascinating. It depicts a henpecked husband being humiliatingly paraded around the village for allowing his wife to beat him – thereby reversing Tudor gender norms.

Montacute House is open all winter; entry from £13 for adults.

Hampton Court, Surrey

Hampton Court is the country’s finest remaining Tudor palace and was one of Henry VIII’s favourites. He acquired it when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey fell from grace in 1529, and he spent £60,000 extending it over 10 years – roughly equivalent to £49 million today.

Your first sight will be the Great Gatehouse built by Thomas Wolsey in 1522, lowered three centuries later from its original five storeys. It leads into a huge courtyard, Base Court, which was designed to house visiting guests and ambassadors in lavish luxury. Look out for the wine-fountain modelled on one depicted in a painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold – and Henry VIII’s astronomical clock in the adjacent Clock Court, which shows the sun orbiting the earth.

In the Great Hall, beneath the magnificent hammerbeam ceiling, hang the priceless Abraham tapestries, commissioned by Henry VIII in the 1540s. They signify that, like Abraham, Henry saw himself as a patriarch, making a new covenant with God and being granted, in return, a son and heir late in life. These tapestries were woven with threads of real gold and silver; now tarnished by age, they would have glittered dazzlingly in the Tudor candlelight.

Hampton Court is open from Wednesday to Sunday during winter; entry for adults costs £27.20.

The Vyne, Hampshire

William, Lord Sandys, was an early and long-time favourite of the king and a sort of Tudor “Flashman”, reappearing at an improbably large number of the key events of Henry VIII’s reign. His brick and stone mansion, The Vyne, bears witness to both his eye for design and his powerful connections.

In the Long Gallery, the floor-to-ceiling linenfold panelling is carved with the heraldry of Sandys’ contemporaries and patrons, making it an extraordinary visual of the “Who’s Who of Tudor England” in the 1520s. Look out for the Tudor rose and fleur de lys of Henry VIII, the pomegranate and castle of Catherine of Aragon and the Cardinal’s hat of Thomas Wolsey.

Sandys’ close alliance with the court is also demonstrated by the stunning terracotta roundel of a Roman emperor in the Stone Gallery. Sculpted by the Italian craftsman Giovanni da Maiano – who also carved the matching roundels at Hampton Court – it is a real Renaissance treasure.

Finally, Sandys commissioned one last piece of brilliant art to reflect his relationship with Henry VIII. In 1525, he ordered three wonderful stained-glass portraits of the royal family to be made for the chapel. Check out Henry as a barefaced king with long ginger hair.

The Vyne is open daily; entry for adults costs £15.

Hever Castle, Kent

Set in the midst of the beautiful countryside of the Weald of Kent, and with landscaped grounds that include a lake and a walled rose garden, Hever is a must for Tudor acolytes, for it was Anne Boleyn’s childhood home. The best bedchamber on the first floor is likely to be where Anne was staying when she received her love letters from Henry VIII.

It has a gorgeous panelled Great Hall with a tapestry from 1540 and a wonderful collection of Tudor portraits, but its chief treasure, for my money, is a Book of Hours in which Anne herself inscribed the words “Le temps viendra/Je Anne Boleyn” (“The time will come/I Anne Boleyn”). Situated under an illuminated picture of the Last Day, it was probably a reference to the Second Coming of Christ, but one is tempted to wonder if Anne was also imagining her future as a queen.

Anne’s death on the scaffold meant that Hever passed into the Crown’s possession, to be given away in turn to Anne of Cleves as part of her “divorce” settlement from Henry VIII, and after her death to the Waldegrave family. The Waldegraves were secret recusant Roman Catholics, and they built a hidden Catholic oratory chapel at Hever in 1584 – this in the home of the proto-Protestant who caused the break with Rome.

Hever Castle is open Wednesday to Sunday during the winter season, and also offers overnight stays in its grounds from £195 for a double room.

Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire

This endearingly crooked house is one of the most enchanting examples of the half-timbered manors built by the 16th-century gentry. It was constructed by three or four generations of the Moreton family, who were local Cheshire landowners, and who gradually added to it throughout the Tudor period.

Surrounded by a moat, the three-storey house has a gorgeous chevron and diamond patterned exterior and mullioned windows containing 37,000 leaded panes of glass. Inside, there are original pieces of Tudor furniture and some surviving wall paintings depicting biblical scenes and creating a trompe l’oeil of panelling, a conceit that was the height of interior fashion in the late 16th century.

The Hall is covered with inscriptions that serve as a testament to Tudor sensibilities. They proclaim the omnipresence of God and the dangers of ignorance, but one also features a rather comic malapropism: “The Speare of Destinye, whose Ruler is Knowledge” (it should read: “sphere”).

Two parts of the house give us an insight into the Tudor lifestyle. The 68ft Long Gallery is a wonderfully wonky indoor exercise space for walking or playing bowls when the English weather disappoints. Yet, no one could escape the cold and wind when visiting the unglazed garderobes (lavatories) with their perpendicular drop into the moat.

Little Moreton Hall will open for three weekends in December and daily from February. Entry is £14 for adults.

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is the author of A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England. The six-part TV series, A History of Royal Scandals, written and presented by Suzannah Lipscomb, is currently showing on More4 on Tuesdays at 9pm and is available on catch-up.