Lambeth Palace

“ No one has dined at the Lambeth Palace, or been otherwise a visitor there, without valuing the gardens which surround it and which are necessary to an episcopal residence in London. No one wishes to interfere with or curtail the garden grounds. I thought the public understood this. ”

“ In Milton’s boyhood its gray towers had already marked for three centuries the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. It has now been the home of more than fifty primates. The student of English history will find no building, with the exception of the Tower and the Abbey, which brings him so closely into connection with the whole history of England as does Lambeth Palace. It lies low upon the site of an ancient marsh overflowed by the Thames at this, its greatest width, this side of London Bridge. ”

“ While the architecture of the City churches, with the exceptions mentioned, is not as a rule remarkable, many are notable for the rich and beautiful wood-carving they contain. A Gothic style has been most commonly adopted in building modern churches; but of these the most notable, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral (see Westminster) , is Byzantine, and built principally of brick, with a lofty campanile. The only other ecclesiastical building to be specially mentioned is Lambeth Palace, opposite to the Houses of Parliament across the Thames. ”

“ To-day, when we stand on Westminster Bridge or Lambeth Bridge, and survey the huge building which provides London with one of its greatest landmarks, we are looking at a new Palace: from the River not a stone of the old structure is visible. A magnificent Palace it is too! Its towers, one at each end, rise high into the air, one of them 320 feet high, the other 20 feet more; and its buildings cover a matter of 8 acres. ”

“ The noblemen who lived in the Strand used to proceed to the Court at Whitehall in their own barges from their River ‘stairs,’ and retained a number of watermen, whom their livery protected from impressment. On the Surrey side there were but six or seven houses between Lambeth Palace and the shore opposite Whitefriars. There a line of houses with gardens began which was continued to the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace, where now is Barclay and Perkins’s Brewery. ”

“ The Palace is full of beauty in itself and intensely interesting from its associations. It is approached by a noble Gateway of red brick with stone dressings, built by Cardinal Moreton in 1490. It is here that the poor of Lambeth have received "the Archbishops' Dole" for hundreds of years. In ancient times a farthing loaf was given twice a week to 4,000 people.
Adjoining the Porter's Lodge is a room evidently once used as a prison. On passing the gate we are in the outer court, at the end of which rises the picturesque Lollards' Tower, built by Archbishop Chicheley, 1434-45 ”

“ Lambeth (275) , part of the SW. quarter of London, and a parliamentary borough in Surrey returning four members; abounds in manufactories, contains St. Thomas's Hospital and Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a magnificent library and important historic portrait-gallery.
Lamennais, Félicité, Robert de, a French theologian and journalist, born at St. Malo; began life as a free-thinker, but by-and-by became a Roman Catholic of the extreme ultramontane type ”

“ Westminster Abbey, St. Margaret’s church tower, Westminster Hall, and St. Stephen’s Chapel are prominent, the last foreshortened. The old bridge is already finished. In foreground the painter has introduced part of a tower of Lambeth Palace, much too near the bridge, but improving composition. Nets with large meshes, doubtless salmon nets, are hanging on the rails. ”

“ A little higher up the river, but almost opposite to the huge mass of the Houses of Parliament, lies a broken, irregular pile of buildings, at whose angle, looking out over the Thames, is one grey weatherbeaten tower. The broken pile is the archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth; the grey weatherbeaten building is its Lollards' Tower. From this tower the mansion itself stretches in a varied line, chapel and guard-room and gallery and the stately buildings of the new house looking out on the terrace and garden ”

“ The archbishop’s palace at Lambeth was soon stormed, and all the records it contained were destroyed; the building itself was left uninjured.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, by the Strand, was in flames; and all its wealth of treasure, rich tapestries and costly157 furniture, rare vessels of gold and silver, precious stones, and art work of priceless value, heaped up on a bonfire or ground to powder. ”

“ The whim of royal fancy was the cause of the complete obliteration of the palace, other royal houses pleasing the later Kings more than the one upon Lambeth Marsh. Low-lying ground, only redeemed from complete marshland by the embankment of the river, lay between it and the City of London on the north. As it was not until quite the end of the eighteenth century that houses began to be built upon this district, the land being up till then used as market-gardens, it is not surprising that when the palace was destroyed it soon passed from men's minds, no one living in the neighbourhood. ”

“ The eight rings remain to which the prisoners were secured: one feels that his companions must have envied the one by the window. Above some of the rings the boards are burned with the hot-iron used in torture. The door has a wooden lock, and is fastened by the wooden pegs which preceded the use of nails; it is a relic of Archbishop Sudbury's palace facing the river, which was pulled down by Chicheley. From the roof of the chapel there is a noble view up the river, with the quaint tourelle of the Lollard's Tower in the foreground.
The gardens of Lambeth are vast and delightful. ”

“ Some of the inner rooms are too close and confined; but there are many others open and pleasant in themselves, with the advantage of being convenient, and of affording very agreeable prospects. For as this palace is situated on the bank of the Thames, it affords a fine view up and down the river, and, from the higher apartments, a prospect of the country each way.
The palace, with the rows of trees before it, and the church of Lambeth adjoining, when viewed from the Thames, make a very pretty picturesque appearance, and this is the view which is here given. ”

“ The chancellor with many lords, the king, and the queen with the ladies of her court, welcomed him with affectionate joy. The palace of Lambeth, which Cranmer had exchanged for a prison, was richly furnished for his use, and on the [359] morrow, the 28th of November, the lords and commons assembled expressly to hear from the legate's own lips the object of his coming. The address which he delivered was long and impressive; it dwelt on the dismal condition of nations cut off from the unity of the church ”

“ Accordingly, late in the afternoon, they took a wherry at the Temple Stairs, and were ferried over to Lambeth Marsh, a wide extent of level ground between Southwark and the Bishop's Palace, on which only a few straggling houses had been built. ”

“ The Gate-tower of the house, the grand mass of brickwork, whose dark red tones are (or, alas! were till a year or two since) so exquisitely brought out by the grey stone of its angles and the mullions of its broad arch-window, recalls an age—that of its builder, Archbishop Morton—when Lambeth, though the residence of the first minister of the crown, had really lost all hold on the nobler elements of political life. It was raised from this degradation by the efforts of a primate to whose merits justice has hardly as yet been done. ”

“ But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass of architecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable walls and towers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains briefly to be touched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement left it, some analogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in that it stood outwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine of exquisite and luxurious art. ”

“ Fitzalan went to Hampton Court with the usual crowd of German, Italian, and French hair-dressers, waiters, cooks, and restaurant-keepers, besides native cockneys of all classes except the upper.
The noble old Palace welcomed this mass of very common humanity with such a pageant of beauty as never greeted the eyes of its royal builders. Centuries of sunshine seem to have melted into the rich reds and grays and cream-color of its walls, under which runs a quarter of a mile of flower-border, a glowing mass of color, yet as full of delicate and varied detail as the border of an illuminated missal. ”

“ In midsummer the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, and their grand Household moved from Kensington to Buckingham Palace, then new, and an elegant and luxurious royal residence internally, but externally neither beautiful nor imposing. But with the exception of Windsor Castle, none of the English Royal Palaces can be pointed to as models of architectural beauty, or even sumptuous appointments. The palaces of some of our Railway Kings more than rival them in some respects, while those of many of the English nobility are richer in art-treasures and grander in appearance. ”

“ In spite of the ruin to which it has been exposed, it has the stamp of noble bearing, and, previous to the invasion, must have been one of the most beautiful towns in the Spanish dominions. The Royal Palace, on the banks of the Tagus, is worthy of being the residence of princes, and contains a number of costly and magnificent paintings.
The Queen's Palace, or the Casa de Labrador, the charming summer retreat of her Majesty, is fitted up with simplicity and elegance combined, and, being replete with every comfort and luxury suited for a Queen, it may well be termed a paradise in miniature. ”

“ The show is certainly a great one, greater in extent, in variety, and in the excellence of a large share of its contents, than the world has hitherto seen. The Crystal Palace, which covers and protects all, is better than any one thing it contains, it is really a fairy wonder, and is a work of inestimable value as a suggestion for future architecture. It is not merely better adapted to its purpose than any other edifice ever yet built could be, but it combines remarkable cheapness with vast and varied utility. ”

“ We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, the many-millioned lord of a good part of London. It is a palace, high-roofed, marble-columned, vast, magnificent, everything but homelike, and perhaps homelike to persons born and bred in such edifices. A painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like this not too grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. ”

“ The name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the Old Palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without frontal, without order of architecture. Time has gilded the walls with beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of that old Palace of the Seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults, violent acts, and crimes. ”

“ Upon this promontory the king had caused to be built a huge platform which was ascended by the broadest flight of steps in the whole world, so easy of gradation that a man might easily have ridden up and then down again without danger to his horse. Upon the platform was raised the palace, a mighty structure resting on the vast columned porticoes and halls, built entirely of polished black marble, that contrasted strangely with the green slopes of the hills above and with the bright colours of the rose-gardens. ”

“ What never ceases to surprise you is the richness and the delicate, one might almost say, effeminate finish and elaborateness of every part. The walls are covered with coloured faïence and arabesques; the ceilings are either of inlaid pine or cedar wood, and hollowed after the fashion of stalactite caves; the floors are of polished white marble, the palm-like columns, of alabaster and{178} fountains abound everywhere. There is nothing to add and nothing to take away from this Palace of Aladdin; and as you learn to know the place, you love it, and marvel at it more and more. ”

“ James's Palace, and his erection of Marlborough House are by no means calculated to do him high honour, whilst all lovers of architecture must deplore the removal of a great part of Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court to make way for Wren's structure. A glorious view, if old drawings are to be believed, must all that vast and picturesque variety of towers, battlements, tall mullioned windows, cupolas, and pinnacles, have made, as they stood under the clear heaven glittering in the sun. The writers who saw it in its glory describe it in its entireness as the most splendid palace in Europe. ”

“ The very name of the Crystal Palace had led people to conjure up in their minds a phantasm that could not be realized—a transparent edifice, pellucid as if built of blocks of ice instead of stone—a prismatic kind of fairy mansion, glittering in the sun, and breaking up and scattering the light all around in a thousand rainbow tints. ”