Eltham Palace facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Eltham Palace
General information
Architectural style	Art Deco interior
Location	Eltham London, SE9 United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°26′50″N 00°02′53″E / 51.44722°N 0.04806°E / 51.44722; 0.04806
Current tenants	English Heritage
Owner	Crown Estate

Eltham Palace is a big, interesting house in southeast London, England. It's in a place called Eltham, which is part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich. This special house has two main parts. One part is a very old, medieval great hall that was once part of a royal palace. The other part is a cool, modern extension built in the 1930s in the Art Deco style.

The great hall has a special hammerbeam roof. It's the third-largest of its kind in England! The Art Deco inside the house is also very famous. People say it's a "masterpiece of modern design." The Crown Estate owns the house. English Heritage takes care of it. They started looking after the great hall in 1984 and the rest of the site in 1995.

History of Eltham Palace

Royal Home (1300s–1600s)

The original palace was given to King Edward II in 1305. It was a gift from the Bishop of Durham, Anthony Bek. For over 200 years, from the 1300s to the 1500s, it was a royal residence.

An interesting story says that the idea for the Order of the Garter came from an event here. This famous group was started by King Edward III. Eltham Palace was a favorite place for King Henry IV. He even hosted Manuel II Palaiologos, who was the only Byzantine emperor to ever visit England. The emperor stayed from December 1400 to February 1401. A jousting tournament was held in his honor. You can still see a jousting area there today!

King Edward IV built the amazing Great Hall in the 1470s. Later, Henry VIII grew up at Eltham Palace. In 1499, when he was young, he met a famous scholar named Erasmus here. Thomas More introduced them. Erasmus was very impressed by the young Henry. He wrote about how Henry, even at nine years old, had a "royal demeanor."

Tudor kings and queens often celebrated Christmas at Eltham Palace. But later, Greenwich Palace became more popular. It was easier to reach by river. Eltham was still used for hunting in its big parks. The parks had lots of deer.

By the 1630s, the royal family no longer used the palace much. A famous painter, Anthony van Dyck, used some rooms as a quiet country retreat. During the English Civil War, the palace's parks were badly damaged. Many trees were cut down, and the deer were gone. The palace never fully recovered after that.

The palace was given to John Shaw by King Charles II. By then, it was mostly ruins. Only Edward IV's Great Hall, a building called "Court House," a bridge over the moat, and some walls remained. Shaw's family owned it until 1893.

The house you see today was built in the 1930s. It was built on the same spot as the old palace. It includes the original Great Hall. You can still see parts of the old walls in the gardens. The 15th-century bridge still crosses the moat.

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  The south side of the palace, with the medieval great hall on the left

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  JMW Turner's painting of the great hall c.1793

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  The great hall in 2018

Modern Home (1930s–Present)

In 1933, a wealthy couple named Stephen Courtauld and Virginia "Ginie" Courtauld rented the palace site for 99 years. They hired architects Seely & Paget to fix up the old hall. They also wanted a modern home built next to it. The architects added a special gallery and a wooden screen to the hall. For the new house, they got ideas from buildings designed by Christopher Wren.

The inside of the new house was decorated in the cool Art Deco style. The entrance hall was designed by a Swedish artist, Rolf Engströmer. Light pours in from a glass dome, making the dark wood and fancy patterns shine. Other rooms, like the dining room and Virginia Courtauld's round bedroom, were designed by an Italian artist, Piero Malacrida de Saint-August. The Courtaulds loved gardening, so they also made the gardens much nicer.

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  The Art Deco entrance hall

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  Virginia Courtauld's bedroom

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  The library

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  The dining room

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  The drawing room

Stephen Courtauld had a pet lemur named Mah-Jongg. This lemur had its own special room upstairs! It even had a little door that led to the flower room downstairs. Mah-Jongg could roam freely around the house.

The Courtaulds lived at Eltham until 1944. During World War II, Stephen Courtauld helped as a fire watcher. In 1940, he was on the Great Hall roof when it was hit by German bombs. In 1944, the Courtauld family moved away. They gave the palace to the Royal Army Educational Corps in 1945. This army group used Eltham Palace for their training and administration until 1992.

In 1995, English Heritage took over managing the palace. They finished big repairs and brought the rooms and gardens back to life in 1999.

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  Moat

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  Garden

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  South Bridge

The north side of the palace

Filming Location

Many movies, TV shows, and music videos have been filmed at Eltham Palace. Here are a few:

Is Eltham Palace Haunted?

Eltham Palace is on English Heritage's list of "most haunted places." Some people say they have seen the ghost of a former staff member. This ghost is said to give tours of the palace even when no one else is supposed to be there!