A plaque can be found in the garrison walls at Portsmouth at the
location of the old ‘Sally Port’. Its patriotic inscription proclaimsthat
“from this place naval heroes innumerable were embarked to fight their
country’s battles” but that also, “near this spot, Catharine of Braganza
landed in state, May 14 1662 previous to her marriage with Charles II at the
Domus Dei a week…
A fourteenth-century Anglican church in the Somerset parish of Burnham-on-Sea and Highbridge is not perhaps the place where you might expect to find several remnants from the lost Palace of Whitehall, the main London residence of England’s monarchs until 1698. A second…
The sixteenth century late-GothicSint-Andrieskerk on the Augustijnenstraat
in Antwerp preserves a monument with a quite extraordinary royal connection,
for which reason many English visitors in particular, seek it out.In
1513,Augustine friars established a…
Located in the beautiful Gothic church of St Mary’s at Bury St Edmunds,
is the tomb of a princess of England and a brief queen of France, the thirdwife
of Louis XII. The wife, daughter and sister of kings, she does not rest in the
same royal burial place as her brother, King Henry VIII, who is buried at St
George’s Chapel, Windsor – as is her husband, the Duke of Suffolk. Had…
The British love of dogs is, of course, well established, the royal affection for them as faithful companions being no exception to the rule. Corgis officially entered the British Royal Family when George VI, then Duke of York, gave two corgis named Dookie and Jane to his…
As part of the ‘Great European Tour’ of the Mozart family, which began from Salzburg in June 1763 and extended across the Holy Roman Empire to France, the Netherlands and Switzerland until November 1766, there was a long visit to London from April 1764 until 1 August…
Outside of the traditional burial sites of Westminster Abbey and St George’s Chapel, Windsor, some English (and British) monarchs are missing. The tomb of King John resides in the chancel at Worcester Cathedral, not far from the chantry that contains the grave of the son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII’s elder brother Arthur, Prince of Wales. That of King Edward II is also one…
The new memorial that has been erected in front of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green marks the spot ‘identified’ in the Victorian period as being the site of the scaffold, which may have been a misunderstanding of the Tower’s geography in proportion to…
The gallery of so-called ‘Windsor Beauties’ is the name given to the collection
of portraits painted by Sir Peter Lely (1618-80) of celebrated courtesans and
women of the nobility in Restoration England, which can be seen – and indeed,
still admired – in the…
A building in the Oxford suburb of Marston preserves a unique connection with the lost world of imperial Russia. Its typical late-Victorian exterior belies the remarkable nature of its hidden history. In this building for a period of time, personal possessions once owned by the Russian Imperial Family were carefully preserved and stored, because they came with the belongings of the person who…
