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Pic: PhilYeomans/BNPS
Present occupant (and direct descendent of Jane Seymour) Dominic Binney in the rediscovered Tudor sewer system underneath Wolf Hall.
Historic Wolf Hall, home to the Seymour family and star of Hilary Mantel's famous trilogy on Henry VIII th, has finally been definitively located after new discoveries around the ramshackle house that remains today.
Despite it's fame, nobody really knew where the enormous Tudor pile actually was, or what it looked like, due to its very short but very influential existance in the middle of the tumultuous 16th century.
Built with a million pound loan (£2,400) from King Henry in 1531, brokered by Thomas Cromwell. The huge house was rapidly built in fashionable brick in time for the King's pivotal visit with his court and troublesome
wife Anne Boleyn in 1535, at which point Sir John Seymour's daughter Jane caught his eye.
Within a year Anne was dead and Jane was Queen, and the rest of the Seymour clan were very much in favour. They benefitted massively from Royal patronage around the dissolution of the monastries, even after
Poor Jane died in childbirth, but it all went wrong when Henry died and the brothers fell out and were later executed, in a spectacular fall from power only 21 years after the house was built.
Historian Graham Bathe and his team have now uncovered part of the outline of the original building, as well as the extensive Tudor brick sewer system that proves the huge scale of the 16th century mansion.
Pic: PhilYeomans/BNPS
Present occupant (and direct descendent of Jane Seymour) Dominic Binney in the rediscovered Tudor sewer system underneath Wolf Hall.
Historic Wolf Hall, home to the Seymour family and star of Hilary Mantel's famous trilogy on Henry VIII th, has finally been definitively located after new discoveries around the ramshackle house that remains today.
Despite it's fame, nobody really knew where the enormous Tudor pile actually was, or what it looked like, due to its very short but very influential existance in the middle of the tumultuous 16th century.
Built with a million pound loan (£2,400) from King Henry in 1531, brokered by Thomas Cromwell. The huge house was rapidly built in fashionable brick in time for the King's pivotal visit with his court and troublesome
wife Anne Boleyn in 1535, at which point Sir John Seymour's daughter Jane caught his eye.
Within a year Anne was dead and Jane was Queen, and the rest of the Seymour clan were very much in favour. They benefitted massively from Royal patronage around the dissolution of the monastries, even after
Poor Jane died in childbirth, but it all went wrong when Henry died and the brothers fell out and were later executed, in a spectacular fall from power only 21 years after the house was built.
Historian Graham Bathe and his team have now uncovered part of the outline of the original building, as well as the extensive Tudor brick sewer system that proves the huge scale of the 16th century mansion.
©BNPS 25 Sep 2018 5624x3532 / 2.7MB