Bridewell Palace (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of City Of London.
In the historic county of London and Middlesex.
Modern Authority of City and County of the City of London.
1974 county of Greater London.
Medieval County of City of London.

OS Map Grid Reference: TQ31618101
Latitude 51.51277° Longitude -0.10475°

Bridewell Palace has been described as a certain Palace.

There are no visible remains.

Description

Bridewell Palace was a royal palace built in 1515-2? for Henry VIII on the banks of the Fleet River. It was named after a holy well nearby dedicated to St Bride. The building was a large rambling brick structure round three courtyards. In 1553 Edward VI gave the palace to the City for the reception of vagrants and homeless children and for the punishment of petty offenders and disorderly women. Queen Mary Tudor confirmed Edward VI's charter in 1556 and the City took possession, turning the palace into a prison, hospital and workrooms. Most of the buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt in 1666-7. A new prison section was built in 1797. The prison was closed in 1855 and the buildings were demolished in 1863-4 . The site was first covered by De Keyser's Royal Hotel and since 1931 has been occupied by the Unilever Building. (PastScape)

The palace is known to have been built between 1515 and c. 1523. The need for it arose when fires destroyed both the old palace of Westminster and the Royal apartments in the Tower in 1512 leaving the King without a useable residence in his capital city. It remained Henry's principal palace for some years during which time it saw some notable events. In 1522 shortly before the palace was completed it provided accommodation for the entourage of nobles accompanying the Emperor Charles V on his visit to London. Six years later Henry and Katherine of Aragon stayed there while the papal legates deliberated on their divorce proceedings in the house of the Blackfriars on the other side of the Fleet. Most of Act III of Shakespeare's Henry VIII which concerns those events is set in Bridewell. With Wolsey's fall from grace in 1529 his palaces at York Place (Whitehall) and Hampton Court came into the possession of the King and Bridewell was given over to those ambassadors, mainly French, whom the King wished especially to favour. It was at that time that Hans Holoeich the younger painted his famous portrait The Ambassadors there. Its brief history as a royal palace was brought to an end in 1553 by Henry's son Edward VI who gave it to the city as a workhouse. The palace was laid out around two main courtyards: the principal courtyard to the north with the Great Hall along its southern side whence a Long Gallery ran down to "two towers upon Thames". These with a high wall down the eastern side enclosed the southern courtyard. This type of double courtyard layout is typical of Henry's palaces. To the east and north additional domestic buildings fronted onto the Fleet and Bride Lane forming a subsidiary courtyard. (Gadd and Thompson, 1979)

Sources of information, references and further reading

Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 404993.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 041191/00/00.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Wikipedia entry
Books
- Keevill, Graham D., 2000, Medieval Palaces, An Archaeology (Stroud; Tempus) p. 14, 64-6, 70, 77, 116, 156
  Cooper, Nicholas, 1999, Houses of the Gentry, 1480-1680 (Yale University Press) p. 311
  Schofield, J., 1995, Medieval London Houses (Yale University Press) p. 41-2, 51, 61, 84, 151
  Thurley, Simon, 1993, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (Yale University Press) p. 40-44
  James, T.B., 1990, The Palaces of Medieval England (London; Seaby) p. 156
  Lobel, M.D. (ed), 1989, The City of London from prehistoric times to c.1520 British Atlas of Historic Towns Vol. 3 (Oxford University Press) p. 67 online copy
  Weinreb, Ben and Hibbert, Christopher (eds), 1983 (rev edn 1993), The London Encyclopeadia (Macmillian) p. 89-90
  Colvin, H.M., Ransome, D.R. and Summerson, John, 1982, The history of the King's Works, Vol. 4: 1485-1660 (part 2) (London) p. 53-8
  RCHME, 1929, Inventory of Historic Monuments in London Vol. 4: London (The City) (HMSO) p. 160
Periodical Articles
- Gadd, Derek and Dyson, Tony, 1981, 'Bridewell Palace: Excavations at 9-11 Bridewell Place & 1-3 Tudor Street, City of London, 1978' Post-Medieval Archaeology Vol. 15 p. 1-79
  Gadd, Derek and Thompson, Alan, Mar. 1979, 'Bridewell Palace' London Archaeologist Vol. 3:10 p. 255-60 online copy
  Mylne, Robert Scott, 1911-13, 'Old Bridewell' Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society ns Vol. 2 p. 86-110 download copy
  Brock, E.P.Loftus, 1892, 'Discovery of a Portion of the Foundations of Old Bridewell, London' Journal of the British Archaeological Association Vol. 48 p. 341-42
  Anon, 12 Sept. 1846, 'Discovery of a Portion of Old Palace of Bridewell' Illustrated London News Vol. 9:228 p. 16
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
- Stype, John, 1720, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster Vol. 1 bk1 p. 63 Kingsford, C.L. (ed), 1908, A Survey of London, by John Stow: Reprinted from the text of 1603 Vol. 1 p. 44-71
  Anthony van den Wyngaerde, c. 1543, Panorama of London
  Agas, c. 1558, [map of London > http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/section.php?id=C4>online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Thurley, Simon, 1991, English Royal Palaces, 1450-1550 (unpub PhD thesis; London) p. 104-21 (available via EThOS)

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

Data >	PastScape	County HER
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio