Suffolk Place

Description

Brandon Place, later Suffolk Place, was C15 aristocratic townhouse. Sir Thomas Brandon, who inherited Brandon Place from his mother in 1497, created a private park adjoining it from some 48 acres of meadows and pastures belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. After his death in 1510 it passed to his nephew Charles Brandon, who was created Duke of Suffolk in 1514 and married Henry VIII's sister Mary in 1515. In 1516 Suffolk purchased 11 messuages and eight gardens in Southwark to enlarge the site of the house and by 1518 he was commissioning extensive building work there. In 1521 he renegotiated the lease of the park, renewing it for a further 99 years. Antonis van den Wyngaerde's panorama of London, drawn c. 1544-8, shows Suffolk Place as a large mansion set back from the High Street behind a gatehouse and wall or fence. The main house contained a central block of three storeys with wings extending to the north and west. Henry VIII acquired Suffolk Place, by exchange with Brandon for Norwich Place on the Strand, in February 1536. He granted it to Jane Seymour in June 1537, but when she died the following October it reverted to the King. He had minor repairs and improvements made to the house and gardens, but seems to have visited it seldom, if at all. In 1545 the house was converted into a mint, and until August 1551 it produced silver and gold coin. Thereafter, the house reverted to its former status as a royal mansion. In 1556 Queen Mary granted it to the Archbishop of York, whose Westminster townhouse, York Place, had been seized by Henry VIII in 1529 and converted into the Royal Palace of Whitehall. The archbishop soon purchased Norwich Place to use instead and sold Suffolk Place in 1557, after which the house was demolished and smaller houses built upon the site. (PastScape)

Farther vp on that side, almost directly ouer against Saint Georges church, was sometime a large and most sumptuous house, builded by Charles Brandon late Duke of Suffolk, in the raign of Henry the eight, which was called Suffolke house, but comming afterwardes into the Kinges hands, the same was called Southwarke place, and a mint of coynage was there kept for the King. To this place came king Edward the sixte, in the second of his raigne, from Hampton court, and dined in it. He at that time made Iohn Yorke one of the shiriffes of London knight, and then rode through the Citty to Westminster. Queene Mary gaue this house to Nicholas He th Archbishop of Yorke, and to his successors for euer, to be their Inne or lodging for their repaire to London, in recompence of Yorke house neare to Westminster, which King Henry her Father had taken from Cardinall Wolsey. (Stow)