HATFIELD HOUSE

The original Hatfield House was built in about 1497 when Cardinal Morton, Bishop of Ely had it built. At the dissolution in 1536 Henry VIII siezed the palace and used it mainly as a residence for his children. It was while reading a book under a tree in Hatfield House Park in 1558 that the then Princess Elizabeth was told that her sister Queen Mary had died and so she was now Queen Elizabeth 1st of Great Britain.
The present Hatfield House is not the one that Queen Elizabeth 1st knew as a great part of that was pulled down in 1608 by Robert Cecil, later to become the Earl of Salisbury, who had exchanged it with King James 1st for another residence called Theobolds. The bricks were used to build the new Hatfield House designed by Robert Lyminge. This Jacobean house was built to the traditional E-plan of Elizabethan houses. Finished in 1611 at a cost then of £ 40,000, it is 300 feet long and 150 feet wide. It has a long gallery which runs the entire length of the South Front, 180 feet in length..It is filled with many treasures and well worth a visit.

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