'None such like it'
November 3 2011
A model maker and an Oxford academic have combined forces to recreate Nonsuch Palace, Henry VIII's modest hunting lodge. the model looks most impressive, but the sculpted panels on the outside would surely have been painted, as seen in Joris Hoefnagel's 1568 watercolour.
According to Samuel Pepys, who visited the palace in 1665 during the Plague (when his office was temporarily moved from London), the palace was covered with paintings by Holbein and Rubens on the outside. He describes the house in his diary, but of course it wasn't long until he was distracted by a female, so the description is frustratingly brief:
...a fine place it hath heretofore been, and a fine prospect about the house. A great walk of an elme and a walnutt set one after another in order. And all the house on the outside filled with figures of stories, and good painting of Rubens’ or Holben’s doing. And one great thing is, that most of the house is covered, I mean the posts, and quarters in the walls; covered with lead, and gilded. I walked into the ruined garden, and there found a plain little girle, kinswoman of Mr. Falconbridge, to sing very finely by the eare only, but a fine way of singing, and if I come ever to lacke a girle again I shall think of getting her.
If only Pepys and George Vertue had been one and the same person... More pictures of the model here. The best are in this week's Country Life magazine.
