Hatfield House


Fabulous at 400


Magnificent Hatfield House has a rich and vibrant past, with strong links to British political life from its inception. We take a look at its glorious rooms and


gardens as it celebrates 400 years WORDS VANESSA BERRIDGE


centuries. It is perhaps appropriate that the connection between Hatfield and London should be so easy, since the owners of the house, the Cecil family, have been at the heart of British political life since before the house itself was built. There are two great houses at Hatfield, not one. The first


T


house, known as the Old Palace, was erected about 1485 by the Bishop of Ely, John Morton. During the Reformation, Henry VIII sequestered the house, as he did so much other church property; but instead of selling it off to an ambitious courtier he used it as a home for his children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. Hatfield became a prison for Elizabeth during her sister’s reign; but it was also there, on 17 November 1558, seated under an ancient oak, that she learnt she had become Queen of England. Her first act was to call for William Cecil, to whom she


entrusted the dismantling of Mary’s Catholic regime. The operation was, to quote David Starkey, “quiet, unassuming and fearsomely efficient – like Cecil himself”. Cecil, Elizabeth’s chief minister until his death in 1598, was followed into the job by his son Robert, who managed the succession of James I, and was rewarded by being made Earl of Salisbury in 1605, having exposed the Gunpowder Plot. After a straitened upbringing in Scotland, James I warmed to the bright lights of the English court. The Old


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his year is the 400th anniversary of Hatfield House. This majestic Jacobean mansion, only a short train trip from London’s King’s Cross, offers a prospect little changed over the


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