Hever Castle in Kent was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s ill-fated second wife of 1000 days who was executed for treason on 19 May 1536.
Anne spent much of her childhood here before her father sent her to the continent to be educated. Anne and King Henry VIII also spent much of their early courtship at Hever. During the summer of 1528, there was an outbreak of the sweating sickness. Anne fled the court in London for Hever where she fell ill. The King, who had fled to Waltham Abbey, sent his physician William Butts to Anne and she recovered shortly afterwards.
In Anne’s day, Hever would have looked very different to the fairytale castle of today, with its beautiful lawns, topiary, and lily-covered moat. It would have been wild and rugged. The castle is set in a sloping valley and in Tudor times it was surrounded by boggy marshland and thick forest. The Normans, who built the original castle, called the forest Andreadsweald, meaning ‘the woodland where no man dwells’. Legend says that even medieval mapmakers noted it as a lawless place and were wary of entering.
Anne’s father Thomas Boleyn inherited Hever after his father’s death in 1505. He set about transforming it from a thirteenth century castle into a Tudor manor house. One of his additions was the gallery. As children, Anne and her siblings probably spent many a rainy afternoon running riot up and down it. The double moat of today didn’t exist. In Tudor times, only a single moat surrounded the castle, which could be reached by a stone bridge and not the wooden bridge of today.
Imagine what the castle must have looked like in Tudor times, approaching it on horseback as dusk fell. Sleepy and hidden among the trees. Candles flickering behind windows. The woody incense of the forest and the last ballad of bird song. The sound of the River Eden and the wind rippling through the trees. The sight of its smoking chimneys would have given the weary traveller a surge of energy.
The castle’s interior would have been far less opulent in Anne’s day. In the Great Hall, the walls would have been covered in simple white plaster as opposed to the elaborate wood panelling of today. The floor would most likely have been tiled with terracotta floor tiles, similar to those in the Baron’s Hall at neighbouring Penshurst Place. The fireplace would have been designed in the shape of the famous Tudor arch.
The minstrels’ gallery that dominates the hall today would not yet be there. Instead, there would have been a raised dais with a grand table, most likely made of Tudor oak or walnut. When at home, Sir Thomas Boleyn would have conducted his family business from here. The two windows would have had shutters and no glass, and the roof would have been open to the rafters with a small hole that allowed the smoke from the fire to escape. All in all, the hall would have looked larger and more primitive.
The inner hall we know today would have been a simple kitchen, larder, and buttery.
Today’s library and the room beyond it would have been the parlour and chatelaine’s office, from which Anne’s mother Elizabeth Boleyn would have run the estate in the absence of Anne’s father. The east wing would have contained various domestic rooms: the dairy, napery (linen), and a chandlery (candles), with guest rooms above it.
After Anne’s execution in 1536, Thomas Boleyn set about trying to re-gain royal favour. He served Henry VIII during the Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising in the north, and during Cromwell’s ransacking of the monastic houses. When Anne’s mother died in April 1538, it was rumoured that he might marry the King’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas. However, he took ill and died shortly after his wife in 1539. Thomas’s brother James inherited the castle and sold it to the King.
The King then leased Hever to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, as part of her divorce settlement until her death in 1557, after which it reverted to the Crown Estates. Sir Edward Waldegrave, one of Mary Tudor’s (Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s daughter) commissioners for the sale of Crown land, assigned Hever to himself. However, when Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII’s protestant daughter Elizabeth came to the throne, she stripped him of his appointments and had him imprisoned in the Tower. Edward’s son Charles retired to Hever and occupied his time refurbishing the castle. When he died, his son Edward made Hever his principal residence. In 1642, at age 70, Edward joined Charles I in the English Civil War and was created the first Baron of Hever. He died two years later, and his son and grandson succeeded him as the second and third barons.
Hever passed through numerous hands over the ensuing centuries, returning to merchant ownership in 1749, and was eventually rented out to tenant farmers in the 19th century.
In 1903 Edmund Wakefield Meade sold Hever to William Waldorf Astor. Upon his father’s death, William Astor inherited a fortune that made him the richest man in America. Fed up with life there, he moved to England and set about restoring Hever Castle.
William Astor is responsible for the enchanting castle we see today. He used his wealth to add the sumptuous oak panelling and the minstrels’ gallery, carved in the elegant grotesque style. He added the ornately-moulded ceilings and furnished it with an array of antiques and portraits, and added a grand library filled with rare books.
In 1963, Hever Castle opened to the public for the first time and has remained open ever since. Nowadays, it has become something of a shrine to Anne Boleyn and her love affair with Henry VIII.
Growing up in Kent, I have visited the castle many times. It was a favourite of mine and my lately-departed father. It is well worth a visit. My favourites are its miniature model dolls’ houses that the current owners commissioned from the English miniaturist furniture maker John J. Hodgson. They depict English houses throughout the ages and are magnificent.
Another favourite of mine is the portrait of Anne Boleyn in an English gable hood. This portrait of Anne shows her as a fresh-faced young girl. I especially like it because it challenges the popular picture that Hollywood and some historians give us of Anne the seductress. For 500 years historians have argued over whether Anne was innocent of the charges against her. She’s certainly been vilified and pursued beyond the grave. But, in this portrait, we see a rather innocent-looking, wide-eyed young woman who belies that darker image. I recommend visiting Hever to see what you think.
Hever is open all year round, except Christmas Day and Boxing Day.