Oatlands Palace

Oatlands manor is a former Tudor and Stuart royal palace which took the place of the former manor of the village of Oatlands in Surrey, England. Little remains of the original building, so excavations of the palace took place in 1964 to rediscover its extent.

Much of the foundation stone for the palace came from Chertsey Abbey which fell into ruins after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Henry VIII acquired the house in 1538, and rebuilt it for Anne of Cleves. The palace was built around three main adjoining quadrangular courtyards covering fourteen hectares and utilising an existing 15th-century moated manor house. He married Catherine Howard in the palace on 28 July 1540. Henry's subsequent wife, Catherine Parr, spent time at the Palace as well. Records of her writings include a letter sent from Oatlands to her brother, William, Lord Parr, shortly after her marriage to the King in July 1543.

It subsequently became the residence, at various times, of Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. It was to Oatlands that Mary Tudor retreated after her supposed pregnancy. Her previous residence, Hampton Court Palace, had housed the nursery staff that was assembled for the birth of the child. The announcement of a movement to Oatlands (considerably smaller than Hampton) ended any hope of a happy outcome of the Queen's pregnancy.

James I's wife Anne of Denmark employed Inigo Jones to design an ornamental gateway from the Privy Garden to the Park. In 1646, it was a temporary home of the infant Princess Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I of England and later Duchess of Orleans, sister-in-law of Louis XIV, whose governess smuggled her into France in the summer of 1646.

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