The rooms where the English Reformation began
Visitors to Hever can now see, feel and even smell what home life was really like for Anne Boleyn and her family, after research by the castle’s historians has opened new insights into how wealthy Tudors lived and allowed them to authentically recreate the Boleyns’s living spaces.
The official launch of the new look Boleyn Apartment was held on Wednesday, 26 June, with proceedings opened by historian, author and presenter David Starkey, an adviser on the project. He gave an overview of Hever’s importance in the story of the Boleyns’ rise to prominence, and in English history itself, and also spoke about the painstaking work that the Hever team had undertaken.
“What you are seeing today is the culmination of serious historical research based on evidence,” he said. “This evidence comes from factual records of the past in the form of documents, archeology, and the study of buildings, artefacts and paintings.”
Castle historian and assistant curator Kate McCaffrey then talked the audience through the physical changes that have been made to the apartment.
“Each room has been refurbished to offer the visitor a unique and visually engaging experience by stepping into the world of Anne Boleyn and her family,” she said. “Hever is home to the only surviving suite of rooms that the Boleyns occupied and would recognise today. Other properties they once lived in have since been destroyed or changed, but if they were to walk around Hever’s apartment today they would largely recognise it.
We’ve had a very rare opportunity to re-present the private Boleyn family apartment as we imagine it might once have looked. I emphasise the word ‘imagine’, because sadly no inventory of Hever survives, and neither do any sketches or paintings of the rooms.
We’ve had to use a degree of imagination with this project, but we feel confident in saying that every interior design decision we’ve made has been based on extensive contemporary historical research. From the specific colours of the fabric wallhangings to the materials on the beds and the oak chests scattered around the apartment, it all comes directly from researched sources. These were mainly inventories – helpful lists of house contents – or visual sources like portraits, mainly those from Hans Holbein the Younger.”
Guests were then taken on a guided tour of the four rooms: the parlour, nursery, grand chamber and best bedchamber. Almost all the furniture used is of the period, sourced in the most part by Paul Fitzsimmons of Marhamchurch Antiques in Devon, with other pieces, plus wallhangings and fabrics (bar one original tapestry in the bedchamber), reproduced by specialist companies.
The vivid hues of the textiles are surprising, as houses are often seen as dark and drab when Tudor life is portrayed on screen, but the research shows that vibrant colours were an intrinsic decorative feature for wealthy families of the time. Finally, the evocative scent of the rush matting laid across the apartment’s floors enables visitors to really imagine what it must have been like to have Hever as your home in the early 16th Century.
The rooms also include information about the important role Hever played in the relationship between Anne and Henry VIII, and the momentous decisions made there that changed the course of English history. The bedchamber features copies of the love letters sent by the King to Anne at Hever after her retreat there when the pressure of his attempts to woo her became too much.
You can book your ticket to see the Boleyn Apartments at Hever Castle.
