Tudor 'prodigy houses'

Rycote House, which featured in Time Team's 2001 series and was built in the 1520s, was just part of the immense building activity that took place in England at the beginning of the 16th century. Prior to the arrival of Henry VIII on the throne, the great architecture of medieval England was to be found in its castles and cathedrals. The Tudors, who reintroduced the use of bricks for the first time since the Romans, brought in a new secular architecture – that of the great country house or palace.

This process was hastened by Henry's break with Rome and abolition of the monasteries in 1534, but the new building boom was already under way by this time. Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, was one of the first of these huge new houses, the new scale of building being reflected in its 40 bedchambers. Compton Wynyates, in Warwickshire, with its great crenellated towers; Sutton Place, in Surrey, for which Henry brought in Italian craftsmen; East Barsham Manor, in Norfolk, with its magnificent terracotta decoration; and Layer Marney Hall, in Essex, with its immense, eight-storey gatehouse towers – all these, and many more, were contemporary with Rycote.

The fashion for what the architectural historian Sir John Summerson called 'prodigious' houses was started by Henry VII. His vast new palace at Richmond, completed in 1501, started the trend for 'prodigy houses', which was accelerated under Henry VIII and reached its height in the Elizabethan era with the development of such magnificent country palaces as Burghley, Longleat and Hardwick Hall ('more glass than wall').

Henry VIII had already created the biggest house in Europe when he extended Hampton Court after persuading Cardinal Wolsey to give it to him in 1525. Not satisfied with this, in 1538 he levelled the Surrey village of Ewell to build the huge Nonesuch Palace. Other courtiers and rich merchants of the time were quick to get in on the act too. As well as Wolsey's Hampton Court, Sutton Place was built by the Cardinal's assistant, Sir Richard Weston; Compton Wynyates was built by a man who became Esquire of the King's Body; and Layer Marney Hall was the work of the Captain of the King's Bodyguard.

Large enough to accommodate the entire king's court on its travels, the great houses acted as super-hotels for monarchs and their vast entourages, as well as for other aristocratic travellers of the time. In their architecture, they produced a distinctively English merging of Gothic and Renaissance styles. In their symmetry, they symbolised the order and proportion of society at large. They reflected the vast new secular wealth of a small number of English families at the time – and though the great majority of the population was condemned to live in squalor to enable this tiny minority its remarkable luxury, it is impossible not to appreciate the magnificence and sheer opulence of these houses today.

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