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Richmond Green

The lawn the Tudor court jousted on, with the palace gatehouse of 1501 still standing at one corner.

Squares & yards

Henry VII rebuilt the burnt palace of Sheen here from 1498 and renamed it Richmond, after the Yorkshire earldom he had held before he took the throne. The green was its forecourt, and the court jousted on it. Elizabeth I died in the palace on 24 March 1603 and was taken down to Whitehall by barge. After Charles I was executed, Parliament had the place surveyed, sold it for £13,000, and over the next ten years it was pulled down for its stone.

What survived stands along the green's west side: the Gate House of 1501, Tudor brick laid in a diaper pattern, and the Wardrobe behind it. Maids of Honour Row, the four houses on the north-west side, went up in the 1720s for the ladies-in-waiting to Princess Caroline; Frank Matcham's Richmond Theatre of 1899 closes the far corner. Cricket has been played on the grass since at least 1666, when Sir Robert Paston wrote of his son playing "a game of criquett" here - which means something has been played on this lawn, jousts then bats, for the better part of six hundred years.

Where
Richmond Green, Richmond, TW9
Nearest station
Richmond · 6 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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