A careless bonfire of oily rags gave London its first Palladian building
In January 1619, workmen tidying up after New Year revels at Whitehall burned their rubbish inside James I's wooden banqueting house and destroyed it. The replacement, designed by Inigo Jones, became the first finished building in England in the pure classical manner of Andrea Palladio, and it still stands on Whitehall today.
Whitehall Palace, home to English monarchs from 1530 to 1698, grew out of Cardinal Wolsey's mansion, York Place, which Henry VIII seized and enlarged, hoping to create the biggest palace in Christendom. Henry himself feasted in a temporary pavilion in the gardens. Elizabeth I added a timber hall in 1581, its canvas walls painted to look like stone, and in 1605 the King's Men performed Othello there.
James I's first replacement hosted lavish masques with revolving seats and stage machinery that a Venetian ambassador called a miracle. In January 1617, Pocahontas and Tomocomo attended Ben Jonson's The Vision of Delight, and according to John Smith the king made so little impression that neither realised whom they had met until afterward. Two years later came the fire.
Jones had studied Renaissance buildings in Italy and brought back an austere, mathematical style that made no effort to match the rambling Tudor palace around it. Begun in 1619 and finished in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, the building hides a single double-cube hall, twice as long as it is wide and high. Its gallery was meant for spectators rather than minstrels: ordinary people could crowd in to watch the king eat, climbing an outside staircase that underlined their humbler status. In the 1630s, Peter Paul Rubens painted the ceiling, and mason Nicholas Stone carved delicate swags inspired by Michelangelo.
Charles I dreamed of a vast new palace around it, but money and the approaching Civil War killed the plan, and he was eventually executed outside the building. In January 1698 a fire raged for 17 hours and levelled the rest of Whitehall, sparing the Banqueting House and two gates. Refaced in Portland stone in the 19th century, it is now a Grade I listed monument run by Historic Royal Palaces, a charity receiving no money from government or Crown.
Source: Banqueting House
