A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



The last of these great garden parties was held in the 

 coronation year of King Edward VII, in which year 

 Lord Salisbury resigned. He died 21 August 1903, 



m 



of Salisbury 



and was succeeded by his son James Edward Hubert, 

 the present marquess. 



In 1 292 thehouseat Hat- 

 HATFIELD HOUSE field, already dearly of some 

 ARCHITECTURAL size, was being enlarged, the 

 DESCRIPTION Bishop of Ely then being 



given permission to divert 

 a pathway from the churchyard to a field called 

 Osmundescroft to enlarge his courtyard.*" This 

 fixes the site of the enlargement as being the 

 same as that of the present stables, which themselves 

 constitute the only remains of the palace in the form 

 in which it was rebuilt by John de Morton, Bishop of 

 Ely, about 1480. Nothing of earlier date than these 

 stables now remains, but of the palace of which they 

 formed the western wing a complete plan survives, 

 m.ide only a few years before the demolition of the 

 palace. This plan, which is in the possesion of the 

 present Marquess of Salisbury, shows an imposing 

 building of quadrangular form, with stair towers in 

 the internal angles of the central luurt and a pnmipal 

 entrance in the centre of the outer eastern face, The 

 great hall, solar, kitchen and butteries were in the 

 west wing, now surviving. The state apartments 

 were probably in the south wing. It was a building 

 not only of some size, but also of considerable 

 elaborateness, for Morton was a great builder, and 

 when he became Archbishop of Canterbury in i486 did 

 much building in Canterbury, Maid:tone, Lambeth 

 and Croydon, besides rebuilding Wisbech Castle. 



In 1538 in a survey of the building, then in the 

 tenancy of Hannibal Zcnzano, the king's master of 

 the horse, the palace is described as ' a very goodly 

 and stately manor place . . . constructed alle of 



Bishop's Halfitld (Lin 



*"■ Adapted by pcrmi 

 7.1. Meaum. efliatt. 



a R,p. *f Ry. « 



