Hatfield House

Listen first to the gravel. It crunches under your feet as the long red-brick front of the house opens out ahead of you. The brick is warm in colour, almost rose in soft light, and it is framed by pale stone at the windows and corners. Above the centre rises a clock tower and a small lead cupola. Rooks call from the old trees in the park. For a moment, you could be arriving at a great country estate four hundred years ago... and in many ways, you are.

This is Hatfield House, home of the Cecil family for more than four centuries. It stands in its own park, yet the edge of the modern town of Hatfield is only a short walk away. The railway station sits almost at the gates. That closeness is part of the surprise. Trains run to London in under half an hour, but behind these walls the rhythm of the place still follows the seasons, the gardens and the long history of one family.

The house you see was built in the early seventeenth century, in the reign of King James the First. It was finished in 1611. Its builder was Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury. He was a small man with a curved spine, and he was one of the sharpest political minds of his age. His father, William Cecil, had been the chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth the First. Robert followed him into that role, and later he helped to guide James onto the English throne.

Here is the first twist in the story. Robert Cecil did not choose Hatfield for himself. He already owned a magnificent house called Theobalds, not far away. King James loved Theobalds and its hunting grounds. So in 1607, the king proposed an exchange. Cecil gave up Theobalds, and in return he received the old royal estate at Hatfield. It was not an offer a courtier could refuse. Cecil then began to build again, quickly and on a grand scale.

The style he used is called Jacobean. The word comes from Jacobus, the Latin form of James. It describes English building in his reign. Think of it as a bridge between the Tudor world and later classical styles. You can see it in the symmetry of the front, the two projecting wings, the tall chimneys and the large windows. Glass was expensive, so walls full of windows announced wealth to every visitor who rode up this drive.

Now turn your attention towards the older building nearby, a lower range of darker red brick. This is the Old Palace. It is much older than the main house. It was built in the late fifteenth century for the Bishop of Ely, John Morton, as a palace for the bishops. Later, King Henry the Eighth took it for the crown. Cecil pulled down most of it to supply bricks for his new house. Only one wing survived, including its great hall.

And that surviving hall carries one of the most important stories in English history. Henry the Eighth's children spent parts of their childhood here. His daughter Elizabeth lived at Hatfield as a young woman. During the reign of her half-sister Mary, she was watched closely and kept at a distance from court. Her future was very uncertain. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed when Elizabeth was a small child. For a time, Elizabeth herself was under suspicion of plotting.

Then, in November 1558, Mary died. According to a well-loved tradition, the news reached Elizabeth while she was sitting under an oak tree in the park. Legend says she was reading, and that she fell to her knees and spoke a line from the Psalms. The original tree is long gone, and the details belong more to story than to record. What is firmly remembered is that Elizabeth held one of her first councils as queen here, in the hall of the Old Palace.

Inside the main house, the queen is still present. Hatfield holds two famous portraits of her. One is called the Ermine Portrait, because a small ermine, a white stoat, rests on her sleeve as a symbol of purity. The other is the Rainbow Portrait. In it, Elizabeth holds a rainbow, and her cloak is painted with eyes and ears. The meaning seems clear enough. The queen sees everything and hears everything. It is a picture of power, wrapped in silk and pearls.

The rooms themselves are worth slow attention. The Marble Hall is tall and full of light, with a carved wooden screen at one end. The Grand Staircase is made of dark oak, and its posts are crowned with small carved figures. At the foot of the stairs, look for a low wooden gate. It is a dog gate. It was there to keep the family's dogs from wandering up into the private rooms. It is a small, very human detail inside a very grand building.

Here is another surprise. In the Victorian age, the house was home to the third Marquess of Salisbury, who served as Prime Minister three times. He was also fascinated by science. He brought electric light to Hatfield very early, when it was still new and unreliable. Family stories say the wires sometimes sparked along the ceilings, and that relatives threw cushions up to put out the flames. Treat that as family lore, but it shows how new technology arrived even in the oldest houses.

Not every chapter here was happy. In 1835, a fire broke out in the west wing. The elderly Dowager Marchioness, the widow of the first Marquess, died in it. Much of that wing had to be rebuilt. As you walk around the outside, the brick and stone may look the same everywhere. But you are looking at four centuries of building, damage, repair and careful change, layered together into one long front.

The gardens grew alongside the house from the start. Robert Cecil employed John Tradescant the Elder, one of the first great English plant collectors. Tradescant travelled abroad to bring back trees, bulbs and fruit for Hatfield. Today the gardens include formal knots, hedges, and quieter areas under old trees. So before you leave, pause on the path. Smell the cut grass and the box hedges. Look back at the windows catching the light... the same windows that a nervous young princess once knew, long before she became a queen.