Streets of London : Once a palace

Tudor courtyard of Fulham Palace

We raced off to a second market at Parson's Green on Sunday which ended up being somewhat similar to the one we'd visited in the park, apart from a second hand bicycle vendor there, whose prices I had to photograph. No longer is it cheap to have your bicycle tube repaired. Even on a Sunday. We'd eaten enough snacks at the markets so with time running out we considered lunch done as we scooted back to the Palace lecture on a bus, and though we were a little late for the start we were still welcomed.

The Great Hall where the lecture was held dates back to the Tudor era. It is quite surreal actually to be sitting in a room in which Elizabeth 1 was known to have visited. It takes a moment to nestle deep in your consciousness that her presence was actually there.

These Bishops were wealthy. In the Tudor era alone there were 21 Bishops in London and together they had some 177 palaces scattered throughout the city and its fringes. And we worry about the excesses of Russian oligarchs who have so many mansions here these days.

The Bishops of London were considered peers of the realm and lords of the manor. They held jurisprudence over their serfs, regulating their lives within an inch, including such deliberations as to how many pigs you were allowed to keep, or who you could sell your loaves and fishes to, and so forth. The Bishop of London who owned this palace was responsible for the manor lands that stretched from Fulham up to Hammersmith and beyond. A huge parish. The job they and their stewards did were actually the beginnings of London's current local councils.

Over time, bishops became more involved in philanthropic and parliamentary work, and less involved in regulating the community. From their manors and their parishes with their rules and regulations for functioning so evolved borough councils which took over these functions as time went on and the population grew.

We spent hours at the palace just chatting with the Sunday volunteers. They run the place these days. No bishop conducts services here, or lives here. Today, there are some 41 bishops in London, many more than in the Tudor era, but together they only own some 42 residences. Their luxurious palaces of days long past have likely been gobbled up by oligarchs, among others.

One room we did visit amidst all our chatter was the Bishop's Chapel, we were actually given an impromptu tour which was wonderful. The end altar wall of the chapel had been bombed slightly in the war, but has now been fully renovated. An interesting mural to the left side of the chapel, on the wall, was completed in the fifties and is noteworthy as its kneeling figures are in modern dress, some visitors believe the pair to be the young Elizabeth and Philip.

Another piece, a Nativity mosaic on the back wall of the chapel is a fine installation by an Italian lawyer-cum-glass designer Antonio Salviati, but it caused uproar when it was installed. Worried about the decaying mosaics in St Mark's Basilica, Salviati opened a glass factory in Venice in 1859, in partnership with a Muranese glass blower in order to create a fast-tracking process for laying enamel glass mosaics that could be laid in sheets and be much quicker to install than individual glass mosaic pieces. But, when the work arrived and was installed at the palace, without any of the usual wobbly bits or individual quickishness in the laying, some of the wealthy palace patrons were not enamoured. Or impressed. And made their opinions loudly known. Still the work remains. And still it is quite beautiful.

The Fulham Bishops Palace has an amazingly rich program of events scheduled throughout the year: exotic rococo architectural lectures, little fingers gardening sessions and ghost haunts, archeology digs, craft basketry and weaving classes using the coppiced hazelwood from the palace gardens, a resident Georgian gin taster chat, Victorian pioneers discussions, and so on. Fabulous. And for us this is a hop, step and jump away, right in our neighbourhood. So, we will return.