09/04/2023
WHITEHALL TAKES ITS name from the huge royal palace of Whitehall, where the Royal Court presided from the time of Henry VIII until William and Mary.
The palace burned down in 1698, and the area is now synonymous with the Civil Service and bureaucracy. Many of the biggest government departments line Whitehall, among them the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Department of Health and the Treasury.
The only surviving component of Whitehall Palace is the Banqueting House, which was designed by Inigo Jones in 1622 as THE FIRST PURE RENAISSANCE BUILDING IN LONDON.
Inside is a glorious painted ceiling by RUBENS, showing James I and commissioned by Charles I to celebrate the wise rule of the Stuart Kings. Charles should maybe have studied it more carefully, for his decidedly unwise rule led to his own ex*****on right here.
On 30 January 1649 Charles stepped out of the Banqueting House from a first-floor window on to the scaffold erected outside, handed his gloves to Bishop Juxon and declared, ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown …’ When the axe man had done his work, he lifted up the King’s head and cried, ‘Behold the head of a traitor.
During the First World War, Flat 54 at No. 2 Whitehall Court was the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) under Commander Mansfield Cu***ng RN.
In the Embankment gardens, hard up against the wall of the massive Ministry of Defence building, are some river steps that were built by Christopher Wren as part of a new terrace for Whitehall Palace.
The palace burnt down a few years later and these steps were rediscovered during building work in 1939.
