On a cold day in November 2005, my friend Bill and I were taken around Hampton Court by a very knowledgeable guy. We were allowed to take photographs on designated areas and here I use them. Not fully raw as seen by camera, some of them have been used as backgrounds for King Henry to pose in and one or two not shown have been used to model a texture to brickwork to give accuracy to the eKits at the end of the page.
I am grateful to Hampton court for the use of these pictures and hope young minds out there enjoy them and the derived eKits.
Just where is Hampton Court Palace and how did King Henry VIII get there? Here's a Tudor map and as you can see it is on the river Thames, so Henry would sail there on is Royal barge.


Pleading will not save you my dear!


Chimneys have always intrigued me in the scale of things Tudor. Why go to the trouble of fluting them, spiralling them, patterning them and even splitting them and rejoining at the top? Was it practical, personal taste, showing off or a relevant function? I know I should be answering questions not posing them, but it is my bait on the end of the line to draw you into the minds of the Tudor builders and their masters. You see I know the exact reasons for these chimney designs because I found the answer in a strange but profound place, a building book. Not a History book, not an Architectural book but a bog standard book about bricks, mortar and cooling.
Here’s a file for you to download which gives you all the answers.
Click here to download this file

Here's my version of digital brickwork which when shrunk down will cover my model walls.


The Hampton Court Palace model commentary:

The following eKits will be added as they are written and tested, when the whole suite of kits are finished they will be sent to Hampton Court for their comments.
Many thanks to Hampton Court Palace for their help in making these kits possible.


Each grid is an A4 sized sheet of card, so expect a lot of work to make this model.
eKit 1. The base
Click here to download this file
Now we start!
eKit 2. Grid B5

Click here to download this file

Commentary about the Build.
Comment 1.
I made up the eKit Hampton Court B5 today, it is a bit fiddly because of the scale but remember this model is only 1/25th of the whole and fiddly is necessary for accuracy. It went together well the brickwork was a bit dark on my printer so I will lighten the kit and the rest to come, the two chimneys need a slight angle at the back to accept the roof shape, this I will do also but it is so small an angle that the original is very easy to alter. The back of the B5 kit is now ready to add on to the B4 kit. Looks good so far, even better if coloured and a good quality printer is used.
Comment 2.
Mike from Hartlepool says his laser printer picks the bricks out really well, though the square shape of block printing still comes to the surface. I will mesh the bricks tighter to get rid of this.
Comment 3.
Class 3 at St.Mary's Primary School they have built the first eKits and mounted the 25 base sheets onto a plywood base. The class have water coloured the sheets to be ready for the rest of the eKits. This is a good idea as it keeps the scale in your mind.
eKit B4 target for Wednesday 14th Dec.

Keep the comments coming to help in this gigantic task.