Did Henry VIII really destroy Hampton Court

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A.� No - you're getting your facts rather muddled here. It would be true to say that he bungled part of its design, though.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Beautiful Hampton Court, on the banks of the Thames in Surrey, has been seen for generations as the quintessential English royal palace. But is in fact based on an Italian Renaissance design, archaeologists have discovered.

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Q.� So Henry built it

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Q.� For Henry

A.� No - for himself. Wolsey was immensely rich and the most powerful man in England after the king - but he fell from Henry's favour when you failed to secure the Pope's consent to the king's divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey was stripped of his possessions - including Hampton Court.

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Q.� And then ...

A.� Henry began a huge programme of extensions and rebuilding at a cost of more than �62,000 (�18 million in today's money). Henry was always given credit for using his own skill and sense of style to turn Wolsey's property into a palace fit for a king. New evidence, however, suggests he made a terrible job of it - ruining the symmetry of a building that was based on the principles of the Italian Renaissance.

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Jonathan Foyle, the assistant curator of the palace who has spent three years on the investigations, said: 'This shows just how magnificent Wolsey's palace was. Henry VIII wrecked Wolsey's palace, not aggrandising it at all. Wolsey was revolutionary and worthy of much more credit and respect as a builder and architect than he has been given.' If Hampton Court were built to a Renaissance design, he said, it would predate the first identified Renaissance architecture in Britain by 40 years.

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Q.� How was this theory proved

A.� Foyle persuaded officials to allow him to dig up parts of the palace. Excavations revealed foundations that showed that the building would originally have been symmetrical and in a design similar to the Renaissance palaces of Rome. Hampton's dimensions and layout matched designs in De Cardinalatu, an Italian book written by Paulo Cortese in 1510.

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Q.� And how did Henry ruin all this

A.� No plan of the original palace exists, but the excavations revealed that Wolsey built two kitchen blocks symmetrically spaced around another courtyard. Henry broke through these to build a corridor so wine barrels could be rolled to the cellar.

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He also knocked down the cloister, replacing it with a raised corridor, and added a first floor to the chapel so that he could walk all the way there from his bedroom without having to bother with stairs. Then he stuck a 28-seat lavatory block - the house of easement - to the side of the building. That again threw out the palace's symmetry.

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Today, it attracts 250,000 visitors a year to the apartments, the famous real tennis court and the puzzling maze. It's still wonderful, even though not as Cardinal Wolsey wanted it.

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Steve Cunningham