WHITEHALL PALACE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 281, 16 August 1918, Page 6

WHITEHALL PALACE

A PAMOUS BANQUETING PEACE. Tho luncheon given by. the Ministry of Information to the representative Labour dolegation of tho Amovicail mission took place in the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace, where no feast has been spread since tho days of Charles I. . The hall is now occupied by the united Services Institutions Museum. A mong the exhibits displayed was the menu of tho last Charles I banquet. This comprised marrow-bones, roast leg of mutton, carp, loin of veal, fowls, pullets, lark tart, neat's tongue, anchovies, prawns, and cheese. Compared with tho rigidly rationed war-timo menu of tho luncheon witA which tho present-day guests were regaled this was a regal feast, though in comparison with the expansiveness of West End "feeds" in me pre-war period it would havo appeared but. humble fare. The banqueting hall is the onlv part left of the congeries of buildings town as Whitehall Palace in tho days of the Tiidors and Stuarts, and it, is' tho only part that was completed of Inigo Jones's magnificent design, which, hrwl it been carried out, would have occupied twentyfour acres and exceeded in magnitude the palace of Diocletian. Whitehall was first built by that ambitions churchman Wolsey, and known as York Place, but on tho fall of tho cardinal the place was seized by Henry VIII. Its new name rose from the fact; that somo fresh buildings were constructed of white stono in contrast to the brick and timber structures of tho original palace. Charles I passed through one of the windows of the banqueting hall to the scaffold. and Charles 11, who lived chiefly at Whitehall, also died there, his er.d being little less tragic than that of his father.

Tho banqueting hall, with its gorgeous-ly-painted ceiling, is all that remains of liie old "palace.