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Nonsuch Palace

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Nonsuch Palace

Nonsuch Palace /ˈnʌnˌsʌ/ was a Tudor royal palace, commissioned by Henry VIII in Surrey, England, and on which work began in 1538. Its site lies in what is now Nonsuch Park on the boundary of the borough of Epsom and Ewell (in Surrey) and the London Borough of Sutton.

The palace was designed to be a celebration of the power and the grandeur of the Tudor dynasty, built to rival Francis I's Château de Chambord. Unlike most of Henry's palaces, Nonsuch was not an adaptation of an old building; he chose to build a new palace in this location because it was near to one of his main hunting grounds. However, the choice of location was unwise, for there was no nearby supply of water suitable for domestic use.

The palace remained standing until 1682–3, when it was pulled down by Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine, mistress to Charles II, to sell off building materials to pay for her gambling debts.

Nonsuch Palace, near Cheam, Greater London, was perhaps the grandest of Henry VIII's building projects. It was built on the site of Cuddington, near Ewell, the church and village having been destroyed and compensation paid, to create a suitable site. Work started on 22 April 1538, the first day of Henry's thirtieth regnal year, and six months after the birth of his son, later Edward VI.

Within two months the name "Nonsuch" appears in the building accounts, its name a boast that there was no such palace elsewhere equal to it in magnificence. Construction had been substantially carried out by 1541, but it took several more years to complete. As the Royal Household took possession of vast tracts of surrounding acreage, several major roads were re-routed or by-passed to circumvent what became Nonsuch Great Park.

The palace was incomplete when Henry VIII died in 1547. Queen Mary I invited the French ambassador Antoine de Noailles to hunt deer in the park with greyhounds. In 1556, she sold the palace to Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, who completed it by 1559. In 1585, the Treaty of Nonsuch was signed by Elizabeth I of England and the Dutch Republic at the palace. After Arundel's death in 1580, his son-in-law, John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley, sold the palace back to Elizabeth I and the Crown in 1590–1592, in exchange for lands valued at £534.

Upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the palace was inherited by her successor, James I.

Nonsuch Palace came to Anne of Denmark as her jointure property as the consort of King James I. The royal Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth, the future "Winter Queen" of Bohemia, were lodged at Nonsuch for a time in 1603. The Great Park remained the property of Lord Lumley until he surrendered the lease to the queen in 1605. She rarely visited, but came in July 1617 attended by Viscount Lisle, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the Earls of Southampton and Montgomery.

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