Hampton Court Palace: Two Palaces, Gardens and a Half-Day Plan

Where the Tudor palace stops and the baroque one starts

Hampton Court is unusual because two very different buildings share one footprint. The western half is Cardinal Wolsey's and Henry VIII's, red brick and turreted, with the Great Hall, the Chapel Royal and the vast Tudor kitchens. The eastern half is William and Mary's, built by Christopher Wren in restrained classical stone, with the King's and Queen's Apartments running above Fountain Court. You can walk from one century into the other in a matter of steps, and the join is visible from the gardens. Visitors short of time usually choose a side rather than trying to do both properly.

The kitchens are the part people underestimate

The Tudor kitchens are the largest surviving of their kind and are often staffed by costumed cooks working real fires. They occupy a long sequence of rooms, from the boiling house to the great fireplaces, and they give a far better sense of how a court actually functioned than the state rooms above do. Because they sit off the main route, they are frequently quieter than the apartments. Going there first on a busy weekend is a reliable way to start well.

Gardens, the maze and the river

The gardens are extensive enough to justify the visit on their own. The Great Fountain Garden fans out east of the palace, the Privy Garden has been restored to its late seventeenth-century planting, and the Great Vine, planted in the 1760s, still produces fruit under glass. The maze is the oldest surviving hedge maze in the country and takes less time than its reputation suggests. Beyond the gardens, Home Park and Bushy Park across the road offer open walking, with Bushy's deer and the Diana Fountain worth the short detour.

• Privy Garden and the Great Vine, close to the south front
• The maze, in the northern gardens near the Lion Gates
• Bushy Park for deer and the Chestnut Avenue in May
• The Thames towpath towards Kingston for a level walk

Timing, seasons and the flower show

The palace is open year round with seasonal variations, and the gardens change character completely between spring bulbs, high summer borders and bare winter structure. In early July a major flower show takes over Home Park, which brings very heavy traffic to the surrounding roads and changes local access for several days. Timed entry and opening hours are set by the palace and vary seasonally, so check the current position when you pick a date. Winter afternoons are atmospheric inside but the gardens close earlier than the buildings.

Arriving by car from London

Hampton Court sits on the Surrey bank of the Thames at East Molesey, close enough to central London for a half-day trip and easy to combine with Kew, Richmond or Windsor. The bridge and the road past the main gate get congested at weekends, and parking on the green fills early.

The straightforward arrangement is a set-down at the gates, the car repositioning nearby, and a message on WhatsApp when you are ready to leave. That also means you are not walking back to a distant space in the rain at the end of the afternoon.

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