Catalog
Queen Elizabeth I's life runs through Greenwich, the Tower of London, Hatfield, Westminster Abbey, Tilbury Fort and Richmond: where she was born, imprisoned, crowned, made her Armada speech and died. The route follows her from her birth in 1533 to her death in 1603. Some palaces are gone, so three pins mark the nearest surviving site.
Henry VIII's six marriages played out in a handful of English palaces: Greenwich, Hampton Court, Whitehall, the Tower of London and Hever Castle, plus Peterborough Cathedral and Syon Abbey. Follow where he was born, where his wives lived, and where two of them ended. This route takes seven stops from Henry's birth in 1491 to Catherine Howard's last months in 1542, and says what you can still visit today. Several Tudor buildings have gone, so those pins mark the site.
Thomas Cromwell rises from a Putney childhood to become Henry VIII's most trusted minister, then falls in the same Tudor politics he mastered. Hilary Mantel's trilogy follows him from Cardinal Wolsey's household through the Reformation, Anne Boleyn's rise and execution, and his own last years. This route traces the places that anchor the story: Cromwell's birthplace and London house, Wolsey's palaces at York Place and Esher, the abbey where Wolsey died, Westminster Abbey for Anne's coronation, the Seymour seat that gives the novels their title, Hampton Court, and the Tower. The 2015 television adaptation used Dover Castle for the Tower of London and Penshurst Place for Whitehall.