Fulham Palace House and Garden, London

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has been the main supporter of a series of capital works and restoration projects for the palace and surrounding landscape, and this £3.8m scheme is the latest phase of a decade of renewal.

Bishops of London lived in a moated manor house here for more than a millennium, until they were driven out by rising maintenance costs in 1972. As Princes of the Church, a bishop’s home has always been known as a palace, and when in summer residence, the bishop presided over more than 250 square miles of London diocese.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council took on the buildings, leased offices and tended the gardens, freely open to the public since 1974, with a museum from 1992 and a dedicated charitable trust from 2011.

Fulham’s “Hampton Court in miniature” is archaeologically and architecturally rich. Inhabited since neolithic times, parch-marks on the lawn reveal the medieval chapel’s foundations, and today’s palace is a Tudor-Georgian-Victorian jigsaw.

The palace has witnessed critical moments in history, from Bishop Bonner’s (1500-69) religious persecution of heretics under Mary I, to Bishop Porteus welcoming Hannah More and William Wilberforce, fellow campaigners against the slave trade. Given the extent of the social, political, architectural and literary histories, selecting key narratives and providing fresh perspective can be a challenge. 

Arriving at Putney Bridge station, the palace is a five-minute stroll into immaculate leafy grounds, populated at first sight by well-heeled, toddler-wielding locals who relax on the lawns and drink “babyccinos” in the cafe. The museum runs extensive schools, outreach and events programmes, countering an entrenched affluence bias to a site with no entrance fee.

The redevelopment has mapped out the building’s visitor services and amenities well, with a visitor reception and shop linked by the suite of museum displays to a large, comfortable and stylish cafe with beautiful garden views. 

The museum’s new introductory film gives an engaging historical overview of the site and its residents, including bishops’ wives and their work – a necessary intervention to standard male narratives. 

Perhaps to dispel visitor worries about an overly serious or preachy experience, and to give a theatrical sense of the characters you are about to meet, the displays start with a colourful set of caricatures of memorable past bishops. Bonner stands in a puddle of blood with a fork in his hand, while current bishop Dame Sarah Mullally is there too – the first woman in post. 

Graphics are eye-catching and colourful, while displays are object rich and continue the light-hearted approach; excavated 1970s Golden Wonder crisp packets are up on the wall alongside the earliest turkey bones dug up in London. Acknowledgement of the huge team of professionals and volunteers who have made it all happen takes centre stage.

Just before the cafe is Bishop Howley’s dining room – now a “Mood Room”, empty but for a projected film of patterned visuals, evoking the palace and garden through music, sound effects and images, from peacock wings to air-raid sirens. It is a meditative finale and a good change of pace, with comfy cushions on the floor, although more chairs are needed for those who can’t get down to a beanbag. 

Overall, the text needs reviewing in places. Although well written for an adult audience, many information panels are too high and too dense. The small font  makes reading uncomfortable. Free-standing digital screens in key rooms give well-structured, swipe-through additional information, but the screens’ awkward height and small size makes them easy to ignore, and they look a little lost. The simple, press-button, light-up map at the start of the museum brings most clarity to the complex history and geography of this site.

The essentials for a good adult visitor experience are all in place, from the warm, knowledgeable volunteer welcome to the playable Steinway grand piano and the box of marigold, beetroot and sunflower seeds with instructions on planting, and a paper bag to take home. Children’s trails and a natural outdoor play area will follow – most of the palace’s trees are so distinguished and elderly, they can’t be climbed. 

The transformation also includes an exhaustive brick-by-brick restoration of the Tudor West Courtyard and entrance wall. Bricks were removed, repaired or replaced by new ones fired using Tudor techniques – and a successful sponsorship campaign sees benefactors’ names engraved on the back. A patch of wattle and daub wall is revealed behind the reception desk, while the original oak gate with postern still works centuries after its installation.

Volunteer-led guided tours work well in bringing lost spaces to life, including the Great Hall where Elizabeth I dined in 1600, and the Tait Chapel, where the tour guide hands out a picture of the astonishing multi-coloured brickwork and inlaid stone interior created by William Butterfield in 1867, which was painted over just 30 years later after falling out of fashion.

Delightful as the house is, the real joy of the visit is the garden. Old paths and gateways have been carefully restored around the group of protected trees and a two-acre walled Tudor garden. Beds are newly planted with 400 species originally grown by botany-loving Bishop Henry Compton, who cultivated exotics such as oranges, figs, ginger and coffee in heated, 17th-century greenhouses. The long information panels work much better out here – the open skies give them more room to breathe.

While it certainly helped that I visited on two sunny days, every detail of the garden, from the “Bishop’s Tree” – a cedar of Lebanon carved like Mount Rushmore with bishops – to the knot garden, bee shelters and market barrow selling vegetables, is little short of magical. 

London’s sprawl has always held pockets of a greener England and Fulham follows the renovation and reopening of the 18th-century gothic folly of Strawberry Hill and, more recently, Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, designed by the architect John Soane in the early 1800s. 

All have reopened to acclaim and with engaging restoration. The ecclesiastical hideaway of Fulham Palace is more than ready to entertain without disturbing the beauty of this ancient place.