Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace (Tilman2007/Wikimedia Commons)
The ‘Tudor Effect’—a noticeable rush of visitors to stately homes and palaces associated with Henry VIII—has taken hold in Britain with the six-part final season of Wolf Hall on BBC and other platforms.
The series, based on books by Hilary Mantel, began with a first series in 2015. It dramatizes the closely-connected careers of Henry VIII and his long-time close advisor and collaborator Thomas Cromwell.
Both website traffic and actual visits have risen sharply, both at places where the series was filmed and places that figured in the actual lives of the characters. The Tudor Effect has also spilled over into podcasts such as Empire, presented by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple, and Radio 4’s You’re Dead to Me. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland of The Rest Is History podcast sold out London’s Royal Albert Hall in October.
On the ground, the Tower of London, where numbers of the characters, including Cromwell, met their ends, says visitor numbers jumped by a third last year. Another site that’s seen heavy website traffic and more bookings is Henry’s Hampton Court Palace. The Great Hall at Hampton Court, seen above was used as a setting in the series for, not surprisingly, a banquet. It was the first time in over 50 years it had been used for filming.
