Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall

It was created under Henry VIII and was expanded and improved under his successors, but lost its royal patronage after the Palace of Whitehall was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1698.

[1] At the time, Westminster was not heavily built up as it is now, and York Place – later renamed Whitehall Palace – lay within a suburban area dominated by parks and gardens.

The Spanish 3rd Duke of Nájera wrote of a visit in 1544 in which he saw "a very pleasant garden with great walks and avenues in all directions, containing many sculptures of men and women, children and birds and monsters, and other strange figures in low and high relief.

A high wall to the west separated it from The Street, the main thoroughfare at the south end of Whitehall that bisected the palace in a north-south direction.

[5] The royal apartments were off the Stone Gallery and had a view of the Privy Garden, with a screen in place to prevent passers-by from seeing the naked king in his 7 by 7 feet (2.1 by 2.1 m) bathtub.

Pepys recorded his titillation at the sight of the underwear of Charles II's mistress, Lady Castlemaine, hanging out to dry in the Privy Garden.

[8] A century later, James Boswell wrote in his diary that he had taken a prostitute into the garden and "indulged sensuality", but he was shocked to find when he got home that she had stolen his handkerchief.

[10] The bronze statue of James II by Peter van Dievoet,[11] depicting the king wearing the robes of a Roman emperor, stood just outside the garden in the Pebble Court from 1686 to 1898 (with a short interruption during the Glorious Revolution).

Andrew Marvell lamented that This place for a dial was too insecure Since a guard and a garden could not it defend; For so near to the Court they will never endure Any witness to show how their time they misspend.

It stood 3 metres (9.8 ft) high and was constructed of stone, brass and wood, with gilded ironwork and painted glass panels to accompany its 270 component dials.

It resembled "a fountain of glass spheres, or a giant candelabrum with tiered, branching arms ending in crystal globes",[13] which showed not only the hours of the day but "many things also belonging to geography, astrology, and astronomy, by the sun's shadow made visible to the eye.

A watchman was posted to guard it against the kind of vandalism that had wrecked the earlier sundial, but in June 1675 it was severely damaged when it was attacked by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, much to the king's fury.

[15] At the start of the 19th century the garden's "decayed wall, long fringed by pamphlets, ballads, and ragged advertisements"[16] was removed and replaced by an iron railing and newly planted trees.

Its north side remained "most confused and unpleasant", terminating in a maze of "fifty narrow passages, formed by sheds, blank walls, the residences of the nobility, and the workshops of the tradesmen.

The houses were demolished along with the rest of Whitehall Gardens in 1938, in what the architectural historian John Harris described as "a monstrous act of vandalism",[20] to make way for the construction of the new offices of the Board of Trade and Air Ministry.