The mansion, which became Middlesex County Council Secondary School and then Theobalds Park College, is now part of a hotel and members club known as Birch; the house is a Grade II* listed building.

Burghley's intention in building the mansion was partly to demonstrate his increasingly dominant status at the royal court, and also to provide a palace fine enough to accommodate the Queen on her visits.

[5] The formal gardens of the house were modelled after the Château de Fontainebleau in France, the English botanist, John Gerard, acting as their superintendent.

[13] Two thieves, John Todd alias Black Jack and Thomas Travers got into the Queen's privy chambers and stole an inkstand and two silver bowls in September 1597.

The Earl of Northumberland paid him a compliment, writing that for planning his own new house he was going to look at Copthall and as a builder he "must borrow of knowledge somewhat out of Tibballs, somewhat out of every place of mark where curiosities are used.

[15] After the Queen's death in 1603, Robert Cecil arranged for the new king, James I, to stay on his way from Scotland to London, and receive homage from the Privy Council.

Both monarchs were notoriously heavy drinkers, and according to Sir John Harington, the occasion was simply an orgy of drunkenness, as few English or Danish courtiers had their rulers' capacity to hold their drink: an attempt to put on a masque of Solomon and Sheba descended into a farce, as most of the players were too inebriated to remember their lines, or even to stand up.

James gave Theobalds to Anne of Denmark in 1607, and this formality was the occasion of court festivities in May 1607 involving hunting, tournaments, and the Prince de Joinville.

Although James declared in 1607 that it was "a fitting place for our sports",[27] Godfrey Goodman noted that it had no "lordship nor tenants, nor so much as provision of fuel, only a park for pleasure and no more".

[28] In July 1613 Anne of Denmark was hunting deer at Theobalds and accidentally shot and killed the king's dog "Jewel" with a crossbow bolt.

[32] The architect John Smythson visited and made drawings, a surviving diagram shows the panelling of the great chamber in "walnut tree colour" graining with black and gold mouldings.

[35] The ambassador Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar arranged for the gift of two camels and a breeding pair of asses to be sent from Spain for the park in 1622.

[37] James had made few changes to the main suites, installing panelling in the Great Gallery to which his son Charles I added a number of carved and painted stag's heads.

These included a remodelled entrance based on Sir Christopher Wren's Temple Bar Gate, which had been dismantled and stored in a yard at Farringdon Road.

In 1888, it caught the eye of the beautiful (painted by Whistler) and eccentric Lady Meux (formerly a banjo-playing barmaid named Val); the gateway was purchased from the City of London and the 400 tons of stone was transported by horse-drawn carts to the park, where it was carefully rebuilt at a cost of £10,000.

[41] When Sir Hedworth Lambton, the commander of the Naval Brigade at the siege of Ladysmith, returned to England, he called on Lady Meux at Theobalds to recount his adventures.

In the 1990s it was refurbished for use as a commercial conference centre and later converted to its current (2015) status as the Theobalds Park Hotel in the De Vere Venues chain.

[44] The Temple Bar Gate had remained in the hands of the trustees of the Meux family estate and despite its status as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, had lapsed into decay.