Nottinghamshire Contents

The Archbishop's Palace

The Archbishop's Palace, on the south side of the minster Yard, has long been in ruins, but still there is enough standing to show its magnificence and extent. In the ruined walls are still many pointed gables, gothic windows, and circular chimneys, of the age of Henry VIII, and being deeply overshadowed with ivy, they add much to the beauty of Southwell.

The north wing, which contained the Chapel and Great Hall, has been fitted up as a Sessions House, for the Southwell Division, and has consequently been preserved from the ravages of time, though much modernised in its appearance. The quadrangle, once surrounded by the offices, is now a garden, encompassed by the crumbling walls of this once pround Archipiscopal seat, which appears to have been first neglected in the reign of Elizabeth I, for that at Scrooby. There were attached to it four parks, but they have long been divided and enclosed.

The Palace is supposed to have been founded wither by Cardinal Wolsey or Archbishop Bothes. During the civil wars, it was completely gutted of anything that was valuable or useful. In those unhappy times Charles I was often here, and lodges sometimes at the Palace, and sometimes at the Inn, now called the Saracen's head, but formerly the King's Arms.. Here it was that he surrendered himself to the Scotch Commissioners on May 6th 1646.

White's Directory of Nottinghamshire 1853

[Last updated: Thursday 2nd October 1997 - Clive Henly]

© Copyright C.R.G. Henly 1997