by Henry VIII visits a stately home he technically used to own and is asked for six pounds to park near it
I once granted land to loyal men with a single signature, no fee attached. I visited a stately home that stands on ground I personally once owned and was charged six pounds simply to park near it.
The Car Park
The car park attendant, a retired gentleman named Geoffrey working part time, explained the parking charge applied regardless of National Trust membership, a policy I found genuinely baffling given that membership, once purchased, is meant to grant unlimited access to properties precisely like this one. I once granted access to an entire kingdom for considerably less administrative confusion.
The Membership Desk
Inside the visitor centre I was offered annual membership at a rate that would grant free entry to hundreds of properties nationwide, a proposition I found genuinely moving, having once owned rather more properties than that myself and never once organised a scheme allowing the public to visit any of them without an invitation, a war, or both.
The House Itself
The house, built shortly after my own original death, stood on land that had, several centuries earlier, passed through royal hands including my own, a fact the guide confirmed with visible delight once I mentioned it, assuming I meant it as historical trivia rather than, as I intended, a legitimate ownership grievance I fully intended to raise with someone in authority before the end of the visit.
The Guide
The volunteer guide, a woman named Rosalind with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the property, described the house’s history in considerable detail, occasionally glancing my way with quiet suspicion as I corrected several minor details about court protocol that she had, understandably, sourced from books rather than personal experience. She was gracious about it. Several bishops were not nearly so gracious the last time I corrected them mid-sentence.
The Gift Shop
I ended the visit, as one apparently must, in the gift shop, where I purchased a tea towel depicting a version of my own face considerably rounder and jollier than I remember being, alongside a jar of chutney described as fit for a king, priced at four pounds fifty, which felt, on balance, like a fairly modest valuation for the honour. I paid without complaint. Even a king, it turns out, eventually learns not to argue with a gift shop.
The Membership Card
I purchased the annual membership on the way out after all, reasoning that a man who once owned rather more real estate than this ought to at least be able to visit some of it without arguing with Geoffrey in the car park every time. Rosalind has already invited me back for a talk she is giving next month on Tudor kitchen practices, and I have accepted, mainly to see how many details she gets wrong, and how gracefully I can avoid correcting all of them.
The full record of properties I have technically owned twice now sits over in the chapters. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: London’s full field guide to its own modern grifts, the capital’s renaissance in charging you simply for looking, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
