A Rare Look Inside St James’s Palace: The two Chapels

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to have a look inside St James’s Palace. It is the royal palace with, traditionally, the least public access. That will however soon be changing, more on that below.

The palace has been at the heart of Royal history for nearly five hundred years and naturally has an incredible number of stories to tell, so on this visit I focussed on the two historic chapels: the Chapel Royal and the Queen’s Chapel. 

Thank you to Jon, the Serjeant of the Vestry in The Royal Household, who showed me round, it was a fascinating visit.

The Origins Of St James’s Palace

St James’s Palace was constructed on the orders of King Henry VIII from 1531-1536, on the site of what had once been a leper hospital, dedicated to St James the Less. The leper hospital was later converted into a convent and then dissolved by Henry as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 

A significant proportion of Henry VIII’s original palace survives including the gatehouse, the chapel, turrets and various state rooms. 

Henry had the palace built as an escape from Whitehall, where he could spend time with his new bride Anne Boleyn. She never saw it completed however, as she was executed two years before it was finished. 

After much of Whitehall Palace burnt down in 1698, St James’s Palace became the official residence of the monarch. It remained so until 1837, when Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace. St James’s Palace is, however, officially still the most senior royal palace. It is where the Accession Council meets to proclaim a new monarch and ambassadors/high commissioners in the UK are accredited to the Court of St James’s. 

Pictured below is Friary Court. The Garter King of Arms reads the Principal Proclamation from the balcony to proclaim the new monarch.

It is a main residence today of Princess Anne, Princess Beatrice and Princess Alexandra and it is connected to Clarence House, where The King and Queen generally reside. It is therefore still very much a working royal palace. 

The Chapel Royal

At the beating historic heart of the palace is the Chapel Royal. The ‘Chapel Royal’ is also the name of the establishment/body that serve the spiritual needs of the royal family. In the summer the ‘Chapel Royal’ moves into the Queen’s Chapel (more on that later). 

The Chapel was finished in around 1540 when Henry VIII was briefly married to Anne of Cleves. It has a beautiful, original Tudor ceiling, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, and you can still spot an ‘H’ and ‘A’ for Henry and Anne of Cleves. 

As well as the ceiling, the marble in the aisle is Italian and dates from the chapel’s construction. You are therefore literally walking in the footsteps of Henry VIII and every monarch since. 

The chapel was expanded and altered slightly by Sir Robert Smirke in 1837. It is still though relatively compact, with a capacity of 150. 

Other Details To Spot 

On the way to the chapel you pass through this archway.

Carved into the stone, is a footprint. ‘Chapel mythology’, as the team call it, has it that this is the outline of Henry VIII’s foot and it was put here to remind him where to place his foot when dismounting his horse. 

The lovely stained glass window was designed by John Napper in 2002 to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee.

It shows a tree representing the Commonwealth, displaying lots of country names. It was funded by the Twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London.

King Charles III, when he was crowned in 2023, took inspiration from this for the design of his anointing screen. 

The chapel plate was also laid out on the altar during my visit.

These gold and silver candlesticks, plates and cups are officially part of the Crown Jewels, made predominantly from 1660-1 after the Restoration of Charles II. They actually comprise 12% of the Crown Jewels and are used regularly today for Sunday communion. 

Outside the chapel is a list of lots of the organists and musicians of the Chapel Royal.

You may well recognise some of the names, such as George Frederic Handel, Thomas Tallis and Henry Purcell. 

Weddings, Burials and Baptisms

It has been the scene of many royal weddings over the centuries. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married here, for example, on the 10th February 1840. 

It is also where future King George IV and Caroline of Brunswick were wed: possibly the worst royal marriage in history. I have previously written about it in a separate blog post here. 

It is said that the heart of Mary I, or ‘Bloody Mary’, is buried underneath the altar. There is no real historical evidence for this, although an x-ray machine did detect a casket underneath the altar a few years ago. It was not uncommon to remove the heart as part of the embalming process and bury it separately. 

Elizabeth I prayed here for the success of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada. She departed from the palace to Tilbury to give her famous ‘stomach of a King’ speech. The two tapestries, from Bruges, in the chapel date from this period and depict the story of Hannibal. 

Numerous royal baptisms have taken place here including those of Edward VI, Charles II, Queen Anne, George III. More recently it is where the baptisms of Prince George and Prince Louis took place (2013 and 2018 respectively). 

The Queen’s Chapel

The Queen’s Chapel across the road from the main palace is really beautiful. It was completed in 1625 and was designed by Inigo Jones as a Catholic church for the Roman Catholic Spanish Infanta Maria Anna, the proposed wife of Prince Charles, future Charles I. He ended up marrying another Roman Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France and she used it instead. 

This was at a time when Catholicism was prohibited in the country as a whole and many Londoners were not happy. There were, in fact, riots in the street when the building opened. 

The Design

The Queen’s Chapel was designed in a neo-classical, Palladian style of architecture by Inigo Jones, heavily inspired by Italian architecture. It is very significant architecturally because it was the first building in England to be designed in a classical style. The Queen’s House in Greenwich was another by Jones, under construction at this time. 

The Queen’s Chapel was actually also originally attached to the palace, but the wing connecting the two was destroyed in a fire in 1809. The fire destroyed roughly a quarter of the palace and was likely started by a candle in a servant’s bedroom. 

The Queen’s Chapel was used by Oliver Cromwell as a store room during the Interregnum, before being restored after the Restoration of King Charles II and again by Sir Christopher Wren in the 1680s. The beautiful blue, ‘Modena blue’, was recreated by Farrow and Ball from paint samples provided to them, so is as close as possible to Wren’s scheme.

From the 1690s it was known as the ‘German Chapel’, because the Protestant German courtiers of William III and Mary II prayed here. 

The Queen’s Chapel is the summer chapel, Sunday services move here from the Chapel Royal between Easter Sunday until July. This was originally because this chapel was very cold in Winter but the heating has since been improved.  

Visiting

Services are sung every Sunday morning except during August and September and the Sundays after Easter and after Christmas, and on a number of other occasions such as Weddings and funerals.

These services are open to the public and take place at the Chapel Royal until Easter Sunday and then the Queen’s Chapel until July. They take place at 11.15am. 

Royal Collection Trust, the charity that opens the official royal residences to the public, recently announced that St James’s Palace will open for exclusive guided tours on selected dates in the Spring. You can find out more here. They are currently sold out, but sign up to their emails for updates. 

Thank you for reading, more of London’s wonderful historical spots below!