Henry VIII's Homes Guest Star in 'Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light'

Wolf Hall’s spectacular settings are one of the joys of the series, both in the 2015 original and in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. However, viewers may wonder if every historic building used in the series is correct to the 1530s. The answer is no, that wouldn’t be possible, as property owners have this annoying habit of rebuilding, redecorating, and adjusting their houses to their needs (or just trends), generation after generation. Wars and political upheaval tend to alter a building’s structure and function, and the main offender during this period was the dissolution of religious houses as Henry VIII took control of the English church. However, the series uses a fascinating variety of properties to stand in for what no longer exists.

Prominent locations are, obviously, not practical. It would be nice to film in the Tower of London, but it’s full of tourists taking selfies, and the cost of closing it for filming is prohibitively expensive, so Dover Castle, suitably grim and looming, was used instead.

Hampton Court offers similar problems beyond being the mullet of royal residences: Tudor in front, Baroque around the back. William III and Mary II (1689–1702) commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to build an elegant new baroque palace that sits behind, or in some places, atop the earlier structure. That being said, it was still used (the front), and viewers were also privileged to see the tapestries of Hampton Court’s Great Hall in their glowing original color via 21st-century technology.