Name: The Undercroft
Start: 2023-07-17T12:00
End: 2033-07-17T12:00
Location: Banqueting House

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When

Open days and Members-only days

Ticketing information

Included in palace admission (Members go free)

Buy Banqueting House tickets

Things to see

Descend into the shadowy vaulted Undercroft of the Banqueting House, originally created as an intimate drinking den for James I and VI and his friends.

The Undercroft would have given the King and his royal favourites a degree of privacy in complete contrast to the magnificent display of the Banqueting Hall upstairs.

At one end there was originally a 'grotto' decorated with shells, designed by Isaac de Caus. The shell grotto and hidden, dark spaces beneath the vaults no doubt lent the King's revels in the Undercroft an air of mystery and decadence.

On display is an exhibit about court masques, which includes models of Inigo Jones's set designs, showing how the elaborate theatrical scenery transformed the Banqueting Hall.

Ben Jonson's ode to the Undercroft cellar

Poet Ben Jonson wrote this dedication for the Banqueting House's Undercroft as a drinking den in 1623:

Since Bacchus, thou art father
Of wines, to thee the rather
We dedicate this Cellar
Where now, thou art made Dweller

Following James I and VI's death, the decadence continued, when the Undercroft began hosting gambling sessions. Courtier and writer John Evelyn describes one in 1664, at which 'the King, Queen-Consort and Queen Mother' won only 'a trifle' – as he did himself.

Stuart Architecture and building history