England: Day 6, Blenheim Palace

Photograph taken by on Sunday, August 11, 2013
Blenheim Palace

Blenheim Palace

After our country jaunt yesterday, we decided we were up for crowds again. We spent the entire day at Blenheim Palace. This largish house, built between 1705 and 1722 as the home of the Dukes of Marlborough, is the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. I don’t really see how you could call it anything else.

If you’ve seen Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 production of Hamlet (and if you haven’t, you should), then you may recognize it as Hamlet’s castle. I won’t go on about all we did today because we basically saw the house and the gardens. It’s a big place with a park landscaped by “Capability” Brown starting in 1764. The lake was created by damming the River Glyme and certainly looks natural, although it is not.

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