The Boleyn Apartment at Hever Castle & Gardens has once more been dressed for Christmas, allowing visitors to see what it would have looked like when Anne Boleyn lived there.
This important apartment, where history was made, was reinterpreted last year by the curatorial team at Hever Castle & Gardens. In 2024, for the first time in nearly 500 years, visitors could literally walk in Anne Boleyn’s steps and witness the story of the Boleyn’s meteoric rise.
This extraordinary experience, a must for all lovers of Tudor history, will be on offer again this year.
The Boleyn family would have spent Christmas together in the Apartment; they would have dressed the Tudor Yule log, arranged foliage around the mantle, fasted in preparation for Christmas, then showcased a feast fit for kings. These very elements of the Boleyn Christmas are on show today for the first time in five centuries.
Evergreen garlands, picked from the grounds, flickering candles and aromatic cinnamon sticks are among the Tudor-inspired Christmas decorations arranged by the curators.
Observed by portraits of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, the table in the Great Chamber has been dressed as it was with seasonal foods that Anne, her sister Mary, brother George and parents would have eaten across the 12 days of Christmas when they resided at the Castle in Kent.
Thirteen months in the planning, the decoration of the Castle is something that the team work on together.
And while there are 30 Christmas trees decorated and standing within the Castle, none will appear in the four-roomed Boleyn Apartment.
Curator Alison Palmer explains: “Christmas trees really weren’t a feature of a Tudor Christmas and only gained in popularity during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century”
The curatorial team have made the decision to only include Tudor-style decorations in the newly renovated Boleyn Apartment.
Alison explains: “The Boleyn Apartment is a truly unique space – there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It is the only place where visitors get the chance to really walk in the footsteps of Anne and her family, and experience Christmas as they would have 500 years ago.”
Castle florist Pamela Brise, head gardener Neil Miller and head of retail Ashley Collins have been out in the grounds collecting fresh evergreen foliage to dress the Apartment.
Ashley Collins says: “while the rest of the Castle will be a magical interpretation of ’10 Year of Christmas Past’ with fabulously bedecked Christmas trees, we are working in step with the curatorial team to ensure this first dressing of the Boleyn Apartment in 500 years is as authentic as possible.”
Head gardener Neil Miller says: “We have an abundance of fantastic greenery at this time of the year and it is fantastic to get the chance to dress and redress the rooms in the Apartment with foliage as fresh as the Tudor’s would have wanted and used. Aromas will be very important – the smell of Christmas, cinnamon, pine and laurel will fill the space.”
What would a Tudor Christmas have looked like during Anne Boleyn’s tenure at Hever Castle?
In Tudor times, the 12 days of Christmas was the centre-piece around which everything revolved.
Fasting
Prior to Christmas Eve, the Boleyn family would have undertaken a strict sober period of four weeks, abstaining from certain foods and wine. During this period, no meat or dairy was served. This religious observance helped prepare the Boleyn’s spiritually.
Bringing in the green
Festivities would begin on Christmas Eve. The Boleyns would have spent the day beginning to decorate Hever Castle with their version of Christmas decorations. They would have gone into the thickly wooded Kentish weald to gather foliage to decorate the castle.
Foliage would have included: holly, ivy, yew, box, laurel, rosemary and mistletoe.
This decking of Hever’s halls was also about bringing evergreen life into the house at midwinter to cheer the manor up and to hasten on spring.
Holly & Ivy
The holly and ivy would also been used to decorate objects such as the spinning wheels and the ploughs. These decorations were placed on these objects of labour on Christmas Eve to prevent their use over the twelve days of Christmas, for this was a time to down tools and to have much merriment.
Holly was symbolic during the period as Christ’s crown of thorns, and the berries as Christ’s blood.
On Christmas Eve, Tudor women would find smooth holly leaves (the female variety) and place them in a handkerchief and put it under their pillow on Christmas Eve. They would then hope to dream of the man they would marry.
Ivy was a sign of fertility in Tudor days – Tudor women would fill a saucer of water and leave a piece of ivy within it, then inspect it at the end of the 12 days. They would use it to divine what illnesses they may suffer the following year from the shape of black spots on the ivy!
Nearby Hever church would also have been decorated with evergreens.
Mistletoe
The Boleyn women may have made a kissing bough – a sphere like precursor to the Christmas wreath, made from holly and ivy, and placed at the bottom of the sphere would have been Mistletoe, which visitors would have kissed under before plucking a mistletoe berry. When all the berries had gone, there were no more kisses to be had.
The Yule Log
The Tudor Yule Log had nothing to do with chocolate – instead it had a practical purpose – to heat the family throughout Christmas. Thomas Boleyn would have taken his man-servant and son out into the Kentish Weald to fell a great oak tree. They would have dragged it back over the drawbridge to the Great Hall, where it would be dressed with holly and ivy by the Boleyn women and tied with wet ribbons to slow the burning process down so that the log could burn for the whole 12 days of Christmas.
Feasting
At the Boleyn’s table you would have found venison and boar, hunted in the Kentish weald. There would have been a Christmas pie – a pigeon inside of a partridge, inside of chicken, inside of a goose, inside of a turkey!
Boxing Day/Feast of Stephen
On the 26th of December, or the Feast of Stephen, the Boleyns would have welcomed their tenants into the great hall to present them with gifts of food and ale.
Christmas at Hever Castle takes place from 21 November 2025 – 2 January 2026 with the opportunity to step back in time for a Tudor Christmas.
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Within the grounds of the Hever Castle Estate, there are two opportunities for you to stay the night with us.
Hever Castle has played host to many important events and celebrations for over 600 years. In 1903 when William Waldorf Astor set about restoring Hever Castle to its former glory, he added the Astor Wing, to accommodate his family and guests, before creating a lake and the spectacular Italian Garden to house his impressive collection of ancient Greek and Roman statuary.
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