[Illustration: Gateway in the Hall, Eltham Palace]
As was Eltham, so was Kennington. Both places were built for the same purpose about the same time. Both were castles erected on a plain without the aid of hillock, mound or running stream--unless the moat at Kennington was fed by one of the many streams of South London. The plan of 1636 shows approximately the line of the wall; the stream or the ditch marks the course of the moat; the 'Long Barn' on the east side of the palace belonged to the 'service'--it was kitchens, stables, armoury, brewery, or granary. The house itself had its principal entrance on the north. This is certain, because all the supplies were brought by what is now Kennington Road either from Westminster Ferry or from Southwark. A gate on this side simplified the transference which took place when the court moved from one place to another; when everything--bedding, blankets, utensils of all kinds, plate, _batterie de cuisine_, the workmen with their tools, the wardrobe of king and queen--was packed up and carried from Westminster over the ferry to Kennington, or from Kennington to Woolwich. Provisions and goods sent up from the City were also landed at Stangate, Lambeth, so as to get as short a land journey as possible. For these reasons I place the principal gate at the north.
I have seen it stated--I know not with what truth--that the people of the streets now on the site have found substructures beneath their houses. If so, one would expect, what one cannot find, some tradition to account for the existence of these stone vaults.
Such was the vanished Palace of Kennington: a fortress of the Lambeth Marsh, a place for keeping Christmas, a royal residence; now completely vanished.
Two other royal houses there were in South London, neither of which can be compared with Kennington. Greenwich, for instance, which appears in history from the time of King Alfred. Edward I., Henry IV., Henry V., Edward IV., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth--all had more or less to do with Greenwich. When Henry VIII. completed his buildings here he deserted Eltham; he left, that is, the mediæval fortress for the modern house. His Greenwich was not fortified. The accompanying view of it shows that it possessed none of the characteristics of the ancient residence, half castle, half manor house. Greenwich, however, before Henry rebuilt it, was a fortified castle. Had we a plan of Greenwich of the fourteenth century it would most certainly resemble those of Eltham and of Kennington, with certain small differences, just as one Benedictine monastery resembles in its general disposition another Benedictine monastery, and one Norman castle in general terms, and allowing for the site, resembles another.