The wing to the right as we front the Gatehouse is the south-west wing and is worthy of special mention before entering the buildings, for there one of Hampton Court's ghosts has been given to manifesting itself. This is the ghost of Mistress Penn who was nurse to Edward the Sixth. An elaborate and circumstantial story tells of the sound being heard of a ghostly spinning-wheel, and when search was made by the officials a small sealed-up chamber was revealed, containing nothing but a spinning-wheel and a chair!
Entering through the Great Gatehouse--where, though the Palace is no longer used as a residence by the royal family, a sentry is always on guard--we reach the First Green Court or Base Court--a peaceful quadrangle surrounded by low red buildings with the western end of the Great Hall fronting us to the left. This, the only turfed "quad", is the largest of them all. In the surrounding rooms are supposed to have been many of the chambers which Wolsey allotted to his guests when they came in such numbers as are indicated in the passage already quoted from Master George Cavendish. Opposite us is the end of the Great Hall to the left, and directly in front is the clock gatehouse on either turret of which is to be observed one of those terra-cotta plaques of the Roman Emperors which were at one time thought to have been the work of Della Robbia, and to have been presented to Wolsey when he was building, but which Mr. Law has shown to be the work of Joannes Maiano and to have been ordered by the Cardinal. This gate is known as Anne Boleyn's Gateway, in the groined ceiling (restored) of which as we pass beneath are to be noticed around a central Tudor rose the monograms of that unhappy Queen, Henry the Eighth, and "T. C." repeated alternately with them--the last-mentioned initials may well puzzle the visitor who does not know that they stand for Thomas Cardinal, a designation which Wolsey was fond of employing.
A broad flight of steps to the left leads upwards from Anne Boleyn's Gateway to the Great Hall, but before proceeding thither most visitors will wish to look into the Clock Court beyond. In this Court we get the greatest clashing of the two periods to which the Palace as we know it to-day belongs. On the left, or north side, is the buttressed wall of the Great Hall with above the pinnacles surmounted by the heraldical beasts already referred to; while on the right is a colonnade masking the Tudor buildings on that side--Wolsey's own apartments--in most incongruous fashion. Beneath that colonnade is the entrance to the King's Grand Staircase and so to the State Rooms now known as the Picture Galleries.