101 (1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5) Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in  England and forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England and symbolic leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its formal title is the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ at Canterbury.
The cathedral's first archbishop was St. Augustine of Canterbury, previously abbot of St. Andrew's Benedictine Abbey in Rome. He was sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine founded the cathedral in 602 and dedicated it to St. Saviour. Archaeological investigations under the nave floor in 1993 revealed the foundations of the original Saxon cathedral, which had been built across a former Roman road. Leeds Castle, four miles southeast of Maidstone, Kent, England, dates back to 1119, though a manor house stood on the same site from the ninth century. The castle and grounds lie to the east of the village of Leeds, Kent, which should not be confused with the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire.
Built in 1119 by Robert De Crevecoeur to replace the earlier Saxon manor of Esledes,  the castle became a royal palace for King Edward I of England and his queen, Eleanor of Castile in 1278. Major improvements were made during his time, including the barbican, made up of three parts, each with its own entrance, drawbridge, gateway, and portcullis. The medieval keep is called the "Gloriette" in honour of Queen Eleanor.
In 1321, King Edward II besieged the castle after his queen was refused admission, and used ballistas, or springalds, to force its defenders to surrender.
Henry VIII transformed the castle for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and a painting commemorating his meeting with Francis I of France still hangs there. His daughter, Queen Elizabeth I was imprisoned in the castle for a time before her coronation.
| 99 (2 votes, average 5.00 out of 5) Knole is an English stately home in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre deer park.  It is remarkable in England for the degree to which the early 17th-century appearance of its state rooms is preserved: the interiors of many houses of this period were subsequently altered, but not in Knole's case. The surrounding deer park is also a remarkable survivor, having changed little over the past 400 years except for the loss of over 70% of its trees in the Great Storm of 1987.
The house was built by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, between 1456 and 1486, on the site of an earlier house belonging to James Fiennes, the Lord Say and Sele who was executed after the victory of Jack Cade's rebels at the Battle of Solefields. On Bourchier's death, the house was bequeathed to the See of Canterbury — Sir Thomas More appeared in revels there at the court of John Morton — and in subsequent years it continued to be enlarged, with the addition of a new large courtyard, now known as Green Court, and a new entrance tower.
98 (1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5) Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, near London. It's not been lived in by the British royal family since the 18th century. The palace is about 10 miles upstream from Central London, on the River Thames. It was originally built for Cardinal Wolsey, a favourite with King Henry VIII, circa 1514; in 1529, as Wolsey fell from favour, Hampton Court Palace was acquired by the King, who enlarged it. That's the official version - Henry took an instant liking to the palace and was more than a little miffed, that someone other than the king should own such an ostentatious palace. It was only a matter of time before it would somehow find its way into his possession.
The following century, William III's extensive rebuilding and expansion project, intended to rival Versailles was begun. Work halted in 1694,  leaving Hampton Court Palace in two distinct contrasting architectural styles, domestic Tudor and Baroque. While the palace's styles are an accident of fate, you can't deny that they work well together. The facade (South Front) in the picture on the right, is the work of Sir Christopher Wren.
Hampton Court Palace is one of the most haunted buildings in the country with famous spooks including: Catherine Howard, Jane Seymour and Henry VIIIth himself. In 2003 the palace hit the headlines when a security camera was pointed at a door which kept opening and revealed a 'ghost' as the cause. I'll let you be the judge of its authenticity (it's posted below), but the palace are not renowned for using low-ball tricks to generate publicity. |
London Buildings 
