- The Guardian,
- Friday March 31 2000
The church is hoping that up to 80,000 paying customers this summer will enter the 15th century gates of the palace, just across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, and it has already taken 45,000 advance bookings.
The palace, occupied with varying degrees of discomfort by every archbishop since the reign of King John, will be open to pre-booked customers from Tuesdays to Saturdays until November 4.
If the openings prove a success, they may be repeated in future years.
George Carey, the present archbishop, still occupies a second floor flat at the palace, and though that is not on the tourist route, visitors may be able to catch fleeting glimpses of him as he heads for his office. He told journalists yesterday that he and his wife Eileen feel very much part of the history of the place.
After paying £6 for adults and £4 for children and pensioners, visitors will be able to visit the palace's medieval though newly renovated crypt - reopened yesterday by the Prince of Wales - parts of which date back to the original palace on the site.
That was erected by Archbishop Hubert Walter in 1199 and burnt down by angry monks from Canterbury, fearful that they would be displaced, the next year.
The tour also takes in the Great Hall, guard room and archbishop's chapel.
Among the palace's treasures are the grubby embroidered leather gloves Charles I handed to his friend, the future Archbishop Juxon, on the scaffold in Whitehall in 1649; bibles owned by Archbishop Cranmer at the time of the reformation; and even the shell of a tortoise which was given the run of the place by Archbishop Laud in the 1630s, and which managed to survive until 1750 before being accidentally spiked by a gardener.
