In 1829 the parish of Hampton obtained permission of George IV. to fit up the hall for divine service during the rebuilding of Hampton Church, and it was so used for about two years.
George II. but seldom visited Hampton Court, and George III. preferred Kew Palace. From his time no Sovereign has occupied Hampton Court as a royal residence.
On November 4, 1793, Richard Tickell, a political writer, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace, had been accustomed to sit and read on a parapet wall or kind of platform in one of the upper rooms. The spot was filled with flower-pots. On the day in question, while his carriage was waiting to take him and his family to town, his wife having left him for a moment, on her return missed him, and going to the open window, saw her husband lying in the garden below on the ground. Before she could reach him, he had expired. How the accident happened can never be known. He was said to have committed suicide, but there was no assignable reason for such an act.
The famous vine at Hampton Court, the largest in Europe, was planted from a slip in the year 1768. Its fruit, the black Hamburg kind, is reserved exclusively for the Queen’s table. The writer of a ’Tour of England,’ in 1798, says: ’In these gardens is a most remarkably large vine.... The gardener told me 1,550 bunches of grapes are now hanging upon it, the whole weight of which is estimated at 972 cwt.’ It bears the same number of bunches, that is, from 1,500 to 2,000, now.
For the last century or more apartments in Hampton Court Palace have generally been bestowed on the poorer female members of noble families, or on the widows of distinguished generals and admirals who have died in the service of their country. And several of these apartments contain large suites of rooms, some of which are compact and self-contained, whilst in other cases they are inconveniently disconnected. For the accommodation of tenants of such suites there survives an ancient Sedan chair on wheels, drawn by a chairman, and called the ’Push,’ which is used by ladies going out in the evening from one part of the building to another. Of the fifty-three apartments into which the palace is now divided, some contain as many as forty rooms, with five or six staircases.