A Brief History of Hayloft Road Palace by local history expert Mr G. W. Hurling, available in all good bookshops.
This lavish tome is the perfect coffee table-sized book, if like us, your coffee table has a missing leg. Fully illustrated with over 700 photographs of both the interior and exterior of the Palace, including never-before-seen photos of the fabled ‘Honey Room’ which was stripped during the Icelandic Fishing War and hidden for posterity to prevent it falling into enemy hands.
The Palace was originally built in 1489 by the current Squire’s long-lost ancestor HRH Admiral Emperor Lord Nelson Jones, First Duke and Duchess of Smalltown, as a storage barn to house his collection of medals. Since then it has undergone several restorations and extensions to become the Palace we all know and love.
In 1646, after noticing the poor people hanging around street corners in the parish the Duke declared “Must I be forever cursed by the sight of these ingrates? Can no one rid me of these troublesome peasants? I suppose I’ll have to do it myself.” He immediately ordered that anyone caught trying to get served before him in the local Apothecary be rounded up and imprisoned in the barn.
There they were put to work carving blocks from Balsa wood for use in the Duke’s scheme to build a pyramid on the nearby Short Island.
By 1713 the Duke was delighted to learn that all the reprobates had died from inhaling Balsa wood shavings but that a new problem was blighting the area. Residents were suffering from a strange mental illness which meant they no longer recognised the Duke and he was often forced to demand “Don’t you know who I am?”.
Overnight the sign on the barn was changed to read ‘Lunatic Asylum’. If you look up above the door at the Palace you can still see that sign today.
Residents who failed to recognise the Duke or who queried his right to park his carriage wherever he wanted were immediately incarcerated in the asylum where they were put to work filing important papers and correspondence. Unfortunately, because many of them were illiterate this led to a vast amount of Smalltown history being lost forever, a tradition which continues to this day.
During this period the Duke realised that money could be made by selling tickets to his friends and family who, for a small fee of 94 guineas, could pop along to jeer and laugh at the poor unfortunates within. Some say that this is where the current Squire got his idea for The White Elephant Enclosure.
Coming in part two: Hayloft Road Palace – The Squire Years.
A fascinating piece. I do hope you cover the Roman origins of the area, under the command of the infamous Teflonicus Adulterous.