Banqueting House, Whitehall of it in January 1649. The building was controversially re-faced in Portland stone in the 19th century, though the details of the original façade were faithfully preserved. Today, the Banqueting House is a national monument, open to the public and preserved as a Grade I listed building. It is cared for by an independent charity—Historic Royal Palaces—which receives no funding from the British Government or the Crown. The Palace of Whitehall was the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion that had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, known as York Place. The King was determined that his new palace
Whitehall 1658. During the Great Plague of London in 1665, people boarded coaches at Whitehall, then at the edge of urban London, in an attempt to escape. The King and court temporarily moved to Oxford to avoid the plague, while Samuel Pepys remarked in his diary on 29 June, "By water to Whitehall, where the Court is full of waggons and people ready to go out of town. This end of town every day grows very bad with plague". By the 18th century, traffic was struggling along the narrow streets south of Holbein Gate, which led to King Street Gate being