Banqueting House, Whitehall room at Wilton House, to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family. Given the attention and effort which were lavished by Charles I on the Banqueting House, his end was not without irony. On the afternoon of 30 January 1649 he stepped out of a first floor window of Banqueting House onto the scaffold which had been erected outside for the purpose of his execution. The actual window no longer exists as it was not in the main hall but just outside it in an adjacent part of the building which has now gone and, pictured from the
Horse Guards (building) building was commissioned by King Charles II in 1663, on the site of a cavalry stables which had been built on the tiltyard of the Palace of Whitehall during the Commonwealth. Built of red brick and costing some £4,000, it comprised a central range with a clock tower, under which an arch connected Whitehall with St James's Park; two wings enclosed a courtyard with two large sentry boxes for mounted troopers on the Whitehall side, facing the palace gate. Entry to the park, then an enclosed private garden, was controlled by special ivory passes issued to favoured courtiers, a tradition