The grace and favour scheme at Hampton Court Palace began in the mid 18th century when the palace ceased being a royal residence. An act of parliament was passed allowing the Lord Chamberlain to grant apartments to successful applicants by 'the grace and favour of the monarch'. This practice ceased in the mid 1970s, since when the grace and favour community has declined, with only a handful of residents now remaining.

Looking beyond the apparent luxury reveals another story. Residents often complained about the cost of heating their cold, damp apartments, and some apartments lacked bathrooms until after the Second World War. Improvements to apartments could be made, if residents could afford it, but the cost was often prohibitive.

Most residents were female (at times only 8% were male) whose income and influence had declined when their husbands had passed away. The continued decline of aristocratic wealth and influence also meant that employing households of servants became too expensive, until within time the grace and favour scheme came to resemble council housing for the great and good.

Grace and favour is a strange dichotomy. It is everything modern Britain isn't supposed to be - undemocratic, privileged, aristocratic - and yet grace and favour residents made a notable contribution to British history. Diplomats, professional soldiers, suffragettes, inventors and many others graced the palace through the scheme, but the grace and favour story must compete with Hampton Court's past regal residents for limited resources, and Henry VIII will always come off winner in that competition.

Grace and favour residents left no Great Hall, Chapel Royal, Privy Garden or equivalent, and most apartments now stand empty or have long since been converted to office or storage space. Although the marks and traces of their lives still exist in the fabric of the palace, both the public's understanding of the scheme and access to the remaining apartments is limited, reflecting the uneasy position which grace and favour now occupies in British history.