In the small, dark chapel of a 16th-century country house a priest is saying Mass, using the Latin Rite that in a few years’ time will be a capital offence. His footsteps echo as he purifies the altar. Thurible chains clank. And choirboys sing elaborate polyphony appropriate to a royal occasion – because high above them in a “closet” gallery sits a king, Henry VIII; and in a separate closet to his right, a queen (although she won’t be for much longer), Anne Boleyn.
The date is mid October, 1535. The mansion is The Vyne in Hampshire, seat of William Sandys, Henry’s Lord Chamberlain. And to be truthful, none of this is actually happening – except in sound and the imagination of the National Trust, which owns The Vyne and has created what it calls an “immersive experience”, designed to give some sense of how it might have been to witness pre-Reformation liturgy on the cusp of sweeping change.
