Where was Anne Boleyn Born?

We had some comments back from the National Trust that he should not have said this.  Apparently he should have said that ‘It is believed that Anne Boleyn was born at Blickling’.  Are they just being pedantic, or is there a real issue here?

Anne Boleyn’s birthplace and date has been controversial for many years, with her date of birth taken as 1507 at Hever Castle in Kent. But in 1986 the late Eric Ives, who went on to become Emeritus Professor of English History at Birmingham University, published the seminal biography of Anne, and on the first page states that ‘she was in fact born in Norfolk, almost certainly at the Boleyn home at Blickling‘.  The problem is that their is no documentary evidence of either her date or place of birth, so assumptions have to be made based on later letters and documents that have been preserved.

Writings from the later 16th and 17th century put her birth date at 1507, but research by other scholars, including art historian Hugh Paget show that she was 12 or 13 when she left England for the European court of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria in 1513.  And a key piece of evidence is a letter, written by Anne in ‘schoolgirl French’ to her father from Margaret’s court in 1513.  This was not the work of a six year old! Ives goes on to present further evidence of the earlier date, which suggests she was most likely born at Blickling, since the family didn’t move to Hever until 1506, after the death of Anne’s grandfather, Sir William Boleyn.

So it seems very reasonable to state that Anne Boleyn was born at Blickling.  But was she born in the house now standing on the site?

The general view held by the National Trust is that the present house was built by Henry Hobart in the 17th century on the footprint of a former Tudor house.  But remarkably, very little historical research has been done on the house and little is known of it’s origins.  Unfortunately no drawings or paintings of the earlier house have survived.  However we do know that the Boleyns built a substantial house here.  We know it had the existing double courtyard footprint of the current house, and Tudor brickwork has been identified in some of the corner towers.  So it seems likely, that rather than pulling down the existing house and starting again, Hobart built on to what was already there and added new features, such as the present front of the building.

So was Chuck making a reasonable statement when he said Anne was born here while indicating the house behind him?

You decide.