STILL THE HOURS, HAMPTON COURT PALACE

Still The Hours was an audio-led journey through Hampton Court Palace after hours. Conceived from the stories of women who lived or worked in the palace from 1541 to 1925, the promenade experience blends binaural audio with site-specific spatial sound across the palace's rooms while visually transporting you through time periods from candlelight to gas lamps.

Produced in the centenary year of Virgina Woolf's Mrs Calloway, Still The Hours is inspired by the novel's exploration of time as both linear and circular. It is said that though the palace's astronomical clock has functioned to mark the passage of time over 500 years, on certain occasions the clock has paused or stuttered, as if within the palace gates, time is unreliable.

Featuring the voices of actors Kathryn Hunter (Black Doves, Harry Potter, Poor Things), Miranda Richardson (Good Omens, The Hours), and Ayesha Darker (The Father), alongside an ensemble cast of established and emerging actors, students from the Rose Youth Theatre and staff at Hampton Court Palace, Still The Hours listens in to women's lives at the palace, their struggles for survival, their triumph and losses over five centuries.

Still the Hours was commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces and ran from 19th to 30th March 2025.

(text written by Claire Doherty)