Hampton Court first belonged to Cardinal Wolsey. This extract is from Alison Weir's book, "Henry VIII: King and Court":
“Wolsey aspired to a lifestyle rivalling that of the King himself. In the spring of 1515, he had begun building the most splendid palace yet seen in England. After consulting his physicians as to the most healthy site within a twenty-mile radius of London, he acquired from the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St John of Jerusalem a lease of their manor at Hampton by the Thames, fifteen miles from Westminster. It boasted a fifteenth-century courtyard house which had perhaps been built by the previous tenant, Giles, Lord Daubeney, Lord Chamberlain to Henry VII, who had visited him there with Elizabeth of York shortly before the latter's death in childbirth in 1503.
Wolsey demolished this building; the only remnant of it is the clock in the campanile above Clock Court, which bears the date 1479. In its place he raised a grand red-brick double-courtyard house with mullioned windows, turrets, tall chimneys, a moat, gardens, a large service complex and an advanced system of conduits and sewers. It was designed by Ellis Smith on a collegiate plan, and decorated with antique work in terracotta: there are putti supporting Wolsey's coat of arms above the clock-tower gateway, and medallions of Roman emperors with exquisite decorative borders, which were carved in 1521 by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni di Maiano and based on those commissioned by the Cardinal of Amboise for his palace at Gaillon, near Rouen. Hampton Court was ready for occupation by 1517, when Wolsey first entertained the King and Queen there, and finally completed in 1525. By then, it was said to contain one thousand rooms. Here Wolsey lived in princely magnificence.
The palace was entered by an imposing five-storey gatehouse with octagonal towers surmounted by lead cupolas at each corner and a large oriel window. In the Base Court was accommodation for Wolsey’s household and forty-five guest lodgings; 280 beds with silk hangings were kept made up in readiness for visitors. A second gateway led to Clock Court, where the Cardinal’s great hall, banqueting chamber, gallery and chapel were located.
Wolsey spared no expense in making Hampton Court the most luxurious residence in England. His own apartments were panelled and sported moulded ceilings and rich friezes and paintings, while the outward chambers were adorned with priceless tapestries, sixty large carpets presented by the Venetian Senate, and furnishings of unprecedented splendour, including five chairs of estate; one tapestry owned by Wolsey, ‘The Triumph of Fame over Death’, based on a work by Petrarch, stll hangs at Hampton Court in the great watching chamber. A special lodging in a three-storey donjon in Clock Court was reserved for the King and Queen. The palace lay within two thousand acres of parkland surrounded by a brick wall, part of which remains today. The Kingston Road divided the park into the Home Park and Bushy Park.
[Wolsey was still dominant, and his enemies were growing more powerful.] Although he still relied heavily on [the Cardinal], it is possible that the King, now a mature man with a changing outlook, was beginning to look askance at the Cardinal’s wealth. In June 1525, Wolsey made the grand – and politic – gesture of presenting to Henry his newly completed palace of Hampton Court with all its contents, receiving in exchange Richmond Palace, which was nowhere near as big or magnificent. Apparently the King, seeing that the lodgings Wolsey had built for him at Hampton Court were far better than any in his own palaces, had dropped a few heavy hints. The Cardinal, however, was still allowed to make use of Hampton Court on occasions, especially for official entertaining.
In the 1530s, in the wing to the right of the gatehouse at Hampton Court, Henry VIII built his Great House of Easement, a two-storey communal public lavatory with fourteen seats. The waste emptied into the palace’s main drain, bypassing the moat over which the building projected, and was flushed way by tidal water from the river (Thames).”
The above is about Hampton Court and its Tudor beginnings.
Below are links to more information.
http://tudorhistory.org/places/hcp/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/hampton_court_01.shtml
An overview of Hampton Court throughout history:
http://www.hrp.org.uk/hamptoncourtpalace/stories.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Court_Palace