Why did the narrator want to live in hampton court? Why did he cancel the idea?

From the text:

J. would love to live at Hampton Court for its peace and quiet.

I’ve often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court. It looks so peaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round in the early morning before many people are about.

None-the-less, in hindsight he questioned that desire on the grounds it would be dull and depressing. 

But, there, I don’t suppose I should really care for it when it came to actual practice. It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in the evening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, and the echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and now drew nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save the beating of one’s own heart.