The 600-room residence of the British sovereign in London, UK, and the administrative headquarters of the monarchy. George III bought Buckingham House in 1761 for his wife Queen Charlotte to use as a family home near to St James's Palace. It was reconstructed in the 1820s by George IV. The escalating costs of the project led to the dismissal of the architect, John Nash, on the king's death in 1830. Edward Blore was appointed to complete the work, but the palace remained unused until Queen Victoria's accession in 1837. The famous east facade was refaced in Portland Stone by Sir Aston Webb in 1913. The gates, railings, and forecourt, where the Changing of the Guard takes place, were added two years earlier. Some rooms were opened to the public for the first time in summer 1993. Over 50 000 people visit the Palace each year, many at investitures and the royal garden parties.
Buckingham Palace is the official London residence of the British monarch. The Palace is a setting for state occasions and royal entertaining, a base for many officially visiting Heads of State, and a major tourist attraction. "Buckingham Palace" or simply "The Palace" commonly refers to the source of Press statements issued by the offices of the Royal Household.
In the Middle Ages, Buckingham Palace's site formed part of the Manor of Ebury. (A loophole in the lease of Charles I allowed the area to revert back to royal hands in the 18th century.) Precursors of Buckingham Palace were Blake House, Goring House, and Arlington House.
Originally known as Buckingham House, the building forming the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 and acquired by King George III in 1762 as a private residence. Buckingham Palace finally became the official royal palace of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. The east front was refaced in Portland stone in 1913 as a backdrop to the Victoria Memorial, creating the present-day public face of Buckingham Palace, including the famous balcony.
The original early 19th-century interior designs, many of which still survive, included widespread use of brightly coloured scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Sir Charles Long. Many smaller reception rooms are furnished in the Chinese regency style with furniture and fittings brought from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and from Carlton House following the death of King George IV. The Buckingham Palace Gardens are the largest private gardens in London, originally landscaped by Capability Brown, but redesigned by William Townsend Aiton of Kew Gardens and John Nash.
The State Rooms form the nucleus of the working Palace and are used regularly by The Queen and members of the royal family for official and state entertaining. Buckingham Palace is one of the world's most familiar buildings and more than 50,000 people visit the palace each year as guests to banquets, lunches, dinners, receptions and the royal garden parties.
History
The site
In the Middle Ages, Buckingham Palace's site formed part of the Manor of Ebury (also called Eia). The marshy ground was watered by the river Tyburn, which still flows below the courtyard and south wing of the palace.
In 1531 King Henry VIII acquired from Eton College the Hospital of St James (later St James's Palace), and in 1536 he received the Manor of Ebury from Westminster Abbey. These transfers brought the site of Buckingham Palace back into royal hands for the first time since William the Conqueror had given it away almost 500 years earlier.
Various owners leased it from royal landlords and the freehold was the subject of frenzied speculation in the 17th century.
Eventually, in the late 17th century, the freehold was inherited from the property tycoon Sir Hugh Audley by the great heiress Mary Davies.
First houses on the site
Possibly the first house erected within the site was that of a Sir William Blake, around 1624. (It was this critical omission that helped the British royal family regain the freehold under King George III.)
The improvident Goring defaulted on his rents; Arlington House rose on the site — the southern wing of today's palace — the next year, and its freehold was sold on in 1702.
The house which forms the architectural core of the present palace was built for the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby in 1703 to the design of William Winde.
Buckingham House was eventually sold by Buckingham's descendant, Sir Charles Sheffield, in 1762 to King George III for £21,000. (Like his grandfather, George II, George III refused to sell the mulberry garden interest, so that Sheffield had been unable to purchase the full freehold of the site.) The house was originally intended as a private retreat for the royal family, and in particular for Queen Charlotte, and was known as The Queen's House. St. James's Palace remained the official and ceremonial royal residence; indeed, the tradition continues to date of foreign ambassadors being formally accredited to "the Court of St. James's", even though it is at Buckingham Palace that they present their credentials and staff to the Queen upon their appointment.
House to palace
Queen Charlotte died in 1818 and George III in 1820. The spendthrift King George IV decided to enlarge Buckingham House to use in conjunction with St James's Palace as had his father, but by 1826 he had decided to convert the house to a fully equipped royal palace. The palace that arose formed three sides of an open cour d'honneur, with the former Buckingham House as the corps de logis. This is the palace much as it is today, but without the great east front (facing The Mall) which now encloses the quadrangle. The interiors of the palace were to be of unparalleled splendour.
By the time of George IV's death, the escalating cost of the still unfinished palace was causing concern in both parliament and the press. A less idealistic but more businesslike architect than Nash, Blore retained Nash's contributions and completed the palace in a similar, if more solid and less picturesque, vein. The final cost to the nation of rebuilding Buckingham Palace was more than £719,000.
Though William IV and Queen Adelaide held receptions and courts in the state rooms, they never lived in the palace, preferring to remain at Clarence House, the more modest London mansion they had commissioned to be built before their succession. Moreover, when the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834, the King offered the incomplete palace to the nation as a replacement seat of government. (The offer was declined and the old Palace of Westminster rebuilt.)
Many of the smaller reception rooms were furnished during William IV's reign — as they remain today — in the Chinese Regency style, utilising many of the fireplaces, decorations, and furniture brought from George IV's palaces, the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and from Carlton House, following his death.
Garden and precincts
At the backof the palace is the large park-like garden, the largest private garden in London. The landscape design was by Capability Brown but the garden was redesigned at the time of the palace rebuilding by William Townsend Aiton of Kew Gardens and John Nash.
Like the palace, the Buckingham Palace Gardens are rich in works of art.
In June 2002 the Queen invited the public into her garden for entertainment for the first time during her reign. As part of her Golden Jubilee Weekend thousands of Britons were invited to apply for tickets to Party at the Palace where the guitarist Brian May of the band Queen performed his God Save The Queen guitar solo on top of Buckingham Palace. This concert was preceded the previous evening by a Prom at the Palace. During the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations in 2006 the garden was the scene of Children's Party at the Palace for an audience of 2,000 children.
The garden is the setting for the many garden parties held by the Queen each summer.
Next to the palace is the Royal Mews, also designed by Nash, where the royal carriages, including the Gold State Coach, are housed.
Home of the monarch
Buckingham Palace finally became the principal Royal residence in 1837 on the accession of Queen Victoria. While the State Rooms were a riot of gilt and colour, the necessities of the new palace were somewhat less luxurious. It was also said that the staff were lax and lazy and the palace was dirty. Following the Queen's marriage in 1840, her husband, Prince Albert, concerned himself with a reorganization of the household offices and staff, and with the design faults of the palace. The problems were rectified, the builders finally leaving the palace in 1840.
By 1847, the couple had found the palace too small for Court life and their growing family, and consequently the new wing, designed by Edward Blore, was built, enclosing the central quadrangle. This large east wing, facing The Mall is today the 'public face' of Buckingham Palace and contains the balcony from which the Royal Family acknowledge the crowds on momentous occasions and annually following Trooping the Colour.
Before Prince Albert's demise, Queen Victoria was known to love music and dancing, and the greatest contemporary musicians entertained at Buckingham Palace. Strauss' 'Alice Polka' was first performed at the palace in 1849 in honour of the Queen's daughter, Princess Alice. Under Victoria, Buckingham Palace was frequently the scene of lavish costume balls, in addition to the routine royal ceremonies, investitures and presentations.
When widowed in 1861, the griefstricken Queen withdrew from public life and left Buckingham Palace to live at Windsor Castle, Balmoral Castle, and Osborne House. For many years the palace was seldom used, and even neglected. Court functions were still held at Windsor Castle rather than at the palace, presided over by the sombre Queen habitually dressed in mourning black.
Interior
The principal rooms of the Palace are contained on the piano nobile behind the west-facing garden facade at the rear of the Palace. The centre of this ornate suite of State Rooms is the Music Room, its large bow the dominant feature of the facade. Other rooms leading from the Picture Gallery are the Throne Room and the Green Drawing Room. The Green Drawing room serves as a huge anteroom to the Throne Room, and is part of the ceremonial route to the Throne from the Guard Room at the top of the Grand Staircase.
Directly underneath the State Apartments is a suite of slightly less grand rooms known as the semi-state apartments.
Between 1847 and 1850, when Blore was building the new east wing, the Brighton Pavilion was once again plundered of its fittings. The red and blue Chinese Luncheon Room is made up from parts of the Brighton banqueting and music rooms, but has a chimney piece, also from Brighton, in design more Indian than Chinese.
At the centre of this wing is the famous balcony, with behind its glass doors the Centre Room. The Chinese Luncheon Room and Yellow Drawing Room are situated at each end of this gallery, with the Centre Room obviously placed in the centre.
Visiting heads of state today, when staying at the palace, occupy a suite of rooms known as the Belgian suite, which is on the ground floor of the North-facing garden front.
Court ceremonies
During the current reign court ceremony has undergone a radical change, and entry to the palace is no longer the prerogative of just the upper class.
There has been a progressive relaxation of the dress code governing formal court uniform and dress.
In 1924 Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was the first man to be received by a monarch inside the palace wearing a lounge suit;
Today there is no official dress code. Most men invited to Buckingham Palace in the daytime choose to wear service uniform or morning coats, and in the evening, depending on the formality of the occasion, black tie or white tie.
One of the first major changes was in 1958 when the Queen abolished the presentation parties for debutantes. The ceremony corresponded to the "court drawing rooms" of earlier reigns, and Queen Elizabeth II replaced the presentations with large and frequent palace garden parties for an invited cross-section of British society.
Investitures, which include the conferring of knighthoods by dubbing with a sword, and other awards take place in the palace's Victorian Ballroom, built in 1854. At 123 ft by 60 ft (37 m by 20 m), this is the largest room in the palace. The Beatles were among the first non-establishment artists to be awarded honours at the palace.
State banquets also take place in the Ballroom. The largest and most formal reception at Buckingham Palace takes place every November, when the Queen entertains members of the foreign diplomatic corps resident in London.
Smaller ceremonies such as the reception of new ambassadors take place in the '1844 Room'. Larger lunch parties often take place in the curved and domed Music Room, or the State Dining Room.
Since the bombing of the palace chapel in World War II, royal christenings have sometimes taken place in the Music Room.
The largest functions of the year are the garden parties for up to 8,000 invitees, taking tea and sandwiches outdoors in a series of marquees.
Modern history
In 1901 the accession of Edward VII saw new life breathed into the palace. Many people feel King Edward's heavy redecoration of the palace does not complement Nash's original work.
The last major building work took place during the reign of King George V when, in 1913, Sir Aston Webb redesigned Blore's 1850 East Front to resemble in part Giacomo Leoni's Lyme Park in Cheshire. Queen Mary also had many new fixtures and fittings installed, such as the pair of marble Empire-style chimneypieces by Benjamin Vulliamy, dating from 1810, which the Queen had installed in the ground floor Bow Room, the huge low room at the centre of the garden facade. This room, 69 feet (21 m) long, previously known as the South Drawing Room, has one of Nash's finest ceilings, coffered with huge gilt console brackets, and is referred to by the author and historian Olwen Hedley in her book Buckingham Palace as the most beautiful in the palace, grander and more lavish than either the Throne Room or the Ballroom, which was built to take over the Blue Drawing Room's original function.
The last major extension to the palace was in 1850. In 1999 it was stated that the palace contained 19 state rooms, 52 principal bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, and 78 bathrooms. While this may seem large, it is small compared with the Tsar's palaces in St. Petersburg and at Tsarskoe Selo, the Papal Palace in Rome, the Royal Palace of Madrid, or indeed the former Palace of Whitehall, and tiny compared to the Forbidden City and Potala Palace. The relative smallness of the palace may be best appreciated from within, looking out over the inner quadrangle.
During World War I the Palace, then the home of King George V and Queen Mary, escaped unscathed.
During World War II the Palace fared worse: it was bombed no less than seven times, and was a deliberate target, as it was thought by the Nazis that the destruction of Buckingham Palace would demoralise the nation. One bomb fell in the palace quadrangle while King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were in residence, but while many windows were blown in, no serious damage was reported. The most serious and publicised bombing was the destruction of the Palace chapel in 1940: coverage of this event was played in cinemas all over England to show the common suffering of rich and poor. The Royal family were seen as sharing their subjects' hardship, as The Sunday Graphic reported:-
On September 15, 1940 an RAF pilot, Ray Holmes, rammed a German plane attempting to bomb the palace.
On VE Day (May 8, 1945), the Palace was the centre of British celebrations, with the King, Queen and the Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen, and Princess Margaret appearing on the balcony, with the palace's blacked-out windows behind them, to the cheers from a vast crowd in the Mall.
Security
Today though Royal security is high, it is better known for a series of high-profile intrusions, both at the Palace and elsewhere. The famous armed sentries on guard at the front of the palace are commonly thought to be ceremonial, but they have always had a security role. The palace also contains its own police station, and the Royal Family have their own protection officers at all times.
A notorious incident occurred in 1982, when Michael Fagan gained access to the Queen's bedroom while she was asleep. In 2003 a reporter for the Daily Mirror, Ryan Parry, spent two months working as a footman inside Buckingham Palace. Bush, who stayed at the Palace, and the Mirror published clandestine photographs of Bush's bedroom, along with the Queen's breakfast table and the Duke of York's room. The Palace took the Mirror to court for invasion of privacy, and the newspaper handed over its materials, and paid some of the Queen's costs in an out-of-court settlement in November 2003.
Most lapses of security have been outside the palace: In 1974, Ian Ball attempted to kidnap the Princess Royal at gunpoint in the Mall while she was returning to the palace, wounding several people in the process. In 1981, three German tourists camped in the gardens of the palace, after climbing over the heavily barbwired wall, purportedly believing the area to be Hyde Park. In 1993, anti-nuclear protestors also scaled the palace walls and held a sit down protest on the palace lawn. In 1995 a student, John Gillard, was able to deliberately ram the gates of the palace, knocking one of the great wrought iron gates weighing 3,300 pounds (1.5 tonnes) off its hinges. In 1997, an absconded mentally ill patient was found wandering the palace grounds, which ordered another security review.
Most recently, in 2004, a protester advocating the legal rights of single fathers, received wide press coverage when he climbed onto a ledge near the ceremonial balcony on the east front dressed as Batman. Probably the most incredible was in 1837, when a 12-year-old boy known to history as The boy Cotton managed to live for a year undetected inside the palace. Of the eight assassination attempts made on Queen Victoria, at least three occurred in the vicinity of the palace gates. In the early 20th century the front of the palace became a favoured venue for suffragettes, who would chain themselves to the gilded iron railings. Over the years numerous intruders have been apprehended in the palace grounds, including one who wished to propose marriage to Princess Anne, and who was declared insane.
The Palace in the 21st century
Today, Buckingham Palace is not only the home of the Queen and Prince Philip but also the London residence of the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex. The palace also houses the office of the monarchy and its associated functions.
In addition to being the weekday home of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the palace is the workplace of 450 people. The forecourt of Buckingham Palace is used for Changing of the Guard, a major ceremony and tourist attraction (daily during the summer months;
The palace is not the private property of the Queen; Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace and their art collections belong to the nation. The priceless furnishings, paintings, fittings and other artefacts, many by Fabergé, from Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are known collectively as the Royal Collection; owned by the nation, they can be viewed by the public when the palace and castle are open to the public at various times of the year. The rooms containing the Queen's Gallery are on the site of the former chapel, which was damaged by one of the seven bombs to fall on the Palace during World War II.
The Mall, the ceremonial approach road to the palace, extends from Admiralty Arch, up the Mall, around the Victoria Memorial to the Palace forecourt.
The Summer Opening of the Palace State Rooms to the public was a huge change to tradition in the 1990s. Each Summer, during August and September, the West Wing of the Palace is opened to the public.
Big Royal Dig graphic reconstructions of Buckingham Palace history
As part of the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations, the Big Royal Dig carried out by the Time Team of archaeologists (see Buckingham Palace Gardens for full findings) from 25th-28th August 2006 produced some spectacular graphic reconstructions of Buckingham Palace history.
Graphic Reconstruction 1 shows the familiar East Front of Buckingham Palace removed (in the background of the picture). (There is no truth in the frequently heard claim that it was removed as being too small for Queen Victoria's carriage: the Gold State Coach can pass through the arch, as was seen in the coronation procession of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.)
Graphic Reconstruction 2 combines architect John Nash's Palace building with the original Buckingham House wing. (The more familiar East Front of the Palace is out of frame on the right of shot.)
Unfortunately, the Big Royal Dig did not succeed in unearthing traces of three prior residences erected on the Palace site, namely Buckingham House (1703), Arlington House (1674) and Goring House (1633).
User Comments Add a comment…