Buckingham Palace
A palace that went from a mulberry farm to the seat of the British Royal Family
Probably most famous for being the home of the UK’s monarch. This destination sits in central London and is a tourist hotspot with balcony appearances by a variety of royals and the popular changing of the guard ceremony. It hasn’t always been the monarch’s official London residence though, believe it or not, it can trace its history back to an old-fashioned house and a couple of mulberry trees.
Before the Palace
While Buckingham Palace has served as the administrative headquarters of the British monarch since 1837, the piece of land where the Palace sits can be traced back to James I in the early 17th century.
Originally marshland along the River Tyburn, the land had a series of owners before James I wandered along, including William the Conqueror and the Monks of Westminster Abbey. When James I acquired the land, he was known in other parts of a somewhat united Great Britain as James VI of Scotland.
James had the bright idea to plant mulberry trees in his little garden in an effort to breed silkworms. This was supposed to be an attempt in creating a rival to the French dominated luxurious silk industry of the 17th century. James planted 10 000 black mulberry trees in a 4 acre grove. But James made the common mistake of a lack of research, he planted thousands of the wrong type of mulberry tree. If you’re an expert on silkworms, you’d be able to tell me that when silkworms feed on anything but white mulberries, they produce a coarse thread. And James, well, he had 10 000 trees full of black mulberries. There were rumours that this mistake on James’ part was from intentionally bad advice by French adversaries, but let’s not let that put us off the French.
As a testament to James’ failed efforts as a gardener, a national collection of 38 name varieties of mulberry has been grown in the Palace grounds since 2001.
Buckingham House
Records from 1628, show that the late James’ mulberry farm also was home to a large house. Throughout the struggles of deciding who was going to rule the people, it would seem that the monarchy lost control of the land, and it popped up in John Sheffield’s possessions in 1698. But Sheffield found himself in the position I imagine a lot of privileged white men find themselves in, he wasn’t that much of a fan of the house that James had left behind. So he did the only thing he could do, knock it down and build a new one. Sheffield was made the Duke of Buckingham in 1703, and had the totally original idea of naming his house after himself.
It was around this time, and by ‘this time’ I mean the early to mid 1700s, that Buckingham House was in the running for the site of the British Museum. We can safely assume that this fell through, otherwise this would be a very different episode.
After pulling a Prince Harry and going off on its own for a while, Buckingham House was soon back in the royal sphere when George III decided to up his property portfolio. He bought the house, and the surrounding grounds, in 1762 as a retreat from the rigours of royal life and a family home for his Queen, Charlotte and their growing numbers of children. At this point, St James’ Palace was still the official residence of the monarch so it was decided this house would pretty much be where the family would reside. Of course, the House had to be renovated and fitted with all the latest technologies of the late 18th century. The improvements seemed to be effective with 14 of the couples 15 children being born at Buckingham House.
Buckingham Palace
George IV, George III and Charlotte’s only child to not be born at Buckingham House, was also a privileged white man and decided that a House just wasn’t enough for him, he needed another Palace, not to mention what that would do to the resell value. So he put John Nash in charge, who had the incredibly sexy job title of Official Architect to the Office of Woods and Forests.
Nash made a lot of changes, but he pretty much enlarged the house into a big u-shape, by extending the central building and adding a west wing, while the east wing was rebuilt. The building was faced with stone from quarries near Bath to make it look particularly pretty. And the newly acquired wings created a massive forecourt where a large arch, creatively called Marble Arch, was put in the middle so that you could feel quite grand as you approached the Palace. The building itself was heralded as a masterpiece in early 19th century architecture, but by 1828, Nash had blown through his budget and had spent in excess of £500 000. This pretty much got him fired.
A Mr Lord Duncannon took over from Nash as the First Commissioner of Works. Duncannon was a master delegator and so got Edward Blore to be the new architect. Blore, with an extremely limited budget, extended the east wing and pretty much built a whole new entrance on the southern side.
Now, I don’t know about you, but all this north, south, east, westing is just getting me all turned around. So here’s what you need to know. The Palace pretty much looked like it does today, but just without a whole side. So instead of being basically a square with a huge quadrangle in the middle, the side that we would call the ‘face’ of Buckingham Palace today, the one that you see when looking through the gates, with the balcony the royals like to pop out onto. It basically didn’t exist. So it was just a three sided square. And in the balcony’s place was a massive arch, the Marble Arch. Some pretty good renderings of this early building can be seen in the ITV series Victoria.
By this stage, George IV had died, and the new king, William IV, George’s brother, really didn’t share George’s enthusiasm about having another palace and definitely didn’t like the idea of moving from his comfy abode at Clarence House. He was however, kind enough to offer the still incomplete Buckingham Palace as a replacement when, in 1834, the old Houses of Parliament burnt down. Awkwardly, this was declined, but Parliament kinda did something right, when they voted to allow the ‘completing and perfecting’ of the Palace for royal use.
Seat of the monarchy
Thanks to Parliament’s decision, Victoria, the Queen, was able to make Buckingham Palace her, and later Albert’s, official London residence, which she did in 1837. This was the first time that a monarch had moved the seat of the court in more than 300 years. St James’ Palace had held the title since 1531, when Henry VIII decided he liked it best. Victoria, taking on the Patriarchy. But don’t feel bad for St. James’ Palace, it’s still home to several royal family members, probably the most notable being, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal.
She’d only been Queen for eight years, and she was popping out children like it was going out of fashion, but Victoria and Albert found that the entire Palace that they had to themselves, just wasn’t cutting it size wise. Can you just image Victoria and Albert attempting to live in a three or four bedroom home today. It almost elitists a chuckle. Old mate Edward Blore was told to prepare plans for a new wing, which would effectively close in the grand forecourt. And that balcony we talked about not a minute ago, well, that was added at Prince Albert’s suggestion. Great foresight that guy.
Queen Victoria was actually the first person to use the now famous balcony when she stepped out onto it in 1851 for the opening of the Great Exhibition, another Albert mastermind; which pretty much showcased the ground-breaking innovations being made in international manufacturing. Victoria also stepped out onto the balcony when she watched her troops depart for the Crimean War and then again when she welcomed those lucky enough to return.
Victoria, like many of us came upon a cash flow problem for her renovation. And because the Queen does not go to the bank to ask for a loan, she did the royal version of gumtree and sold the Brighton Pavilion. Now that her money issue was sorted, her space issue was not. Where the fourth side of the square was meant to go, they found the Marble Arch in the way. So what did they do? Well, I’ll tell you. They didn’t design around it, or move the fourth side behind it. Nope, they decided that they were going to move it. And that is why boys and girls, you can see the Marble Arch in the north-east corner of Hyde Park today. But just remember, that it was kicked out of its home and forced to live out in the wilderness.
Now here’s a feature Charlotte didn’t have in her ‘modern’ Buckingham House. Electricity was put in, in 1883, only in the ballroom to start, but over the next four years, it was installed throughout the whole Palace. I would hate to be the Palace electrician then or now, that’s over 40 000 lightbulbs you’ll be replacing.
The Renaissance style interiors of the renovated Palace, led critics to describe it as the ‘Headquarters of Taste’. Even with this title to call its own, Edward VII, Victoria’s son and the Queen’s great-grandfather, wanted to leave his own mark on the Palace, and it’s his taste that we see in the white and gold style of the Ballroom and a few of the state rooms. This is also probably a good time to point out that Edward is the only monarch to have been born and to have died at Buckingham Palace. And now that Royal children are born in Hospitals, it’s very possible that he may be the last. Continuing his father’s tradition of leaving his own mark on the Palace, George V, the Queen’s grandfather, decided that the whole Palace needed a facelift, this time with harder-wearing Portland Stone. The procedure to change from the Bath stone, which had become quite worn from the terrible London pollution, took place in 1913.
The forecourt that we see today, which is the bit of space that separates the royal balcony from the peasants behind the gates and where the Changing of the Guard ceremony takes place, was actually formed in 1911, when the gates that hold back those pesky peasants were put in. All part of the Victoria Memorial Scheme. Ahh Vicky, how you shaped us.
The Palace and the War
1914, with its face newly applied, saw the Palace put right into the middle of the Suffragette Movement, when 20 000 suffragettes attempted to breach the palace gates so they could present their ‘Votes for Women’ petition to the King. Why they weren’t allowed to just hand it to him, I don’t understand, but the whole thing resulted in several women being arrested and some even chaining themselves to the gates of the Palace.
It was the Second World War that brought out the stubbornness of the Royal family. Basically, they refused to leave London, even when the Palace itself was being bombed. The Queen Mother, who was going by Queen Elizabeth at the time is recorded as saying,
“The children will not leave unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does, and the King will not leave the country in any circumstances”.
The Palace received nine direct bomb hits, thanks to the Blitz, and decades later, Prince Philip created the Queen’s Gallery from the bombed ruins of the Private Chapel.
The Palace was allowed to be a positive focal point for the celebration of VE Day, marking the end of the war. The family made about eight balcony appearances throughout the day, with the princesses secretly joining the crowd for the final balcony appearance. A quote from the Queen herself, then Princess Elizabeth:
“We stood outside and shouted, ‘We want the King’… I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life”.
Buckingham Palace today
The Palace today is a pretty amazing building. Standing in front of it, you realise just how big the thing is. It makes you wonder was Victoria and Albert were on about.
Throughout the Palace there are 775 rooms, but telling you the cool and exciting things about a whole lotta rooms is going to take way too much time then I can fit in this little podcast. But if you head on over to the Buckingham Palace website, there is heaps of awesome information on specific pieces of furniture and other items. But I will walk you through one of the most important rooms in any Palace.
The Throne Room in Buckingham Palace has had the pleasure to house countless balls, functions and audiences with monarchs, both of the past and present. The most important thing in the Throne Room is probably the throne chairs. They take centre stage and they even sit on their own little podium. They are made from carved and gilded beechwood and the upholstery is crimson silk damask. Just in case you didn’t know, silk damask, from what I can figure, is a silk pattern weaved into the fabric, as opposed to embroidered on top of the fabric. These chairs are so special that they have the silk pattern weaved into the fabric and then on top of that they have been embroidered as well. What have they been embroidered with I hear you ask. Well let me tell you. On one chair you will not be surprised to hear that it is embroidered with the Queen’s Cypher, an ‘E’, ‘I’, another ‘I’, and an ‘R’. And probably equally unsurprising, the second chair is embroidered with a ‘P’, for Philip of course. The Queen’s chair was made in 1953 for her coronation, and Prince Philip’s chair was made after the coronation, because him sitting down clearly isn’t as important.
The Queen’s Cypher is also known as the Royal Cypher. You can actually see this on the back of all coins minted in the Commonwealth, post stamps, post boxes (particularly the pillar post boxes), and medals, among other things. The cyphers are generally put up on buildings commissioned by the monarch as well. Each monarch has their own individual cypher, and if that stuff interests you there’s some great resources out there on how and why they were created. I can highly recommend the postal museum website. They’ve got some great nuggets of information. But basically the cypher stands for Elizabeth II Regina, which can be translated from the Latin to Queen Elizabeth II, and has been generally used to mark a monarch’s time on the throne. You will probably also find royal cyphers on a couple of buildings here and there if you take a closer look. Each of the cyphers are encircled by the Garter circlet, which was taken from the Order of the Garter, the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain. You may have seen these guys in photos or on TV, they’re the ones that have those weird fluffy hats with massive fluffy feathers sticking out of them. And the circlet is topped with a crown.
Now, if we wander off from the thrones, and head towards one of the corners of the room, you’ll also see Queen Victoria’s Throne. This one was made in 1837 also from gilded wood, but her upholstery is crimson velvet with lacework. And the chair is a bit more showy and decorative, with the whole top rail of the chair carved with a crown, VR (Victoria’s cypher) and the three national emblems (a rose of England, a thistle for Scotland, and a shamrock for Ireland).
Now I’m about to throw some numbers at you, so don’t be alarmed. You already know that the Throne Room is just one of the 775 rooms that Buckingham Palace has to offer. Within those 775, you have 19 state rooms (all of which can be viewed by the public when the Queen goes on holiday to Balmoral and the palace is opened up to the people), there are 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and approximately 78 bathrooms. Those numbers I just read out to you only cover 429 of the rooms, so it’s your guess what the other 346 rooms are used for. Oh yeah, and the Palace has 760 windows and 1514 doors. The building itself takes up 830 000 square feet, is 180 metres long across the front, that balcony again, the building is 24 metres high, and 120 metres deep (this includes that central quadrangle). The Palace sees more than 50 000 visitors each year as guests of Her Majesty for garden parties and other events. Who knows how many people actually wander past just to have a look.
And to end, here’s a fun little fact: Brian May sang ‘God Save The Queen’ from the rooftop of the Palace to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. What a sight that would have been. I mean, I suppose we can all imagine it, but it’s just not the same. Queen singing for the Queen.
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