The
Buckingham
Palace
Buckingham Palace has served as the official London residence of Britain's sovereigns since 1837.
It evolved from a town house that was owned from the beginning 949v213j of the eighteenth century by the Dukes of Buckingham. Today it is The Queen's official residence, with 775 rooms.
Although in use for the many official events and receptions held by The Queen, areas of Buckingham Palace are opened to visitors on a regular basis.
The State Rooms of the Palace are open to visitors during the Annual Summer Opening in August and September. They are lavishly furnished with some of the greatest treasures from the Royal Collection - paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Poussin, Canaletto and Claude; sculpture by Canova and Chantrey; exquisite examples of Sèvres porcelain; and some of the finest English and French furniture in the
World.
HISTORY
George III bought
Buckingham House in 1761 for his wife Queen Charlotte to use as a comfortable
family home close to St James's Palace, where many court functions were held.
Buckingham House became known as the Queen's House, and 14 of George III's 15
children were born there.
In 1762 work began on remodelling the
house to the King's requirements, to designs by Sir William Chambers, at a cost
of £73,000.
George IV, on his accession in 1820,
decided to reconstruct the house into a pied-à-terre, using it for the same
purpose as his father George III.
As work progressed, and as late as
the end of 1826, the King had a change of heart. With the assistance of his
architect, John Nash, he set about transforming the house into a palace.
Parliament agreed to a budget of £150,000, but the King pressed for £450,000 as
a more realistic figure.
Nash retained the main block but doubled
its size by adding a new suite of rooms on the garden side facing west. Faced
with mellow Bath stone, the external style reflected the French neo-classical
influence favoured by George IV.
The remodelled rooms are the State
and semi-State Rooms, which remain virtually unchanged since Nash's time.
Many of the pieces of furniture and works
of art in these rooms were bought or made for Carlton House (George IV's London
base when he was Prince of Wales), which was demolished in 1827.
The north and south wings of
Buckingham House were demolished and rebuilt on a larger scale with a triumphal
arch - the Marble Arch - as the centrepiece of an enlarged courtyard, to commemorate
the British victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo.
By 1829 the costs had escalated to
nearly half a million pounds. Nash's extravagance cost him his job, and on the
death of George IV in 1830, his younger brother William IV took on Edward Blore
to finish the work.
The King never moved into the Palace.
Indeed, when the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire in 1834, the King
offered the Palace as a new home for Parliament, but the offer was declined.
Queen Victoria was the first sovereign to
take up residence in July 1837, just three weeks after her accession, and in
June 1838 she was the first British sovereign to leave from Buckingham Palace
for a Coronation. Her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 soon showed up the
Palace's shortcomings.
A serious problem for the newly
married couple was the absence of any nurseries and too few bedrooms for
visitors. The only solution was to move the Marble Arch - it now stands at the
north-east corner of Hyde Park - and build a fourth wing, thereby creating a
quadrangle.
Blore, the architect in charge, created the
East Front and, thanks largely to his builder, Thomas Cubitt, the costs were
reduced from £150,000 to £106,000. The cost of the new wing was largely covered
by the sale of George IV's Royal Pavilion at Brighton.
Blore added an attic floor to the
main block of the Palace and decorated it externally with marble friezes
originally intended for Nash's Marble Arch. The work was completed in 1847.
By the turn of the century the soft French
stone used in Blore's East Front was showing signs of deterioration, largely
due to London's notorious soot, and required replacing.
In 1913 the decision was taken to
reface the façade. Sir Aston Webb, with a number of large public buildings to
his credit, was commissioned to create a new design. Webb chose Portland Stone,
which took 12 months to prepare before building work could begin. When work did
start it took 13 weeks to complete the refacing, a process that included
removing the old stonework.
The present forecourt of the Palace, where
Changing the Guard takes place, was formed in 1911, as part of the Victoria
Memorial scheme.
The gates and railings were also
completed in 1911; the North-Centre Gate is now the everyday entrance to the
Palace, whilst the Central Gate is used for State occasions and the departure
of the guard after Changing the Guard.
The work was completed just before
the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Besides being the official London residence
of The Queen, Buckingham Palace is also the busy administrative headquarters of
the Monarchy and has probably the most famous façade of any building in the
world.
Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms.
These include 19 State rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms,
92 offices and 78 bathrooms. In measurements, the building is 108 metres long
across the front, 120 metres deep (including the central quadrangle) and
24 metres high.
The Palace is very much a working building
and the centrepiece of Britain's constitutional monarchy. It houses the offices
of those who support the day-to-day activities and duties of The Queen and The
Duke of Edinburgh and their immediate family.
The Palace is also the venue for
great Royal ceremonies, State Visits and Investitures, al of which are
organised by the Royal Household.
Although Buckingham Palace is furnished and
decorated with priceless works of art that form part of the Royal Collection,
one of the major art collections in the world today, it is not an art gallery
and nor is it a museum.
Its 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.
More than 50,000 people visit the
Palace each year as guests to banquets, lunches, dinners, receptions and the
Royal Garden Parties.
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