How a fire at Windsor turned the monarch’s London headquarters into one of the capital’s busiest ticketed venues
Buckingham Palace Is a Working Office, a Building Site and a Summer Tourist Attraction
For ten weeks or so each summer, an orderly queue forms along the south side of Buckingham Palace. Its members hold timed tickets and audio guides. They pass through security of the airport kind, climb the Grand Staircase and walk through the State Rooms, where they inspect the thrones, admire the paintings and privately assess the carpets. At the end they are delivered into the garden, where there is a cafe selling cake and a shop selling tea towels. Then, when autumn comes, the ropes are taken down and the building goes back to being the headquarters of the head of state.
This yearly transformation has become so familiar that it is easy to forget how recent it is and how much it once alarmed people. The story of how the palace opened its doors says a good deal about the modern monarchy’s dealings with money and with the public.
It Began With a Fire
In November 1992 a fire broke out at Windsor Castle. It burned for many hours and destroyed or damaged more than a hundred rooms. The castle was not insured, as is usual for buildings of that kind, and the question of who would pay for the restoration became a political row. The initial suggestion that the taxpayer should meet the bill was received badly by a public then in the middle of a recession.
The solution was unprecedented. The State Rooms of Buckingham Palace would be opened to paying visitors during the weeks when the Queen was in Scotland, and the income would go toward the repairs at Windsor. The first summer opening took place in 1993. It was announced as a temporary measure. It has run, with very few interruptions, ever since.
Who Runs It
The opening is managed by the Royal Collection Trust, a charity set up in 1993 to care for the Royal Collection and to show it to the public. The Trust receives no government grant for this work. It is funded by ticket sales and by what visitors spend in the shops, and the surplus is put back into conservation, exhibitions and education.
The collection itself is among the largest and most important art collections in the world. It includes paintings by the great masters, drawings, furniture, porcelain, clocks, armour and a remarkable quantity of jewelled boxes. It is not the King’s private property. It is held by the sovereign in trust for his successors and the nation, which means it cannot be sold to pay a bill. That distinction, between what the monarch owns personally and what is held by virtue of the office, turns up again and again in royal affairs.
What the Visitor Sees
The route takes in nineteen State Rooms, the grand apartments used for official entertaining. There is the Throne Room, the Ballroom where investitures and state banquets are held, the Picture Gallery and the White Drawing Room, which contains a concealed door through which the Royal Family enters on formal occasions. Each year a special display is mounted on a different theme.
The private apartments are not on the tour. Nor are the several hundred offices from which the household runs the business of the monarchy. The palace has 775 rooms and the public sees a small fraction. But what is shown is the real thing, in use. The same rooms that receive tourists in August receive presidents and ambassadors in November.
The Building Site
Visitors in recent years will have noticed scaffolding. The palace has been undergoing a ten-year programme of reservicing, the most extensive work on the building since the Second World War. Miles of old cabling and pipework have been replaced. Lifts have been installed to improve access. Thousands of works of art have been moved wing by wing to allow the builders in.
The project is funded through the Sovereign Grant, and Parliament approved a temporary increase to pay for it. Progress is reported in the annual accounts, which are available via the Royal Family’s website, and the spending has been examined by MPs, whose findings are published by the UK Parliament. The official justification was blunt: without the work there was a real danger of a catastrophic fire or flood. Given how the summer opening began, nobody could say the household had not learned the lesson.
More Open Than It Was
The direction of travel has been toward more access. The East Wing, including the room behind the famous balcony, has been opened to small guided groups for the first time. Tours are offered at other times of year. The gallery alongside the palace, now the King’s Gallery, stages changing exhibitions from the collection. Balmoral has admitted visitors to rooms that were previously closed.
There are reasons of principle and of prudence behind this. A monarchy that depends on consent does well to be seen. A palace that stands shut and mostly empty in the middle of a city with a housing shortage invites awkward questions. Opening the doors answers some of them and pays for the upkeep of the pictures at the same time.
Is It Good Value
The tickets are not cheap, and for a family the cost adds up quickly. Critics point out that the public is being charged to enter a building maintained with public money, and that the great national museums a short walk away are free. It is a reasonable complaint. The Trust replies that it receives no subsidy for the collection and that the income pays for its care. Tickets can be converted into a pass allowing return visits for a year, which softens the blow for those who live near enough to use it.
The practical advice is to book well ahead through the official site, to go early in the day and to allow two hours or more. Details of accessibility and opening dates change from year to year and are listed by the Trust. General information for visitors to London can be found on GOV.UK and from the official tourism bodies it points to.
A Palace That Earns Its Keep
Thirty-odd years on, the experiment has become an institution. The sight of the public trooping past the thrones, once thought faintly improper, now seems the natural order. The palace is at once a home, an office, a gallery and a venue, and it gets through more visitors in a summer than many stately homes manage in a decade. A temporary fundraising scheme has become a permanent part of how the monarchy presents itself.
The gift shop has long supplied material to the nation’s humourists, and the British satirical news desk, the English satirical news team and The Daily Mash have all had their fun with the royal tea towel. The British Onion page gathers more in the same line. If you come across a report of some improbable palace souvenir and cannot tell whether it is real, the checklist for telling satire from real news will see you right. My reporting on the Crown and its houses is on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
