Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Palaces, the most spectacular and lavish homes on earth.
00:12Luxuriously designed for the royals who wanted the biggest and the best.
00:18Behind the golden gates of these royal megastructures are incredible stories waiting to be discovered.
00:24Infamous monarchs from history, and the artists, designers, and engineers who turned their grand visions into a reality.
00:35These are the most opulent, flamboyant, and innovative royal residences around the world.
00:44This time, Kensington Palace in London is an intimate residence that houses today's modern royals.
00:52But it began as a new home for King William III and Queen Mary II in 1689.
01:00The brainchild of architect Sir Christopher Wren, its construction was state-of-the-art, and its design was the height of sophistication, making Kensington one of the world's greatest palaces.
01:14Two of the most famous royals in British history, Queen Victoria and Princess Diana, have both lived at Kensington Palace.
01:32Hidden away in London's Hyde Park, it began its life as an early 17th century Jacobean mansion, before becoming a palace fit for the monarchy.
01:43Lee Prosser has been a curator here for over 15 years.
01:57Kensington's grown very organically from its origin.
02:00It was never a grand palace.
02:02It was always a retreat, a very intimate place for the king and queen.
02:06And it started life as a little courtier's house, so a square block, if you like, quite modest, and that it was extended and extended and extended and extended over the years.
02:19And what that's left us with is a difficult labyrinth to navigate.
02:23And even people who work here have to think about where they're going if they want to get from one place to another, because there's no logic to it and it can be quite confusing.
02:31But it's a reflection of the way that the building's just grown piecemeal over the years, really.
02:38As well as a rich history, Kensington Palace is full of refined engineering.
02:45The original roofs, designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1689, are a great example.
02:52There are elements of this palace which represent technological advance, but you can't see them because they're all in the roof.
02:59And Wren built the most modern form of roof in the 17th century.
03:06He used a new structural form, which we call a king post truss, which was a new way of allowing you to have roofs which had a lower pitch and a wider span.
03:15You didn't want to see great tall roofs over your buildings in the 17th century.
03:19You wanted low, shallow pitches.
03:21And the only way to do that was to combine timber with iron and to create what's called a truss, which is a structural form of roof.
03:30And Wren used them in nearly all his buildings.
03:33But here at Kensington, we see the development of that technology.
03:36Although the king post style of roofing dates back to the ancient Romans, Wren was a master of the design and used a new interpretation, which is still used today.
03:49He was as much a mathematician and an engineer as he was an architect.
03:54And that's where I think his greatness lies.
03:56He wasn't just a man who designed the buildings.
03:59He was also concerned about the way they were put together.
04:02And so the technology that allowed him to build in a new way.
04:05As a structural engineer, I'm a bit of a fan of triangles.
04:09We like triangles and nice, strong shapes.
04:12Now, when Christopher Wren was designing the roof for the Kensington Palace, he had quite a long span that he wanted to cover.
04:19So if you think about, well, what's a good way to cover a big, long distance?
04:24I want to use triangles.
04:25So what he did was he had a pitched roof.
04:27So he had this kind of the two pieces of the triangle that went up.
04:31But what then happens if you think about kind of two pieces of wood like that, when you get the weight of gravity acting on the top of it, it tends to push out.
04:41So what he did was to add an extra piece.
04:44The third side of the triangle was put in.
04:46And that then becomes a tie.
04:49So instead of getting pushed, that force is going into this tie across the bottom of the triangle.
04:56But then to take it one step further, because it's quite a long distance, that tie just under gravity would start to sag a bit.
05:03So the idea was to add the king's post, and that's why it's called the king's post truss, which is another vertical piece that went from the apex of this triangle to the center of that tie at the base of the triangle.
05:19So you end up with a really stable structure.
05:22And that shape was a real innovation for its time.
05:27300 years later, the roofs are all still in perfect condition.
05:33In 1688, before Kensington Palace existed, England was ruled by Stuart Monarch James II.
05:41But Parliament made the decision to depose the Catholic king and replace him with his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, the sovereign Prince of Holland, William of Orange.
05:52The political move has since been dubbed the Glorious Revolution.
05:58William and Mary were quite popular monarchs.
06:02I think there was a real sense of relief at the demise of Mary's father, James II, who was the absolute opposite, very dogmatic, very determined to stamp his views on the English people.
06:14Whereas William and Mary were much more tactful, diplomatic and very well-liked.
06:20The new monarchs needed a new home.
06:24William and Mary had to quickly assert their new regime.
06:28And the best way to do that was through bricks and mortar.
06:32They also wanted more modern, comfortable palaces.
06:37So they got building very quickly indeed.
06:39He didn't like Whitehall, and he liked Hampton Court, but it was just a bit too far, because you never know that there might have been a crisis in London.
06:48So he thought he better have a halfway house in the little village of Kensington, that's Nottingham House.
06:54He took it over, and with very good taste, he said, I want the best architect, which is the Christopher Wren.
06:59And he had carte blanche, and they literally turned it into this lovely red brick and cream building.
07:07By 1689, architect Sir Christopher Wren had made a name for himself by helping to rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.
07:18He was considered to be the best in the business.
07:23Wren was the most celebrated architect of the day.
07:27He had been very prominent in helping to transform London into very much a modern city, with the characteristic elegant buildings that we still know today.
07:38And he was chief surveyor of the king's works and official royal architect.
07:44So really, he was the natural choice for William and Mary.
07:48Wren was charged with turning this small suburban villa in Kensington into a palace.
07:54He didn't demolish it. What he did was extend what they already had.
07:58So he kept the existing structure and added extra sections at the corner, extra pavilions for more accommodation.
08:05He made a proper drive up so it would have a proper palatial drive to make it into this great grand palace.
08:11When you're thinking about trying to amend a structure, you often need to cut into it and you want to create maybe bigger spaces or extend something or add different materials to the outside of it in order to change what it looks like and the way it works.
08:26So it's really important to make sure that it's stable at every stage.
08:31So you might cut a portion out first. You need to make sure that's stable.
08:34You can add the next section and then it needs to be stable.
08:37And the way you can do that is by putting what we call temporary works in.
08:41So what the engineers could have been doing at the time was to create these timber frames and then once they had finished their work and they knew that all the mortar had dried up and that everything was nice and strong,
08:55then those pieces of timber could have been taken away to leave the structure in its final form.
09:01So that's a technique we still use today.
09:05Wren utilised a modern trend of construction when creating the new palace.
09:10The 17th century is a great period for English brickwork.
09:13After the Great Fire of London, there had been a call for rebuilding the whole of centre of London.
09:17An enormous number of bricklayers were acquired and trained up for the job.
09:22And they produced not just ordinary brickwork, but extremely beautiful brickwork, which we call cut and gauged brickwork, where each brick is cut to shape and fitted together with joints that are only half a millimetre.
09:36Kensington Palace is full of beautiful brickwork.
09:40of the best quality.
09:41It was very symmetrical with different wings leading off from that central original house.
09:49And it was also very elegant and actually quite understated compared to some of his other works.
09:57But it was undoubtedly now a house fit for a king and queen.
10:01The new royal residence of Kensington Palace was refined yet beautiful.
10:10Sir Christopher Wren had created the perfect home for William and Mary.
10:14You can see Wren in two ways.
10:16In one way, architecturally, he was a proponent of the Baroque style.
10:21And that was a continental style that didn't really catch on that much in this country.
10:28It borrowed a lot from the ideals of ancient Greece and Rome, columns and great arches.
10:37It was very symmetrical.
10:38And it was incredibly grand.
10:41It was really making a statement.
10:43If you had Sir Christopher Wren to design a building for you, there would be absolutely no doubt who was behind it.
10:50He popularized things like the sash window, for example, which was fairly modern, fairly new in the late 17th century.
10:56And he used them almost everywhere on his palaces.
11:00And after Wren, sash windows become universal.
11:04Sash windows are believed to have originated in Western Europe in the 17th century.
11:10By installing Kensington Palace with this new innovation, Wren ensured that the building was up to date with modern trends.
11:19The sash window belongs to this period.
11:21It's a completely new innovation that is coming in just at the end of the 17th century.
11:26And will then be used everywhere so that it will become so common and many earlier windows will be taken out and replaced with sash windows that we just take them entirely for granted.
11:38They're good for ventilation.
11:39If you open a sash window a little bit at the bottom and a little bit at the top, you get a good flow of air coming into the room.
11:46This is an era where there are great advances in technology in buildings too.
11:50The sash window slides, so the top and the lower half slide independently.
11:56And sliding windows had been around for some time.
12:00But the great innovation was to have counterweights hidden away in pockets on either side of the window.
12:06So that when you slid the window up and down, it stayed where you put it.
12:11After the death of Queen Mary in 1694 and King William in 1702,
12:17Mary's younger sister, Anne, succeeded to the throne.
12:20The new queen made Kensington Palace her home.
12:25I think we don't know enough about Queen Anne.
12:28She's not well remembered now because her reign was fairly short.
12:32But it was marked by some very important events in our national history.
12:37One of Anne's greatest political achievements was the Act of Union, where the governments of Scotland and England were joined.
12:46The United Kingdom, as we know it today, was born.
12:50Anne had a real soft spot for Kensington and she spent an awful lot of time there once she was queen.
12:55Probably more time than at any other of her residences.
13:00And she was quite a sociable lady.
13:02She liked to host at suppers and balls and assemblies.
13:06And it was also at Kensington that her notorious relationship, in whatever form that took, with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, was played out.
13:18And it actually reached a very stormy end at Kensington.
13:22Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill's story received more attention after the release of the Oscar-winning film, The Favourite.
13:30I think to look at that relationship in modern terms and to suggest that they were lovers is wrong because they perhaps would have seen their relationship in a different way.
13:42The contemporary accounts don't really tell us anything in that detail.
13:46They just infer it.
13:48And we can make of that what we will.
13:50We do know that the film is absolutely right in portraying Sarah Churchill and her cousin Abigail Masham as fierce rivals for Anne's attention and for her affections.
14:02And indeed, this was really the source of a great fight between Anne and Sarah, which took place at Kensington Palace, which was never resolved.
14:13I think what happened was that Sarah Churchill became more and more contemptuous of Queen Anne and eventually spoke to her or snapped at her in a way that just crossed the line.
14:23And the Queen took offence and Sarah was banished from court.
14:31But away from the stresses and strains of her personal life, Queen Anne enjoyed her time at Kensington.
14:38It was Anne's beloved house.
14:41It was Anne's great home and really Kensington flowered under Anne and the gardens in particular became the great gardens that they are now.
14:51She also had the Orangery built, which became one of the most distinctive features in the gardens at Kensington and still is today.
14:59The Orangery is one of our architectural treasures.
15:02So this is a contribution by Queen Anne.
15:04And she had this built-in 1705 ostensibly as a greenhouse, so a place for putting tender plants like oranges.
15:12But we know that she also used the building for ceremonies and for parties as well.
15:18Anne was not known for spending large amounts of money at the palace, but for the Orangery, she made an exception.
15:24All of the archives seem to suggest that Anne spent very little on the garden and tried to reduce the expenditure.
15:32But this would have been quite an extensive and elaborate construction.
15:36And to collect all these wonderful citrus plants, trees and bushes would have been quite an undertaking and must have looked absolutely spectacular.
15:46Orangeries have become popular across Europe in the 17th century, but the elaborate greenhouse at Kensington Palace was one of the first to be built in Britain.
15:58It is still unknown who exactly dreamt up the impressive structure.
16:03Nicholas Hawksmoor, we think, designed the Orangery, but there's an ongoing debate because we know that Hawksmoor was originally a kind of apprentice to Christopher Wren, who's got a lot of promise architecturally.
16:17And Christopher Wren recognises that and gives him the project at Kensington.
16:22So he becomes the clerk of works and effectively he's the project manager on the site.
16:27And it's said that he built the Orangery for Queen Anne.
16:31But we think, in fact, he presented a plan to Queen Anne.
16:35And we know that Queen Anne had Sir John Vambra, who was another rising architectural star of the day, whisper in her ear and she decided to go with his design instead.
16:45So today, we're still uncertain whether our Orangery is designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor or Sir John Vambra.
16:53Vambra very often drew things out in outline and then Hawksmoor was responsible for doing the detailed drawings.
17:00But Hawksmoor himself worked on his own as well and was an assistant to Wren and more than capable as an architect.
17:07To keep the tropical plants and trees warm in the British winters, it's believed the early 18th century engineers used a system created by the ancient Romans.
17:17We're not quite sure how the Orangery at Kensington was heated, but in restorations, they discovered flues running under the building to what must have been a distant furnace of some kind.
17:29So it seems to have had some kind of hot air ventilation system like a Roman hippocorst.
17:33The things that we used for heating Roman baths, where you had vaults underneath the floor, in which hot air was pushed.
17:44The glazier work in the Orangery was state of the art for 1705.
17:50Although it's unknown who designed the windows, they were clearly inspired by Sir Christopher Wren.
17:55This is a very good example of one of those early sash windows that were so typical of Christopher Wren's work.
18:03So you have two sort of sliding sashes, one with 16 panes of glass and the lower one with 20 panes of glass.
18:11So these are of really epic proportions.
18:13And one of the most important historical things about them was that in 1705, when this building was constructed, window glass was expensive.
18:22So if you could afford to have very large panes of glass like this, it showed that you were wealthy.
18:26And of course, who is more wealthy than Queen Anne herself?
18:29So she has the biggest, biggest windows with the biggest panes of glass.
18:33But you also need these enormous sashes because you've got trees inside.
18:37So you need to admit the maximum amount of light.
18:39But these are so big and heavy, you need two or three people just to lift them.
18:44This is the only great legacy of Queen Anne at Kensington Palace.
18:48But what a legacy.
18:49It's a really important building.
18:51It's a beautiful building.
18:53Despite desperately trying to secure a successor, the Stuart dynasty ended with Queen Anne.
19:00Anne was popular.
19:01She was quite charismatic.
19:03And it looked like the succession was going to be secured because she had a young son, George.
19:10But poor old Anne had an incredibly tragic history in that respect.
19:15She was pregnant no fewer than 17 times.
19:19And her son, George, was the only one of her children to survive.
19:23But tragically, not for long.
19:26He didn't survive long enough to be king himself.
19:29And he died whilst still a young boy, which absolutely broke Anne's heart.
19:35When Anne herself died in 1714, her Hanoverian second cousin, George I, became king of Britain.
19:43He brings with him his entourage, including his son and heir, George, Prince of Wales, and George's wife, Caroline.
19:53But the English people were very xenophobic at that time.
19:58We don't really take kindly to this royal family full of Germans.
20:03And it takes us a while to adapt.
20:05In 1722, King George decided to update Kensington Palace by adding some new staterooms.
20:14He hired a relatively unknown artist-cum-architect named William Kent.
20:20William Kent was one of those people he'd like to be around.
20:25He was a larger-than-life character.
20:27He loved good food and good conversation.
20:29What he did at Kensington, which nobody had done before, was he designed the rooms, what we would call en suite.
20:36So he designed the decor, the curtains, and he designed and had made furniture to go with them.
20:43And he really pioneered the idea of decorating a whole room together as a suite, if you like.
20:49So what he represents is a departure from the way that people had decorated their houses in the past.
20:55When deciding upon a painter for the new rooms at Kensington, George I was impressed with Kent's competitive quote.
21:05William Kent, at the time, was not very well known.
21:09The official artist was Sir James Thornhill.
21:12And Sir James Thornhill says to George,
21:14George, look, I can do these rooms for £800.
21:18And those times, that was a lot of money.
21:21George, being a bit of a miser, thought, crikey, that is not the amount that I want to spend on these rooms.
21:26In walks in William Kent, and he says,
21:28I will do the ceiling for £300.
21:31If you want the really expensive ultramarine blue from Lapis Lazuli,
21:35I could do it for £350.
21:37This completely sells, George.
21:39He says, fantastic.
21:40This is exactly how much I want to spend.
21:42And it gives William Kent the commission for all of the King's State Apartments.
21:47Kent's rivals claimed that William had cheated the King and used the cheap material.
21:54However, our recent research has shown that William Kent did, in fact, use the expensive pigment.
22:03George I got his money's worth.
22:05This is the first ceiling that he does, starting in 1722.
22:12Now, the reason George was so impressed with the ceiling is because it's actually a bit of an optical illusion.
22:17We call it the cupola room, because cupola is the Italian word for dome.
22:21But in fact, a lot of the roofs are completely flat.
22:24So it is a trick of the eye that William Kent did to make these rooms look a lot more grand than they actually were.
22:32Making the completely flat roof of the cupola room look dome-like took incredible skill.
22:38But Kent's work at Kensington went far beyond just decoration.
22:42These changes are not just entirely cosmetic.
22:47They involve moving walls around and creating different shaped spaces and building new structures and wings and sporting servant quarters and things.
22:57So there's quite a lot of work going on.
22:59But typically for Kensington, this adds to the general higgledy-piggledy nature of the overall construction of the building.
23:05But the result is incredibly dramatic.
23:09William Kent went on to design and paint all the new apartments under George I.
23:15What epitomizes William Kent's work, perhaps more than anything else at Kensington, is the king's stair.
23:22And this is where you get the sense he had free reign just to express himself.
23:27And he decorated this magnificent staircase with a mural showing the court of George I.
23:34So as a piece of social history, it's second to none.
23:38We still don't know who they all are, but we know they're probably servants.
23:43One of them might be a milliner to the Princess of Wales.
23:46Another one might be the housekeeper of the palace.
23:50So there's one gentleman who's got a set of keys in his hand.
23:53And we're pretty sure that he's a man called Henry Lohmann, who was the housekeeper and in charge of the day-to-day running of the building.
23:59But others, it's a bit like a detective story.
24:02We're still trying to find out who they are.
24:06But there is one face on the mural that is known for sure.
24:10A curious character, Peter the Wild Boy.
24:13George I had rather an unusual entourage, not just his extraordinary mistresses and his Turkish servants.
24:23But he also brought over a young man known as Peter the Wild Boy, who came over to England late in George's reign.
24:33Now, this boy had been discovered in Hanover, living in the woods, a sort of semi-wild existence, really.
24:40He couldn't speak. He went around on all fours.
24:44He excited, as you might imagine, a great deal of curiosity amongst the English people when he arrived.
24:51And, of course, the first thing that they tried to do, the royals included, was to civilize him, make him behave as a normal human being, as they saw it.
25:03He was given clothing. He was taught to behave as people expected him to.
25:09And we know that he learned a few words.
25:12More recent research suggests that Peter may have had some kind of medical condition that certainly accounted for the way he held himself, the fact that he couldn't really stand upright.
25:22After the fascination with Peter the Wild Boy began to fade, when he began to grow up, he was given to one of the Queen's bedchaber women, who took him away to a farm.
25:31And he lived till about the age of 70, an example, really, of how a person became used as an 18th century curiosity.
25:40The fascination with curiosity and excess continued under the next Hanoverian king.
25:49George I, the large relief of the British people, actually dies in 1727.
25:55And it's his son, George II, and his wife, Queen Caroline, that inherit the King's State Apartments at Kensington Palace.
26:02And it's really under them that Kensington Palace truly flourishes.
26:05This becomes the centre of both private and public life.
26:08People want to get into one of the parties here at Kensington.
26:12However, it wasn't as easy as people thought.
26:15In order to come back to the court, you have to wear, if you're a lady, what's called a mantua dress, as you can see here.
26:24Really, really big, white dresses that were a status symbol.
26:28This is how they would show their wealth.
26:30Now, what's important to know about court under the Georgians was that no invitation was needed.
26:37Your invitation was instead the outfit that you wore.
26:41So these dresses often cost around 10,000 pounds in Georgian money, which today is almost about 2 million pounds.
26:48So they were very, very expensive.
26:51However, that was the price you had to pay to get into the parties here.
26:55Despite not being the ruling monarch, it was George II's wife, Queen Caroline, who took control of the palace.
27:03She was bright, intelligent, vivacious.
27:08She was artistic.
27:09She was witty.
27:11And that really contrasts with George II, who comes across as being fairly boring and dull.
27:18She was interested in art, she was interested in interior design, she was interested in gardening.
27:24And all of those were very important things to have a royal patronise at the time.
27:28In the early to mid part of the 1700s, England experienced what's been described as a scientific revolution.
27:38It's the age of discovery with Newton, with all of these other great scientists who are finding out a lot more about the world.
27:48And you see a decline in the old superstitious beliefs and practices as we understand more of the universe and how it works.
27:58And Caroline was a real patron of this.
28:00She loved to entertain scientists at Kensington.
28:03She liked to surround herself with the brightest minds of the age.
28:08Caroline used her progressive beliefs to help shape the parks and gardens at Kensington, which blossomed under her stewardship.
28:16Queen Caroline made some extensive changes to the gardens here at Kensington Palace, but also out into the park.
28:26Most notably, the changes of the serpentine.
28:28And in serpentine as we know it, in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, we have her, Queen Caroline, to thank for that.
28:35The serpentine was created for Caroline by her gardener, Charles Bridgman, in 1730.
28:42It covers 40 acres and was one of the first artificial lakes designed to actually look natural.
28:50The only way of constructing a lake in this period is to excavate it with literally with spades into carts, which horses would then take away.
28:59So you could then use the soil to make artificial hills and you would use dams and weirs to divert water to then flood the hollow that you've produced.
29:13Caroline also extensively developed the gardens to the north, creating small plantations with paths weaving in and around the trees.
29:23And also employed Charles Bridgman to come in and redesign parts of the park, particularly this side of the palace, and terrace these gardens from north to south.
29:36In the 18th century, the ideas of what gardens should be changes quite radically in England.
29:41It moves away from the rigid, symmetrical designs that had previously dominated to an idea that landscape should look like a natural landscape of rolling hills and lakes dotted with little follies.
29:58This is exemplified by the Kensington Palace Gardens.
30:01They are perfection in terms of the distances and sort of mathematical equations of them and where exactly something is.
30:07They are completely, perfectly regular, and that is really due to Queen Caroline and to her gardener and the efforts they made to create this beautiful, regular, perfect gardener.
30:20Sadly, Caroline only got to enjoy her time as Queen at Kensington for 10 years.
30:28George and Caroline had a very large family. Caroline was pretty much continuously pregnant for much of their marriage.
30:34But it was the last pregnancy and birth that led to complications that in turn would lead to Caroline's death.
30:41She suffered an umbilical hernia.
30:44And ironically, given all her investment in science, science failed her at the end when the surgeons carried out quite a disastrous operation on her, which just made things 10 times worse.
30:56And Caroline died as a result in 1737.
31:00George II was devastated by the loss of his queen.
31:06Although he didn't spend much time at Kensington, his death here has gone down in palace folklore.
31:12He actually meets his end himself in this room in 1760.
31:17This room, in the time of George II, was actually his toilet.
31:22And just like any other day, first thing you do when you wake up, you go straight into your bathroom.
31:27There, a valet hears a sound much louder than the usual royal wind, a huge crash, and sees that George is passed out on the floor.
31:36He's taken to his private apartments, but before the doctor or his daughter, Princess Amelia, could arrive, he was already dead.
31:45Post-mortem examination, George II suffered an aortic dissection, which essentially means that his aorta burst.
31:52And he unfortunately died here in 1760.
31:55Often people like to say that Elvis was the first king to die on the throne.
31:59But you can politely remind them that George II did it a few hundred years previous.
32:05After the death of George II in 1760, Kensington fell out of fashion as a royal residence.
32:12And for the next 50 or 60 years, it became actually quite dilapidated in parts because it was no longer the centre of royal life.
32:22And it was only with the arrival of Victoria that its fortunes were revived once more.
32:29Life for the future Queen Victoria began at Kensington Palace in 1819, nearly 60 years after the death of her great-great-grandfather, George II.
32:41Queen Victoria's father came to Kensington, was given an apartment here of about 50 rooms in the late 18th century, the last years of the 18th century.
32:51And he lived here on and off throughout that life.
32:55And of course, it was only at the end of his life that he actually knuckled down and got married and tried to produce an heir.
33:02And Queen Victoria, the future Queen Victoria, was the result of that marriage.
33:06Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on the 24th of May, 1819.
33:13Her father, Prince Edward, died when she was just eight months old.
33:18She grew up at Kensington under strict supervision.
33:22She was forced to endure what was known as the Kensington system.
33:28This was superintended by Sir John Conroy, her mother's favourite, who was really trying to groom her into a future Queen.
33:36So there were all sorts of rules and regulations.
33:38She wasn't allowed to walk down the stairs without holding somebody's hand.
33:42And so the list went on.
33:44And Victoria just wanted to be free of all of that.
33:47One of her first directives upon becoming Queen was that she just wanted to be alone.
33:55Although she was treated delicately, Victoria was only fifth in line to the throne when she was born.
34:01At the time of her birth, it wasn't certain that Victoria would one day be Queen.
34:07But she was certainly a lead contender.
34:10Because George III's many sons had preferred to take mistresses to wives.
34:17And astonishingly, they'd had 52 illegitimate children between them, but no legitimate ones.
34:24And so this sparked what's being called the baby race between the sons of George III.
34:32The Duke of Kent, Victoria's father, was one of those.
34:35But there was always the chance that one of his brothers would go on to have a legitimate child too.
34:42And a male heir who would have taken precedence over Victoria.
34:47So it was a complete stroke of luck that she ended up on the throne.
34:51And so it came to pass, as her uncles failed to produce an heir before their deaths,
34:58the 18-year-old Victoria became the rightful successor.
35:03Early in the morning of the 20th of June, 1837, Victoria was woken with the momentous news
35:11that the king, her uncle, William IV, had died and she was now Queen of England.
35:17Victoria went to sleep a princess and woke up a queen here at Kensington Palace.
35:25On the first day of her reign, she called a meeting of the Privy Council to the Red Saloon.
35:33And these old men, the dignitaries of Britain, welcomed their new young queen,
35:39a fresh hope for the country.
35:40After 18 miserable years living under the Kensington system, Victoria saw the palace as a prison.
35:51Once she became queen, Victoria stayed here for, I think, about two weeks.
35:56So she was required to move to Buckingham Palace or, you know, she took control,
36:02took possession of her new inheritance, which were the grand royal palaces.
36:06And I think it was expected that she would move there and go and live in those palaces.
36:12During Victoria's reign, even though she herself had spurned Kensington,
36:17she opened up the palace for minor members of the royal family,
36:21actually including her own daughters.
36:23And from that time onwards, it became known as the Aunt Heap.
36:27This is where the minor royals were able to take up residence.
36:31And in a sense, it's a function of Kensington that continued ever after.
36:37The future Queen Elizabeth II came to Kensington many times as a child.
36:43The Queen used to visit her elderly Victorian aunties, great aunts, when she was a little girl.
36:49And we have people who could remember these two little girls,
36:53Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, coming to Kensington
36:56to visit their sort of very elderly and matronly aunts.
37:00I always find that a really great link between those two great ages.
37:05Even Princess Elizabeth's future husband spent a lot of time at the palace.
37:10It was home to some quite famous royals of the time,
37:14notably Prince Philip, who lived there for a number of years
37:18and was certainly a frequent visitor when his grandmother was in residence.
37:23One of my favorite stories is that when Prince Philip came back from the war
37:27and he was courting Princess Elizabeth, that's where he stayed.
37:30He stayed with his grandma in Kensington Palace.
37:33And I really like that, that he stayed with his grandma
37:36and then got in his car and drove round to Buckingham Palace
37:38where he met up with a princess, Princess Elizabeth, with Princess Margaret as escort.
37:43In the late 20th century,
37:46Kensington became the home of Queen Elizabeth's daughter-in-law.
37:49Princess Diana occupied the apartment that was once home to one of George I's mistresses.
37:58It was a very lavish apartment and Diana was instrumental in its decoration
38:04and in bringing it to a more modern style
38:07when she took up residence after her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981.
38:13An exhibition at Kensington is dedicated to the former Princess of Wales.
38:22We had about two to three hour queues at the height of the exhibition
38:25just to get into the rooms here.
38:27And it really showed us just how far Diana touched people's lives,
38:31how many people will remember the dresses,
38:34where they were in the moment that they saw them,
38:36where they were when Diana herself died.
38:38So it's really, really quite beautiful for us to show these dresses
38:41because we also see people's stories
38:43as well as Diana's come to life through the dresses in the exhibition.
38:48During her time at Kensington,
38:50Diana was the most famous and most photographed woman in the world.
38:56Diana's style was perhaps more informal than was usual for a royal palace.
39:02She wanted it to be a practical family home as well as a royal residence.
39:08So even though she was married to the heir to the throne,
39:11she wanted a comfortable environment to raise their two young sons.
39:17So you get the feeling it was very much a home,
39:20not just a palace while Diana was there.
39:22She loved it. It was her favorite palace.
39:25It was very convenient for Kensington High Street
39:28and she used to go shopping herself quite a lot
39:30and she used to take the boys out incognito
39:32to the fast food restaurants and to the cinema.
39:35So you could just pop out.
39:37I mean, you can't just pop out of Buckingham Palace
39:39or really any other palace,
39:41but you can just pop out of Kensington.
39:42No one might see you.
39:45One of Diana's favorite places at Kensington
39:48was the Sunken Garden.
39:49Graham Dillamore has many stories from his time working here.
40:00I can remember seeing Princess Margaret in this garden before
40:04or walking around.
40:06And more recently, I remember the days when the Princess of Wales,
40:09Princess Diana, would speak to me in this garden on many occasions
40:12and we shared many a moment in this garden
40:14and she often admired the work that we did
40:16and the flowers that we were choosing.
40:18And very recently, we were very proud
40:20to have Harry and Meghan announce their engagement in this garden.
40:24So that was a proud moment for this garden as well.
40:27After the death of Princess Diana in August 1997,
40:32her body returned to Kensington Palace
40:34and was met by a nation in mourning.
40:38On Diana's death in 1997,
40:41Kensington Palace became the focus of public grief.
40:43There were flowers piled up there.
40:45There were flowers everywhere.
40:46The public went there to weep for her,
40:49much more so than it did become a Buckingham Palace.
40:52And her funeral, her unforgettable funeral,
40:55began at Kensington Palace.
40:57Her coffin spent last night at Kensington Palace
41:01before making its journey out into the streets of London.
41:04I think that's incredibly fitting.
41:06She loved Kensington.
41:08It was where she was truly happy.
41:10It was where she wished to remain.
41:12And I think it's truly fitting that that was the last night
41:14which she rested before her funeral
41:16and then going for her final burial.
41:18It's still a place where people come
41:20to find out more about Diana,
41:22to reflect on her life.
41:24And we certainly tell the story
41:27and the impact that Diana had
41:29on various aspects of royal life.
41:40Since 1899,
41:42half of Kensington Palace
41:43has housed members of the royal family,
41:46while the other half
41:47has been opened to the public as a museum.
41:51Today, we've got two sides of the palace.
41:53One is very public
41:54and one is very private.
41:56So when we look at the building
41:57from this perspective,
41:59we see the public face of the palace.
42:01It's been open to the public for 100 years.
42:04But behind and beyond where we can't see,
42:07there's a whole series of courtyards
42:09and other buildings
42:10where members of the royal family live today
42:13very privately.
42:14And that's a tradition
42:15that's been going for 250 years.
42:18A private side and a public side.
42:20And in a way,
42:21it's a mirror of how the royal family lives today.
42:24In recent years,
42:25two of Britain's most famous royals
42:28have lived at Kensington.
42:30I think that William and Harry
42:31will always love Kensington Palace.
42:33It was where they had their childhood.
42:35It was where their mother made every effort
42:36to give them a normal childhood.
42:38There were gardens there.
42:39There was so much freedom.
42:41It was this marvellous place.
42:42And I do think that William and Harry
42:45will always have this great fondness
42:46for Kensington Palace.
42:47It was where they grew up.
42:49And I don't think that they were ever,
42:51either of them,
42:51ever fully leave it.
42:53With almost half a million visitors per year,
42:56Kensington Palace continues to amaze people
42:59from all around the world.
43:01Kensington Palace is more than just
43:04a beautiful building set in a royal park.
43:08It's been the home of the monarchy
43:11for more than 300 years.
43:14It's where they've created magnificent spaces
43:16to dazzle and entertain.
43:20But it's also been a family home,
43:24an intimate home.
43:26It's where young royals like Queen Victoria
43:28have grown up before they went out
43:32into a world to rule.
43:34Many famous monarchs and characters from history
43:38have either lived here or are associated with it.
43:43It's been worked on by all the great architects
43:45over the ages,
43:46by Christopher Wren,
43:48by Nicholas Hawkesmore,
43:49by John Van Brough.
43:50They've all worked here.
43:51So I think the way I would characterise Kensington
43:55is it's intimate,
43:57but it has great richness.