Kensington Palace

A history of Kensington Palace's development
When William III (1689-1702) and Mary II (1689-94) came to the throne, the sovereign's principal London residence was Whitehall Palace.
For purposes of state and ceremony, it remained the official centre of the court during their reign, but neither the King nor the Queen enjoyed the thought of living there.
William suffered from chronic asthma and the damp riverside location of Whitehall threatened to weaken his already delicate health.

Doing up Nottingham House
In the summer of 1689 William and Mary purchased Nottingham House, a Jacobean mansion built about 1605. It stood in Kensington, a village that 'esteem'd a very good Air'.
Nottingham House was owned by William's trusted Secretary of State, Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, and the purchase price was £20,000. William instructed Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor of the King's Works from 1669 to 1718, to improve the house immediately.
Nicholas Hawksmoor was appointed Clerk of the Works (1689-1715) and the project was hurried forward, as the Queen was anxious to move in.

Renovations
In order to save time and money, the Jacobean house was left intact and Wren added blocks, or pavilions, to its four corners, to provide additional accommodation for the King and Queen and their court. Each pavilion was of three storeys, with attics above.
Wren also re-orientated the building by designing a new entrance and service courtyard (the Great Court) on its west side. On the south side of the Great Court, Wren built a range narrow block containing a corridor (the Stone Gallery) which led from the main entrance to the south-west pavilion, with rooms for courtiers behind.
On the north side of the courtyard were the kitchens and on the west, an archway surmounted by a clock tower, which still survives.

More works at Kensington House
The royal court took up residence at Kensington House, as it was known, shortly before Christmas 1689. The following year while William was away on military campaign, fighting and defeating James II in Ireland, Mary decided to launch a second round of improvements.
She extended her apartments by building the Queen’s Gallery. With its own staircase, the Queen’s Gallery also provided a separate block adjoining for her Maids of Honor.
In November 1691, a fire that destroyed part of the southern range of the Great Court was made the occasion for a complete remodeling of the approach to the royal apartments: the King's Staircase was rebuilt in marble and a finely decorated Guard Chamber was constructed, facing the foot of the stairs.
The last addition to the palace in William's time was the South Front, built in 1695, probably by Hawksmoor.
The main feature of the new building was a long gallery at first-floor level – the King's Gallery – in which William hung many works from his picture collection.

Death of the monarchs at Kensington
In the early hours of Friday 28 December 1694 Mary died at Kensington Palace of smallpox, at the age of 32. The Queen had contributed much to the beautification of the palace, and in the years following her death much of her furniture was removed and her vast collection of oriental porcelain was given to the Earl of Albemarle.
In February 1702, several years later, on a visit to Hampton Court, William fell from his horse while riding in the park.
Despite a broken collarbone, the King insisted on returning to Kensington almost immediately. He lay ill at the palace from 22 February until his death at 8.00am on Sunday 8 March.

King George I
The accession of George I was celebrated at Kensington with a bonfire in the gardens, where the household servants and courtiers toasted their new king with six barrels of strong beer and over three hundred bottles of claret.
This became a regular event and during the King's reign celebratory bonfires were held each year on 1 August - the anniversary of his accession.
On the King's first visit to Kensington he inspected the palace and gardens and declared himself satisfied with both. However, a survey of 1716 found the building to be in a very poor state of repair and several designs for alterations were in the King's hands by April 1718.
A plan for a dramatic rebuilding, to rival Blenheim Palace, was prepared by Sir John Vanbrugh, possibly as early as 1714. But such a transformation was not to be and the King chose a more modest scheme.
The work was carried out under the supervision of William Benson, who replaced Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor in 1718.

Rebuilding Nottingham House
The core of the old Nottingham House, which still survived at the heart of the palace, was replaced by three new state rooms: the Privy Chamber, the Cupola Room and the Withdrawing Room.
These rooms were probably designed by Colen Campbell, the Deputy Surveyor, rather than by Benson.
The most striking feature of these rooms was the elaborate decorative painting of their ceilings. By rights this work should have been given to Sir James Thornhill, the Serjeant (or official royal) Painter.
However, his £800 fee for the Cupola Room was thought too costly and the little-known William Kent offered to paint the room in a similar design for £350.

William Kent’s influence
The Cupola Room was William Kent's first commission at Kensington Palace. Kent's skill as a painter, strongly criticised by some, was evidently admired by George I.
Between 1722 and 1727 he devised decoration and hung pictures in nearly all the royal apartments at Kensington, and finished by painting the King's Grand Staircase.

The court-less palace
The extensive rebuilding work initiated by George I meant he was able to make only limited use of the palace for much of his reign.
In November 1723, Vanbrugh remarked that the court had been at Kensington 'so little for want of the New Rooms being ready for the King's use'.
Furthermore, George I disliked the show and formality of court life and preferred to spend his time in his private apartments.
Having equipped the palace with a full set of lavishly decorated state rooms, it was ready to play a central role in the life of the court under George II.

King George II
Unlike his successor, George II (1727-60) made Kensington one of his principal residences. He usually spent between four and six months of the year there.
The palace, however, changed little structurally during his long reign. The only new building erected was a stable block built in 1740 for his younger son, William, the Duke of Cumberland.

Falling into disuse
After the death of his wife, Queen Caroline, in 1737, large parts of the palace fell into disuse. Horace Walpole commented in 1749 that 'though there are so many vacant chambers [at Kensington], the King hoards all he can, and has locked up half the palace since the Queen's death'.
During the reigns of George I and George II, Kensington housed many of the finest paintings in the royal collection - 'much the best...of any of the royal palaces' one visitor wrote in 1738.
In addition, many of London's leading furniture makers supplied the palace. Thousands of pounds were spent furnishing the apartments in the latest fashion.

The last reigning monarch
The sudden death of George II at Kensington on 25 October 1760 ended an era in the history of the palace: it would never again serve as the seat of a reigning monarch.

Princess Victoria
George III (1760-1820) did not live at Kensington Palace. His fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, however, was allocated two floors of rooms in the south-east corner of the palace in 1798, below the State Apartments.
These rooms had formerly been the king's private apartments and seem to have been uninhabited after the death of George II in 1760. They were, therefore, in a fairly dilapidated state.
The Duke’s persistence resulted in a complete conversion of the lower floors of the palace, the substance of which still survives. James Wyatt, Surveyor-General to the Board of Works, was the architect of the conversion.
A new porch was constructed on the eastern side of the Great Court, with an entrance hall that opened into a fine double staircase. This led to a saloon (the Red Saloon), with the dining room and others beyond.

A future queen
The Duke of Kent, who had moved to Brussels to escape his debts, altered his plans following the unexpected 1817 death of Princess Charlotte, the only young heir to the throne. Though George III had 12 living descendants, not one had a legitimate child.
In 1818 the Duke married Victoria, Dowager Princess of Leiningen, the sister of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg - the late Princess Charlotte's husband.
He returned to England when his wife was expecting their first child and on 24 May 1819 Princess Victoria was born at Kensington Palace.
The young Princess was christened the following month in a private ceremony in the Cupola Room. Unfortunately, the Duke lived only nine months after the birth of his daughter.
The Duchess of Kent and her daughter continued to live at Kensington until the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

The Duchess’s changes at Kensington
In the early 1830s, while William IV (1830-7) was on the throne, the Duchess of Kent extended her apartments at Kensington. Noting how unused the State Apartments were, she took the opportunity to extend her living quarters on to the second floor.
In 1832, Sir Jeffry Wyatville prepared a plan for the Duchess to partition the King's Gallery into three rooms. These were for the use of Victoria, the young heir to the throne.
The rooms adjoining the gallery to the south east were also converted into a bedroom, dressing room and maid's room.

William’s disapproval
When King William IV visited the palace in 1836, he discovered that the Duchess and her daughter had taken over a suite of 17 rooms for their own use. Unimpressed, he complained publicly that this had been done 'not only without his consent, but contrary to his commands'.
It was in these newly acquired apartments, a year later, however, that Princess Victoria was awakened early in the morning of 20 June 1837 with news of her accession to the throne. The young Queen at once moved into Buckingham Palace, accompanied by her mother.

Queen Victoria
Throughout the 19th century, the State Apartments were sadly neglected. They were used as stores for various paintings and furnishings from other palaces.

‘Empty, bare, dreary, comfortless’
By century’s end the building was seriously dilapidated: the brickwork decaying and the woodwork infested with dry rot.
In 1888, an article in The Queen's Homes described the State Apartments as 'empty - empty, bare, dreary, and comfortless ... nothing but bare walls and bare boards'.

A building at risk
Ideas for its future varied from demolition to use as a gallery or museum. On 12 January 1898 The Times reported the Queen's declaration that 'while she lived, the palace in which she was born should not be destroyed'.
It was only Queen Victoria's love for the palace in which she had grown up that saved it. In 1897, Parliament was persuaded to pay for the restoration of the State Apartments on condition that they should be opened to the public.

Restoration and public access
The restoration of the State Apartments was carried out at great speed, but also with much care and attention to detail.
According to Viscount Esher, the Secretary to the Office of Works, the aim was to restore the decoration 'as far as possible [to] exactly what it was in the reign of George II'. The aim was also to use as little new work as possible.
The State Apartments were opened to the public on Queen Victoria's 80th birthday, 24 May 1899. The newly restored rooms were hung with portraits and genre and history paintings illustrative of the periods and the monarchs associated with the palace. Queen Victoria took a keen interest in the pictures and exhibits, many of which concerned her reign and her image as Queen.

PALACE HIGHLIGHTS

Sunken garden

Why see it? The beautiful Sunken garden was planted in 1908, transforming part of the gardens occupied by potting sheds into a tranquil ornamental garden of classical proportions. It was modeled on a similar garden at Hampton Court Palace and celebrated a style of gardening seen in the 18th century.

About the garden
The garden is terraced with paving and ornamental flower beds, surrounding an ornamental pond with fountains formed from reused 18th century water cisterns retrieved from the palace. Today, the garden continues the tradition of rotational flower displays in the spring and summer. Vibrant colours and exotic planting are on display from April to October when the garden is looking its best.
In the spring, tulips, wallflowers and pansies bloom, while in the summer months, geraniums, cannas, begonias and much more provide the colour.
The garden was originally surrounded by an arched arbour of red-twigged lime known as the Cradle Walk, with arched viewpoints from which to gaze upon the central sunken garden.
The Cradle Walk flourished until 1987 when it was cut back after the Great Storm of 16th October, then eventually cut down in 1988.
Plans are now underway to refurbish the Cradle Walk and recreate the covered walkway, to return the garden to its original glory.

The King's gallery
Why see it? The largest and longest of the state apartments at Kensington Palace, the King's Gallery looks pretty much as it was when decorated for King George I in 1727. the King's Gallery was used for displaying pictures as well as for exercise, and it is dominated by a copy of Van Dyck’s noble portrait of Charles I on horseback at its east end. The dial positioned over the fireplace is still connected to a wind-vane on the roof so that the King could see which way the wind was blowing, where his navy was likely to be heading, and when the posts were likely to arrive.  Created for King William III, it is still (amazingly) in working order.