Opening the Palace Doors Majesty and Mortar: Britain's Great Palaces

The challenges facing Britain's royal palaces

would increase in the modern age.

Mob violence and revolution had been dangers in the past...

-AIR-RAID SIRENS

-..but now there were new threats.

Aerial bombardment...

..and a nation almost bankrupted by fighting two world wars.

Other nations jettisoned their royal families in a spate of revolutions

after the First World War, and more European crowns would tumble.

In Britain, the monarchy wanted to appear democratic

while retaining the trappings of majesty.

Many royal palaces have survived the turbulent centuries.

The Tower of London still stands proud,

Hampton Court is a miraculous survival,

and more than any other monarch,

George IV created a theatrical backdrop

for the modern age of monarchy.

But many palaces vanished along the way -

the victims of fire, changing fashions and demolition -

and as modernism and post-war progress beckoned,

it seemed that more royal architecture would follow.

The newly completed Buckingham Palace

became the principal royal residence

when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837.

She and Prince Albert made the palace a set for royal spectacle,

adding an immense ballroom...

..and, in the late 1840s, an entire new frontage

to accommodate, children, staff and guests.

But Victoria and Albert increasingly wanted privacy...

and they found it a long way from London.

This is Osborne House on the Isle of Wight,

built for Victoria and Albert in the mid-1840s

on a beautiful and secluded coastal estate.

It was largely designed by Prince Albert with Thomas Cubitt,

a master builder who'd made his name and fortune designing

luxurious London houses in Belgravia for the nation's super-rich.

The house divides in two, with rooms for courtiers

and visitors on one side...

..and, on the other, a substantial family villa.

This was the Queen's sitting room.

And here is the Queen's desk...

..where she'd deal with State papers,

and Albert's desk next to her.

So very important activity taking place in this room.

However, it was also a place of informal family gatherings.

It tells us much about their domestic values.

It doesn't feel, really, like a palace, does it,

but like a comfortable, private, upper-middle-class family home.

And after Prince Albert died in 1861,

Queen Victoria spent even more of her time

in retreat from the demands of court and public.

Despite her aloof demeanour, Queen Victoria supported

the idea of opening royal palaces to the public.

Prince Albert had overseen the repairs to the medieval fabric

at the Tower of London and wanted it preserved as an ancient monument.

Now, with the fashion for the Gothic,

the Tower became a major tourist destination.

It was Charles II who invented royal tourism,

as far back as 1688.

He created a royal attraction at the Tower that told

the story of monarchy using suits of armour.

The Line of Kings was a propaganda statement

created for Charles II, promoting the newly restored monarchy.

It also affirmed the right of kings to rule

by featuring heroic kings like Henry VIII

and ignoring villains like Richard III.

To this day,

it's the longest-running tourist attraction in the world.

Originally, the Line of Kings

was a fairly random assemblage of old armour.

But over the centuries, new monarchs were added

and it became more authentic.

The horses on which the kings sat

are beautiful works of art in their own right,

made mostly in the 1670s and 1680s out of blocks of oak,

glued and pegged together.

This one's absolutely charming.

Some were made by Grinling Gibbons,

the greatest wood-carver of his age.

Wonderfully carved mane, and the teeth,

and even the horseshoes on the hooves -

it's fantastic detail.

All, of course, are stallions.

They're anatomically correct.

And their beautiful naturalistic posture.

They are absolutely tremendous.

Charles II also put the Crown Jewels on public display.

Their traditional guardians are the Yeomen Warders,

who today are a tourist attraction in their own right.

OK. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

-CROWD:

-Good afternoon.

And welcome to Her Majesty's royal palace and fortress,

the Tower of London - a World Heritage Site, no less.

My name is Clive, and I am one of the 37 Yeomen Warders

that live and work here at the Tower.

They also serve as tour guides,

telling visitors the history of the Tower in all its gory detail.

The executioner would then bring down his axe,

hopefully beheading his victim with one stroke.

The executioner would then pick up that severed

and still-bleeding head and hold it aloft for all to see.

Turning to the assembled crowds he would proclaim,

"Behold the head of a traitor!

"So die all traitors! God save the King!"

And the crowd would go wild and cheer.

CROWD CHEERS

Another Yeoman Warder

has a particularly important responsibility.

Sorry, ladies and gents, I'm afraid it's Merlin's bedtime.

I've got to get her to bed.

Do you fancy reading her a good night story?

-Come on, you, down you come.

-Oh!

HE CHUCKLES

That's her in a good mood.

Come on, beautiful.

Barney Chandler is on bedtime duty.

It's something of a specialist skill.

Good girl, Merlin.

The legend goes that if the ravens vanish from the Tower,

the kingdom will fall.

Clever girl.

With all the legends about the ravens in the Tower,

how long have they been here, in fact?

Naturally? Since the year dot.

Long before this place was here.

-London birds?

-Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

They're very hardy birds, they'll survive in the tundra,

in the Sahara, in the Arctic.

They're very, very hardy, but they were driven away

from this part of the world, but they're gradually creeping down.

It's an amazing thought that the ravens were here before the Tower.

Long before this place. Yeah.

And this has been here for 934 years, so you can imagine them now

roosting up in the rafters up there.

But it was because of...

They were being a pain, basically, during the reign of Charles II,

they were getting in the way,

and they were...moved on, shall we say, during that reign.

But Charles II, very superstitious chap,

he agreed to having six kept permanently.

-And that's...

-Since then?

-Since then, a minimum of six.

We've got eight at the minute but we must have a minimum of six.

-She's lovely.

-She's fantastic.

We better let her get some shut-eye. She's got her eye on you.

THEY LAUGH

In the nicest possible way, I hope!

The ravens were efficient scavengers

during the Tower's many centuries as a prison.

Chief Yeoman Warder Alan Kingshott lives in the cell

of the last men to be beheaded on Tower Hill -

executed for treason after the Battle of Culloden.

So do come in, into my home.

Here we are in the Byward Tower.

Do come through.

So, you actually do live in a castle.

HE CHUCKLES

I presume this was a prison at some point here?

Indeed it was, yes.

Most of the prisoners that were here were very important people,

they were wealthy people. And what would normally happen is

the prisoners would be brought in, they would be very well looked after

and essentially looked after by the Yeomen Warders and their families.

So they would provide for them, have food and so on prepared for them.

So it was quite common for the prisoner to be in one room

and the family that were the custodians, if you like,

the people looking after them, in another room.

And the last Scottish lords, Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock, Balmerino,

were held in prison here in 1746, prior to execution up on Tower Hill.

-And they were held in prison in what is now our bedroom.

-Really?

And we still have the original prison door.

-Good heavens!

-Shall we have a look at it?

-Yes.

-It's all in its original state.

-Yeah.

Of course, the rivets down the sides here

and, of course, the locking bars here.

This is how it went, it went across this way and then secured here.

-So it's all still here.

-Exactly the same on the bottom, indeed.

-Good heavens.

-Still work.

Grandchildren love it. They come here, they visit Grandma, Grandad...

-Lock 'em in!

-..and they lock us in, yes.

Of course!

The lock has been removed, I don't know quite when that happened,

but of course the keyhole's still there.

Come inside, let me show you the room behind the door.

Nowadays it's a bedroom

but it was originally a prison room for the Scottish lords.

It's incredible, isn't it? This is where they were held.

Indeed. It's been adjusted over the years, obviously, and modified.

As you can see, the bars in the window are still there on that side

-but they've been removed on this side.

-Ah, what a view!

What's it like, living and sleeping in this room?

Thick brick-and-stone walls, and the curved shape - is it...?

Initially, it was fabulous, obviously.

It was very exciting to live in a castle, quite strange,

and not one day goes by when you're not pinching yourself to think,

well, how fortunate are we,

to be able to live in a wonderful, iconic building such as this?

By the 1840s, the foul-smelling and polluted moat had been drained,

filled in and planted with green and pleasant lawns.

The Tower became a nice day out for Victorian Londoners.

Soon, it was attracting half a million visitors a year.

It was the beginning of a tourist revolution.

In 1838, just one year after coming to the throne,

Queen Victoria declared that Hampton Court Palace

should be thrown open to all her subjects.

They came here in their thousands.

So popular was Hampton Court that a horse-drawn omnibus

carried tourists from central London every 20 minutes.

And a new railway line opened to cope with demand,

culminating in a brand-new station.

Hampton Court offered the first intimate glimpse of regal lifestyle.

By 1881, ten million people had been through the palace doors,

and they kept coming.

The last time the Royal Court descended upon the palace

was in 1737, during the reign of George II.

After that, no monarch stayed here again

and the palace entered a new phase of its life.

It became home to a bustling community

of grace and favour residents.

Grace and favour living involved retired courtiers

and public servants being given a lifetime's free accommodation

in the palace, granted by the grace and favour of the sovereign.

It turned Hampton Court into the grandest,

most eccentric retirement home in the country.

From the late 18th century, Hampton Court became home

to faded and aged gentlefolk and aristocrats,

mostly women - the wives and widows of soldiers,

diplomats and administrators of the British Empire.

These residents included Lady Baden-Powell,

who founded the Girl Guides.

Some of the residents were well-to-do

who simply wanted to enjoy the opportunity offered to them

of occupying large, palatial and free apartments.

Others were out of funds, and William IV in 1830

described Hampton Court as a quality poorhouse.

I love this staircase leading to what for generations

had been grace and favour apartments.

The staircase, I suppose late 17th century,

once grand but now rather utilitarian,

painted this amazing colour.

A bit like a sort of council flat, really,

this glossy greeny-blue

over wonderful panelling, some of it oak, I guess.

And here - a wonderful thing,

very revealing, about the nature of grace and favour residents.

It's a kind of a basket on a pulley.

I suppose the aged ladies living up here couldn't go up and down stairs

so they'd lower the basket to collect supplies or their post,

and then they'd hoist it up. Incredible.

This was apartment 1.

It had been grace and favour accommodation since the early 1770s.

The average size of the apartments was 12 to 14 rooms,

which means some of them must have been absolutely vast.

It's a sort of labyrinth of rooms.

This, I suppose, had been the dining room,

perhaps a bedroom.

Now...

wonderful lock on this door.

Good heavens! What a room! Look at the size of it!

Incredible.

And still lined with its late-17th-century panelling.

And a wonderful original fire surround over there.

Absolutely tremendous!

What a room in which to live.

A lot of the tenants in the 18th and 19th century complained

that these rooms were damp and hard to heat.

They wanted money to pay for alterations and repairs

but when told they had to pay for their own works,

invariably very few works were carried out,

which means rooms like this survive in wonderfully authentic condition.

Grace and favour living started in the mid-18th century,

and soon the palace had been divided into more than 50 apartments.

The father of the great Regency dandy Beau Brummell

lived at Hampton Court from 1772.

An illegitimate daughter of William IV was here in the 1830s.

The daughter of a maharajah based her suffragette campaign here

before the First World War.

And the sister of the last Tsar of Russia

lived on at Hampton Court for almost half a century after the revolution.

But in spite of the palatial setting,

life at Hampton Court could be spartan.

As late as the middle of the last century,

a 105-year-old resident was refused permission to install a bathroom.

This was the kitchen,

and clearly this room has been somewhat altered.

It's rather poignant the things people leave behind -

the shadows of past things.

Look at this - the Hoover Cleaner,

and still Hoover fittings inside, rather early ones.

Something of a museum piece.

And lots of cupboards to explore...

Empty, empty, empty...

Ah! Interesting. Look...

Let's see. It's a letter, or a receipt or something.

John Lewis, Kingston, to... Ah! Lady Moore.

Now, I know of her.

She was the wife of General Sir Rodney Moore,

sometime Chief Steward of Hampton Court Palace.

Indeed a receipt.

1991, for a dishwasher.

So this kitchen presumably dates from that time.

I know Lady Moore was one of the last grace and favour residents

in Hampton Court Palace, she left in the mid-1990s,

and since that time this apartment has been uninhabited.

Someone who remembers the glory days

of grace and favour is the Keeper of the Great Vine, Gill Strudwick.

She's been at Hampton Court for more than 20 years.

When I first worked here, before I started looking after the Great Vine,

I worked in the private gardens, which were reserved solely

for the grace and favour ladies,

and I only knew the ones that did the gardening.

And there was the orchard, and an area which was divided up

into little squares where the ladies could grow

flowers for their apartment.

They weren't allowed to grow vegetables there,

-it had to be flowers.

-Fascinating.

So was there a pecking order amongst them?

Certainly, there was a pecking order amongst the ladies, methinks,

but certainly by the time it came down to me,

I would be, you know, the bottom, being the gardener.

And the ladies at that time didn't want a man working round there

so they had two young women.

We weren't allowed to sit down.

There were little two-seater benches for the ladies,

and we at that time took all our breaks out of doors,

and we weren't allowed to sit on those benches -

but of course, naturally, if there were no ladies, we did -

and we kept the gates, the private gates at either end,

very squeaky, so the minute it squeaked we were up out of our seats

with our Thermos flasks, standing up, having our break.

-Good thinking!

-So we knew our place!

Also, the other thing, it was a community -

a strange one, perhaps -

but then also you had to deal with the other great thing

of the visitors, the tourists. Was that an issue?

The two worlds colliding?

Generally not.

We love the visitors, they're what make it come alive and vibrant,

that's what we're doing it all for.

And we're talking quite a long time ago.

But there was one lady, she used to drive her car

with a view that it was a visitor's job to get out of the way.

And as she became older, she had a little buggy to go round the palace,

but she drove that in the same way -

it was their job to get out of the way.

But other than that, I don't remember any clashes.

She never actually ran anybody over,

but, you know, she was determined, in her way.

I suppose when Queen Victoria opened it to her subjects,

of the grace and favour, I wonder...

Can you imagine what it was like then?

It must have been very shocking

for those genteel ladies suddenly being overrun.

Oh, yes, I believe they were very, very anti it indeed,

yes, having their private...invaded.

No, I believe they were not keen at all.

The hoi polloi turning up, yes.

No, I think they had all sorts of protests

and people peering in through their windows and...

No, I believe they were very anti indeed.

Fascinating. A very radical thing

for Queen Victoria to do, really, wasn't it? To open it.

Very, very, very generous and bold and wonderful.

Well, my understanding is that she...

wanted some government funding,

and the government of the day said they would only help with the funding

if she was to open it...

to the public, which is what she was forced to do.

So I'm not sure that she was quite as radical as that,

I think she was...

Money constraints backed her into that.

And, of course, now that we're no longer government funded,

all the revenue has to go into keeping it all going.

In the 1890s, Queen Victoria did a similar deal with the government

to repair Kensington Palace.

It, too, would be opened to the public.

The Banqueting House, the sole surviving building

of the Palace of Whitehall, became a military museum.

And Kew Palace threw open its doors in the Diamond Jubilee year of 1897.

The latter part of the 19th century

had seen a new interest in historic monuments.

The Society for the Protection Ancient Buildings

had been formed in 1877,

an Act of Parliament to protect prehistoric monuments soon followed,

and the National Trust was founded in 1895.

It's as if the ageing Queen Victoria had anticipated the stirrings

of the modern heritage movement.

The old Queen died at Osborne House on 22nd January 1901.

She had begun her long reign

enjoying the grandeur created by her royal forbears

but then retreated increasingly into a more domestic setting.

The new King would be very different.

Edward seemed like a throwback to the decadent days of George IV

in his appetites and his architecture.

At Buckingham Palace he swept away his mother's domestic clutter

and painted the main rooms in imperial white and gold,

and he installed electricity.

Outside, he had even bigger plans.

He wanted to realise a classical vision

that stretched back nearly 300 years.

The death of Queen Victoria had coincided with the apogee of Empire

and for a nation mourning

the end of the longest reign in British history,

it seemed the right moment for a grandiose gesture.

A memorial committee met within a few weeks of Victoria's death

and it was decided that her memorial would comprise a personal monument

to the Queen and a radical remodelling of The Mall -

the approach road to Buckingham Palace.

Now was a chance to create an imperial processional route

that would allow royal theatre in the grand manner.

The public supported the plan,

and newspapers argued for wide royal avenues

in a truly regal and imperial manner,

as in Rome, Paris and Vienna.

Sir Aston Webb -

a fervent believer in the revival of classical architecture -

was to mastermind the scheme.

The mid-19th-century frontage of Buckingham Palace

was to be replaced by a grander design

with three pediments and giant columns.

An immense statue of Victoria seated on her throne

would create a benign focal point for Empire.

The processional route of The Mall was to be widened...

..and a huge triumphal arch created at its entrance.

Standing here, on top of the Admiralty Arch,

it is clear that it's the gateway

to London's imperial and palace quarter.

But it's also a threshold between worlds.

To the east along the Strand is the City of London -

the centre of wealth and commercial power.

To the west is The Mall, lined with palatial buildings

and terminating at Buckingham Palace -

in the early 20th century, the heart of Empire and of royal power.

The arch transforms The Mall

into the great forecourt of an imperial palace...

..with the focal point being the seated Victoria,

75 feet high and carved of Carrarra marble.

The monument's topped by a sculpture that has long defied definition.

When the monument was started, it was thought to represent peace.

But by the time the monument was completed -

after the horrors of the First World War -

it was thought to represent victory.

And behind Victoria was the theatrical backdrop

of the new-look Buckingham Palace.

An entirely remodelled frontage

had replaced the old, undramatic facade.

It was intended to give the palace a solemn, imperial grandeur,

making it feel for the first time like the royal residence

at the heart of the largest, richest,

most powerful empire the world had even seen.

MARCHING BAND PLAYS

London got its imperial, triumphal palace quarter

but just as Empire was slipping away -

a decline accelerated by the cost, the horror,

the disillusionment of the First World War.

So this grandiose palace quarter - with the Admiralty Arch,

the Victoria monument and the re-fronted Buckingham Palace -

was the last hurrah of a disappearing world.

Now, instead of new buildings, it would be a matter

of keeping existing palaces upright and water-tight,

and finding new uses for them.

During the First World War,

the Tower was a barracks and an Army recruitment centre.

It would also welcome some new inmates.

It was during the First World War that the Tower returned

to a function more closely associated with its medieval roots -

it became a place of imprisonment and execution.

11 German spies were shot here.

But, despite this, it remained open as a tourist attraction.

It was thought to be good for the nation's morale!

But in World War II the Tower was shut to the public,

the moat converted into allotments,

and the Crown Jewels whisked away to a secret location.

Captured U-boat crews were imprisoned in the Salt Tower...

..and Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, was held in the Tower in May 1941.

It was also a last home to Josef Jakobs, a German spy.

This is the chair on which Jakobs was sat for his execution.

He was executed at 7.12 in the morning on 15th August 1941,

in the East Casement firing range here within the Tower,

so nearly seven months after his capture -

a long time for him to brood, to hope.

He was shot using rifles like this -

a short magazine, the Enfield, the standard Army-issue weapon...

..firing a .303 round, a large bullet.

The body would have been almost torn apart, I suppose.

There were eight hits,

seven to the heart, one to the head -

the heart being the main target.

The chair says it all, doesn't it?

The back and the spindles torn away.

Jakobs sitting here, his heart would have been

just in front of this area here, the bullets going through.

Phew, golly! This execution marked the end of a chapter

in the history of the Tower of London.

It was the last execution to take place here.

Around the Tower raged the London Blitz.

The British people - together with Britain's ancient fabric -

had never been so vulnerable,

seemed so fragile.

EXPLOSIONS

The historic towns of York, Canterbury,

Exeter, Bath and Norwich suffered terrible damage.

And London had it worst.

From autumn 1940 until the spring of 1941,

the city suffered intense German bombardment.

In just 261 days, London sustained 71 air raids.

During the Blitz, the Tower was a high-value target for the Germans.

On 7th September 1940, over 80 bombers attacked it

and the adjoining St Katherine's Dock.

The Germans believed that the destruction of the Tower

would help crush the morale of the British people.

The White Tower escaped damage...

..but the North Bastion

and parts of what had been the Royal Mint were destroyed.

Kensington Palace was badly damaged.

And Buckingham Palace was hit seven times.

After the Second World War,

Britain was in the mood for progress,

for a world that embraced a brighter future.

The new taste was for modernism and urban reconstruction.

It would be a world where everything old and broken was cleared away,

and where new egalitarian values ruled.

So the 1950s and '60s were hard times for historic buildings.

Royal palaces, like country houses, were often seen as irrelevant

and had muddle through to survive.

But the world of muddling through came to an abrupt end

on 31st March 1986,

when a catastrophic fire broke out at Hampton Court.

NEWSREADER: The fire last Easter Monday

caused millions of pounds of damage.

Worst hit - the historic Cartoon Gallery with its works of art,

and Lady Daphne Gale,

widow of Second World War hero General Sir Richard Gale,

died in her grace and favour apartment above the gallery.

The fire, in fact, started around midnight,

most likely from a candle in Lady Gale's bedroom.

The fire smouldered for about five hours.

Grace and favour apartments were phased out

and a new body, the Historic Royal Palaces Agency,

was created to look after royal buildings that had largely

ceased to be used in the daily business of monarchy.

The Tower of London, Hampton Court, the Banqueting House,

Kensington Palace and Kew Palace

would operate separately from other royal palaces,

such as Buckingham Palace and St James's.

The new body would be responsible

for making the palaces pay for themselves...

First door to the left, enjoy.

..as well as carrying out conservation,

maintenance and repairs.

Today, work is about to start

on the most precious ceiling in Britain.

The Rubens paintings are undergoing

one of their regular close-up inspections.

But this time the inspection marks the beginning of a major

four-year project to re-present the Banqueting House.

And now I've got to clamber up that tower.

I'm climbing up to meet conservator Zoe Roberts,

55 feet above me.

She's here to decide if repair work needs to be carried out

on the fragile 380-year-old canvases on the ceiling.

I'm not even halfway up yet!

The ceiling above me is a memorial to James I,

who died in 1625.

It was painted by the most famous artist of the day -

Peter Paul Rubens.

I can't wait to get up close to this astonishing work of art.

-It's very mobile, this scaffolding.

-It is! It sways quite a lot.

-Well, Zoe, nice to see you.

-And you, nice to meet you.

Wonderful place to meet.

And this offers a once in a lifetime -

or once in several lifetimes - experience, being so close.

Some people are quite underwhelmed by being this close.

-Are they?!

-Just because it was meant to be viewed from the ground,

and obviously from up here you see some of the scars

of its 400-year history.

What is the particular aim at the moment? Is there an emergency?

No, certainly not.

We basically carry out cyclical condition surveys

of all the paintings we have in our collection.

At the moment, the painting specialists are up here

just checking the condition.

That's, of course, the first point to make, isn't it?

-That these paintings are survivors.

-Amazing.

They've undergone amazing moments of desperate danger.

Moments of amazing drama.

Survival of the fire of Whitehall Palace in 1698,

survival of Oliver Cromwell,

-who certainly didn't believe in the divine right of kings.

-Of course.

Survival of the dreadful pollution of London,

and of the bombings of the Second World War...

So, essentially, because they were all originally stretched canvases -

and obviously they're huge canvases -

over time they sagged, and the Ministry of Works decides

that they should be mounted onto solid board.

-So if I tap it now...

-HE KNOCKS

-It's like wood, board.

-Solid board.

-Not canvas.

The fact that they were mounted on plywood meant that, in 1940,

when they wanted to take them out,

they couldn't take them out of the windows,

these three big panels, so they had to be sawn up.

-This is a saw mark from 1940 here.

-Yes, absolutely.

I imagine there is an inherent problem of the compatibility

of the plywood and the canvas - it must move at different life cycles.

Yes, absolutely. So that's something in particular that we're checking.

So we're looking for any movement along the joins,

where you've got ply boards above.

What were the big restoration conservation projects

of the past?

Presumably, in the 18th century, there must have been

artists up here, adding, repairing?

-In the 1730s, William Kent...

-The great architect and painter.

..and painter, absolutely -

was put in charge of a restoration

by George I and Queen Caroline.

And there's a record of them coming up on to the scaffold...

-The King and Queen?

-Absolutely, which I find...

yeah, quite interesting to imagine.

-In court dress, do you think?

-Well, presumably so!

Squeezing through the trap doors of the scaffold.

Yes, and they congratulated him on his fantastic restoration.

Again, it's a reminder of the high status of the Rubens paintings.

Ever since they've been here, they've been amongst the nation's

greatest works of art, they've been regarded as that, haven't they?

Yes, absolutely.

So what new techniques have you used to help you explore

and restore these old works of art?

One of the techniques that we can use to identify areas of restoration

is using UV light, because the areas of restoration fluoresce,

-so shall we have a look?

-UV - ultraviolet?

-Absolutely.

They fluoresce?

-And these have to be worn to protect the eyes?

-Exactly.

-OK.

And do you want to have the torch? Because you're taller.

Righto, so I turn it on...

Oh, yes, there we are,

an alarming sort of space-age light comes out of the end.

Don't shine the light into your eye.

OK, here's James, and I would say he is as Rubens painted him.

And any retouch or later works would show up as a dark blotch?

Yes, darker patches.

The eyes are OK.

Ah. OK, good example.

That area is the restoration material fluorescing.

Otherwise there's very little, isn't there?

Yes, so when we use the big UV light

and we do a complete mapping of the painting,

it is very reassuring to know that, actually, there are very limited

areas of restoration and a huge amount of original painting.

It's easy to take these paintings for granted,

but let's put them into international context -

how important are they?

Well, this work of art is hugely significant

because it's the only one remaining Rubens ceiling scheme

still in situ, still in the space for which it was painted.

Anywhere?

Anywhere in the world, I believe,

so it's just hugely, hugely significant.

Conservation and tourism is a delicate balance.

More and more human beings bring new problems to the past.

At Hampton Court Palace, Karen Harris works

as a preventative conservator.

-Morning.

-Hello.

-So, I see you're on the hoovering and brushing.

-Yes.

Do you do this a lot?

For this object, we clean it about every four to six weeks.

Four to six weeks. And what is the dust composed of?

It's composed of everything that our visitors bring in,

so hair, skin, fibres off their clothes.

It's also all of the stonework from base court outside

and pollutants from cars, so it's a mixture of lots of things.

Quite nasty. So the people who come in here,

their hair's flaking off and skin's flaking off

-and hairs blowing around...

-That's right.

..and it settles on this wonderful object.

So, what's the nastiest thing you've had to confront?

From a dust perspective, it is cleaning dust off

soft and delicate tapestries, or any other textiles.

And I imagine you get chewing gum.

-We do.

-Disgraceful.

A little bit of chewing gum on our historic floors, yes,

and that has to be removed as soon as it can be.

It's a wonderful sort of relationship with the fabric

of the building you must have, because you're regularly

inspecting it, and seeing things from different angles, close to.

-You get to know the collection really well.

-Yes, yes.

-What do you think about her?

-I have to admit, I think she's beautiful.

We put her on display in 2009 and I'd been wanting to

for many years before that, so it's wonderful to see her up close

and for the visitors to see her. It's fabulous.

-Who is it, do you think?

-I don't know.

She's called the Empress Roundel, so we're not sure who she is.

She's one of a pair, but we don't know who she is.

Hampton Court has some of the best royal tapestries.

These belonged to Henry VIII.

Tapestries are amongst the most vulnerable artefacts to keep safe.

They come from all over the royal palaces

to a central conservation workshop at Hampton Court,

where Mika Takami is in charge.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-How do you do?

-Nice to meet you.

-This is absolutely wonderful.

-Thank you.

-Which tapestry is this?

This is one of the early-17th-century tapestries,

commissioned and purchased by Charles I.

This was woven in the Mortlake tapestry workshop.

It's an English tapestry.

This is part of a set called The Seasons.

The Seasons series represents 12 months of the year.

So what are the problems?

Is it just wear and tear through age or something?

You just walked in at the very last stage of the conservation,

so you don't see how bad and how fragile originally it was,

but the main problem was lots of slits and tears and holes.

The fact that it has been on open display in Kensington Palace,

-very close to the visitor route...

-People sweating, bodies, moisture...

..yes, but also the fluctuation in temperature, humidity,

and the biggest contributor to the deterioration is the light.

-The light?

-Yes.

-There's wool in this, as well?

-Yes, silk, wool and metal thread.

Therefore presumably moth is a problem?

Yes, the pest is always the problem.

What do you do to protect it from moth?

We can't spray anything, we can't use the mothball,

because it might have an effect on the dyes,

so what we do is a regular condition check,

annually if not every other year,

and also we surface clean

and then look at every inch of the tapestry with a magnifier,

so it is a never-ending, ongoing job.

And like a never-ending detective story,

the search for new clues to the past goes on.

Up in the attic at Hampton Court is a storeroom of palace fragments.

Co-chief curator Tracey Borman is going to unpack some.

Well, what a treasure trove of objects.

It's an absolute treasure trove, and a very eclectic one.

This is where we keep all the items that aren't on public display,

and there are some very surprising finds in here, actually,

from all the palaces, not just Hampton Court.

-And I'm going to start with one that was from there...

-Right.

..at Hampton Court, from Henry VIII's heyday.

Ah! Very exciting.

-Put my gloves on so I can handle it.

-Yes, we'll need our gloves on.

Before I reveal, I shall do the same because,

it being an original Tudor object, we need to be particularly careful.

-And reverential too.

-And absolutely reverential to this one.

From the palace.

Oh! That is fascinating.

-So it's a ceiling detail.

-It's a roundel, yes.

It's from the Great Watching Chamber,

-which is immediately next to the Great Hall.

-Yes, yes.

You may recall that, actually, the ceiling at the moment

is dazzlingly bright, it's very heavily gilded,

and it's got all of these over it.

It's decorated with these roundels.

It's actually a leather mache.

This is wonderful, this is leather mache,

so this is baked and pressed leather?

Exactly, in different parts, so the outer part is one section,

then this, and you can see how

it's rather rudely nailed in, and that's why it's ended up here,

because the vibrations eventually worked the nails free

and the roundels started to drop off.

OK, that's my question - why is it here,

not where it should be on the ceiling? It's too fragile.

Yes, in fact there are only three or four original roundels

still on the ceiling. The rest all date from

the Victorian period, and they look pristine.

They're very faithful replicas but, nevertheless, this is the original.

Of course, we have to conserve.

So that's one reason, or one route to things being here,

not where they should be, on display in the building -

they're simply too fragile, too damaged to live, really.

Absolutely.

And we're staying with Henry, actually, for the next item.

-But a different palace this time. I think it's a surprising one.

-Oh!

You're in for a treat.

It doesn't, on the surface, look all that surprising,

-but when you hear what it is...

-Ceramics.

Oh, I say, it is a nice Tudor-y green.

Very nice Tudor-y green. If I hand that over to you...

-It's from the original Whitehall.

-Oh, Whitehall! Ah!

-Henry's central London pad.

-Yes.

And this is fascinating, because the room it is from

-is not a public room. It is from Henry's bathroom.

-Oh.

And it is a stove that would have created a Turkish bath, really,

for Henry, filled the room with steam,

and he'd have been there lounging like some kind of Roman emperor.

-How astonishing.

-I know.

-So he had a Roman steam bath?

-Yes.

A heated bath, a heated room.

I was astonished when I learned about this object.

One doesn't associate the Tudors with sort of Roman bath style...

-No, with bathing much.

-Bathing generally, exactly!

He's living like a Roman emperor, but the objects creating the heat

are Renaissance in their detail. It's amazing.

It's incredible, isn't it?

A cherub here, winged, holding a swag of some sort

and up here there's a bird.

It's an eagle, I think, up there.

This is Henry fancying himself as a Roman emperor,

even in the privacy of his bathroom.

The idea that we're getting a glimpse behind the scenes in Henry's world

is quite extraordinary, through these two items here.

And you don't often see objects

-relating to Henry's private life in this way.

-Yeah.

It's all about the public show, the public rooms.

This is so moving.

It is, it's one of my favourite objects, it's extraordinary.

Gosh, I can't put it down.

It's wonderful, it's a glimpse into another side of Henry

that we didn't know that much about.

What we have here, we're fast-forwarding now

to the end of the 17th century, and we have remnants

-of the Tijou Screen, the famous Tijou Screen that...

-Oh, yes.

-It survives, doesn't it?

-Yes, it does survive,

and it's on the waterside,

it's a beautiful, elaborate gate on the waterside.

But these pieces here were just getting too damaged,

too fragile to remain on display, so they were replicated

very faithfully, but we retained the originals, of course.

Lots of masks. This is a lovely one here.

-Can I pick this one up?

-Oh, do, do.

-It is a wonderful faun-like thing.

-Exactly.

And here's the face, but you can see

that it is very corroded, the fixings are damaged.

-It does look one of the most fragile of the items, actually.

-Yes.

But in its heyday - and we have recreated it -

it would have been quite extraordinary.

-It's a wonderful mask, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

It gives a sense of, you know, the fun and the masking

-and everything else of the court.

-Absolutely.

OK, so they're stored up here really to protect them

from the weather and, I suppose, even from the public.

I'm afraid there has been some vandalism,

and these items have suffered as a result of that.

It's desperately sad, but the screen is...

It's on the riverside, you know, it is quite vulnerable,

not just to the elements, but to potential vandals, as well.

Indeed, and one really now does appreciate the delicacy,

again, which is why this collection is so fantastic,

because one can really become intimate with the object,

see how it is made and see the delicacy and the precision.

This is it, yes, this is what I really love about this collection.

You get a sense of the people who made the palaces.

It's not just about, you know,

a beautiful ready-made thing that just landed here.

You get a sense of the craftsmanship and the labour involved.

And that's certainly the case with this screen, I think.

Just about every day at one of the historic royal palaces

some essential work will be going on.

Today, a new drawbridge is put through its paces

at the Tower of London...

..vital repointing between the 500-year-old Tudor bricks

at Hampton Court...

..and the tricky business of rehanging

repaired ancient tapestries in the Great Hall.

Slowly.

Kate, slow down.

Yes.

The conservation costs a fortune,

so the business of making palaces pay for themselves

is ever more important,

and in the modern world, sometimes things need to get adventurous,

even experimental, to get noticed.

WHISPERED RECORDING: But to remember Queen Anne,

always with child, but none surviving...

At Kensington Palace, 18 small chairs evoke the tragedy

of Queen Anne's many failed pregnancies

and children who died young.

It's an attempt to bring to life

the late Stuart monarchs who lived here.

Head of Kensington Palace Natasha Woollard explains.

So, tell me about the thinking behind this particular presentation

of the interior of the palace.

Well, for the Queen's State apartments

we wanted to be quite playful, we wanted to give people

a sense of the journey that William and Mary made

when they came over to Britain.

What you've created is very striking.

Of course, in a way, the major thing here is the historic interior,

the wonderful panelling on the staircase.

These creations slightly distract from it,

slightly obscure it, don't they?

Yes, that is a challenge, and I think with heritage

there is always the art and the architecture,

the master craftsmanship,

and there's always the people's stories alongside.

For us, at this particular time,

we wanted to tell the story of William and Mary coming here

and who they were.

It's not a period very well-known in history,

so actually we wanted to evoke the drama of that journey.

This obviously is meant to engage the visitor,

let them use their imagination.

Yeah, absolutely. Imagination, curiosity - who were these figures?

Why did they come on a journey?

"Why don't I know about them?"

sometimes is the question we get asked.

Who were William and Mary? Why do we always talk about them together?

There's a lovely story about the only diarchy we've ever had.

So there's great stories,

but of course it doesn't mean this has to be the story for ever.

And this is the Queen's Gallery.

Now, this is a kind of slightly more conventional presentation

of an historic interior, isn't it?

The panelling, wonderful fire surround,

paintings and furniture.

So this is how things used to be, isn't it?

Well, we haven't completely left it how it used to be.

-I notice the birds.

-The birds, yes.

-What are they about?

-That's the question we get asked,

and actually the story is quite simple.

They denote journeys,

they also denote the blue-and-white china

which Mary was so much a fan of.

But also we know that Queen Mary kept birdcages in here with songbirds,

so we're telling very many stories with these birds.

So this is a way of invoking history, the fact,

but in an imaginative way.

-Yes, imaginative.

-Engage the public's interest.

-Yeah.

And now we're in Queen Mary's bedroom.

Here, of course, the display does rather overwhelm

the historic interior and the bed. What is the intention here?

Well, this is a very difficult story to tell here, it's a crisis moment.

There is no Stuart heir, Queen Anne had produced no heir,

and actually there is a hunt for the next monarch,

and they go through so many people to find a Protestant who can take over,

and eventually they find him.

In fact, they find his mother, but she dies around the same time

as Anne, so actually we have to go to George I.

So this is a sort of symbol of the hunt that people go through,

the family tree they have to go through to find that next monarch.

What was the public response?

Some people are surprised but absolutely delighted

that what they thought was a fusty, dusty old house

actually is doing things really in a different way.

Other people are horrified and think that it takes away and dumbs down.

We don't think it does, because we think it challenges you

to ask questions and actually to engage and connect

emotionally with the stories, rather than the sort of passive

heritage experience you can get where you just read a panel of text,

where you walk through a room and don't really know what's going on.

So, horses for courses, some people love it, some people hate it,

but it does engage them either way.

Kensington Palace is both a working palace,

with private apartments and offices for members of the Royal Family,

and a palace open to the public all year round.

MUSIC: "The National Anthem"

But at the Tudor palace of St James's,

the daily business of monarchy occupies a whole building.

Today, the Prince of Wales is honouring helicopter crews

who've recently returned from tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Such events confirm the importance of functioning royal palaces

to the identity of the nation.

Britain's royal palaces are secure, despite daunting maintenance costs.

Indeed, Historic Royal Palaces has recently added

Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland to its portfolio,

and others may soon follow.

In the future there's likely to be a review of Britain's

historic royal palaces to decide which remain in royal use

and which find new lives as museums or art galleries.

Whatever a review might decide about the future of our royal palaces,

perhaps even the future of Buckingham Palace,

they remain a key part of our national identity.

Our palaces are repositories of beauty and national memories,

important to all of us.

How we make decisions about these great buildings

is part of ongoing delicate negotiations,

and will depend on the developing character

of the British monarchy in the years to come.