Holkham Royal Upstairs Downstairs

Just what do you have to do when a queen decides she's going to pop in to see you?

And not just any old queen -

Victoria.

Like a pair of obsessed Victoria groupies,

we're pursuing her around the country

to the posh pads she visited.

We'll be delving into her personal diaries to reveal

what happened behind closed doors.

Today, Holcombe Hall.

Even from here, you can see that this place

was built to impress, eh?

Well, with a drive two miles long, you have plenty of time to admire it.

And as someone who's spent a lifetime

getting excited by antiques,

I'll be exploring upstairs including an amazing architectural trick

that would have tickled Victoria.

This is an enfilade.

And as a chef who's passionate about all sorts of food,

I'll be getting a flavour of the work below stairs

and creating a wonderful 19th century recipe that was served to Victoria.

It's perfect. I'm so pleased.

-And I'll offer Tim an eyeful of tasty treats.

-What a vision.

Princess Victoria came to glorious Holcombe Hall

on the north Norfolk coast, in 1835 for a two-day visit.

She was just 16 years old

and was brought here by her mother, the Duchess of Kent,

keen to show her off to her future subjects.

They'd been on the road for about eight hours and had got through

four sets of horses by the time they got to nearby King's Lynn,

where she was greeted in a most unusual way.

A group of very enthusiastic agricultural labourers

decided to detach the horses from her carriage

and then pull her all around the town for a couple of hours

as an expression of their extreme loyalty.

But when she did eventually get here,

I'm sure she thought it was worth the wait.

In her diary she wrote, "It is a fine large house."

Well, I suppose if you're inviting royalty to stay,

at the very least, you want her to think your house is big enough.

Well, Rosemary, I think it's time to find out what was going on

at the house when they eventually got here.

They must have been incredibly late for dinner.

Well, I'm going to go and find out what they did in the kitchen.

A whole crowd of people were lined up to greet Victoria

that late afternoon

and they became increasingly concerned

at her non-appearance.

Later on, a carriage was spied and Thomas William Cooke, the host,

stepped out and gave an immense bow,

only to discover that it wasn't Victoria's coach.

It was some servants that had come in an advance party

and they scurried away.

Victoria eventually arrived, in the dark, at 8pm, when it was raining.

And just look at the magnificence that was here to greet them.

This is the renowned marble hall at Holcombe,

except it's not marble at all.

The brown vein stone is actually Derbyshire alabaster

which was mined in the 1720s and shipped here

and then it took 20 years

to craft into the beautiful edifice that we see today.

The most striking feature for me has to be this ceiling.

All this beauty seems to have escaped Victoria

because she records in her diary that she's well nigh dead

by the heartened fatigue of this long and tiresome day

and so she goes straight upstairs to be ready for dinner at nine o'clock.

Victoria might have been tired but there was no rest

for the teams of servants working frantically

in the vast downstairs of the house.

Oh, well, I've found my way into the house.

Now this is where the servants would have come in

and I have been told that the kitchen wing is in that direction.

The kitchen was a sacred place and only those actually involved

in the cooking would have crossed the threshold.

But the different downstairs teams still had to talk to each other.

So they installed the latest technology.

This is a tube where they used to communicate to the kitchen.

The footman would come here and sort of say, "Hello!"

And look at this little window.

You can see right into the kitchen.

You can see everything.

Now let's see if this works.

Ivan, are you there?

-'I'm here.'

-It works!

Come in.

Our food historian Ivan Day has made it to the other side of the door,

luckily for me, because together we're going to be cooking

in this amazing kitchen

which still has its original pots and pans

from the time of Victoria's visit.

It would be wonderful to make something with these.

What are they?

Ivan has discovered some moulds in the kitchen called ballettes.

They date from the time of Victoria's visit

and they have inspired us to recreate a very special recipe

that would have impressed the young princess.

Oh, they're sweet, aren't they?

We're going to make a dish which is called foie gras a la imperial.

But we're not going to use real foie gras.

We're going to use some duck liver instead,

from birds that have been raised very happily.

-Oh, good, good. I'm pleased.

-But it'll taste just as good.

This cold entree, as it was known,

was supposed to refresh the appetite,

which they probably needed, because amazingly,

the diners would already have scoffed their way through

four other courses before they got to this foie gras dish.

While preparations for dinner were underway downstairs,

Victoria was still being shown to her room by her host,

Thomas William Cooke.

Cooke was 81 at the time of Princess Victoria's visit.

He certainly liked the young ladies,

as is clear by his choice of second wife, Lady Anne.

Victoria picked up on the astonishing age gap in her diary

noting Lady Anne is some 49 years younger than he is.

No wonder he's got a smile on his face.

The 16-year-old Princess Victoria would have been completely pooped

as the evening wore on.

So she no doubt was delighted when ushered to her bedroom.

This is the green state bedroom

and it's quite likely that the princess was ushered in here.

They don't actually have records of precisely which rooms

the royals occupied in their visit

but because this is the state room,

and it's called a state room because it's the bedroom that was set aside

for any head of state that happened to be visiting,

and whilst Victoria was still only a princess,

she was only a heartbeat away from becoming queen.

She must have been impressed and indeed intrigued

by the contents of this room

because it's one of the most richly endowed

and decorated spaces in Holcombe.

And they certainly didn't spare any expense to make it so extravagant.

The 257-yards of three-coloured velvet used on the bed

and the upholstered furniture cost £899 alone,

an absolute fortune at the time.

In fact, in today's money

you wouldn't get much change from 80 grand.

Crikey.

The room also contains an intriguing piece of furniture,

an 18th century sofa bed, no less.

The duchess was so paranoid about protecting her daughter

that she forced Victoria to sleep in the same room as her,

so perhaps the young princess had no choice but to sleep here.

One thing's for certain though,

Victoria did have a good night's kip,

because she writes in her diary,

"I awoke at nine o'clock after a very good night's rest

"but still rather tired and headachy.

"Got up directly, at ten we all breakfasted."

According to a later account of the visit,

written by a descendant of Cooke's,

when she awoke she was greeted by one of the Cooke children

and her cousin Bessie,

dressed in white muslin frocks, embroidered in coral silk.

They were sent hand in hand to inform her when breakfast was ready,

a summons which must have presented some contrast

to the ceremonious etiquette

with which she was accustomed to be treated.

Charming.

As far as we can tell from the records,

there were seven children in the house during Victoria's stay

and judging by an entry in her diary, the princess,

like any opinionated teenager, had plenty to say about them.

"Lady Mary's second little girl is a dear quiet little thing.

"She is quite the reverse to little Margaret Cooke

"who is the greatest little fidget and chatterbox imaginable."

Back downstairs we're getting to grips with our dish of the day.

Little bombs of foie gras in aspic,

typical of the grand food served on such special occasions.

It's labour-intensive and requires great attention to detail.

This intricate dish was really what aristocrats wanted on their table,

something as beautiful as the furniture

-and the decorations in the room.

-Yes.

So the first thing we need to do is to chill the moulds on ice.

-Yeah.

-And then we mask them with this aspic jelly.

And all you do is you swirl it around in the mould

and tip it out again.

It's just to make a very, very thin lining.

It's just plain aspic jelly.

It's a beef stock that's had pig's trotters boiled in it

with some herbs, and then it's been clarified

by putting it through a jelly bag.

So not such a simple aspic after all.

I'll put this one back on the ice.

This thin coating of aspic will give the little balls of foie gras

a lovely glossy finish.

The ballettes are placed on ice to set before the next stage,

lining the moulds with an egg garnish.

It's made with egg yolk mixed with a little cream

-and then coloured with a tiny bit of cochineal.

-Oh, right.

-And seasoned with some salt.

-Oh, brilliant.

And I'll put it out on the deck.

-And we've also got a very similar egg garnish.

-Yes.

But this one has been made with egg white so this one is white.

They're very firm, aren't they?

They need to be because we're going to cut them

into very, very thin slices.

-If you cut about three slices off that.

-There we are.

There were so many stages to these elaborate dishes.

It's exactly like cutting an egg.

Next we have to cut small circles

with these very special Victorian cutters.

Victoria notes in her diary on 22nd September

that there were at least 21 local highbrows for dinner.

You have to wonder whether those toffs upstairs really appreciated

just what it took downstairs to produce even the smallest morsels.

I hope Tim appreciates all this effort.

This is going to take us hours.

On the afternoon following her arrival,

Victoria went for a ride around the vast Holcombe estate.

There was much to see.

She wrote, saw the hothouses, kitchen garden,

and a little further on, the boundless free ocean is visible.

"Drove around the park in which Mr Cooke has planted all the trees

"and improved the whole thing so much

"that it is really quite wonderful."

Cooke certainly did plant all the trees.

He was mad about them, as Doctor Susanna Wade Martins,

who has written extensively about the great man, explains.

He's said to have planted two million trees.

Did you say two million trees?

Two million trees are recorded in the estate documents

as having been planted between about 1790 and 1820.

So when Queen Victoria came,

some of them would not have been more than 15 years old

so the park would have looked very different

but on the other hand she would have seen it develop.

This memorial was built to honour Cooke

but not just for his obsessive tree planting, he's a fascinating chap.

An agricultural innovator, pioneering landlord

and a bit of a self-publicist.

He'd been offered a peerage several times but had steadfastly refused.

England's greatest commoner, as he became known,

had some radical views.

He despised both King Georges

and called the House of Lords the hospital for the incurables.

But still, he was much admired by the 16-year-old Victoria,

who writes, "He is an astonishing person.

"He is in his 82nd year but is as active and strong

"as any man 30 years younger."

And later, when she became queen, he finally accepted a peerage.

What I think's so interesting

is that he's turned down all the offers of a peerage

from every monarch before that but when it came to the young Victoria,

when she came on the throne two years after her visit to Holcombe,

it was all different, wasn't it?

By this time he had sons,

he had a direct heir to the estate and so he was more interested

in the fact that they should have a title to go with it.

I can't help wondering if it wasn't just his sons

who changed his mind over accepting a peerage

but Victoria, herself, who charmed him into wearing the ermine.

It's not just the stories above stairs that were intriguing.

I've been captivated by one servant's story in particular.

Archivist Mary Ann Garry has a fascinating tale

about a baby below stairs

that made an appearance as a result of Princess Victoria's visit.

So tell me about this extraordinary story that I've heard whispers about.

Well, the story goes that the children's nurse, whose name

was Jane Salmon, had secretly married the head gardener, Hugh Girvan...

-Really?

-..and was pregnant.

And the excitement brought on by the arrival of the royal party

meant that she went into a premature labour

and gave birth to the baby the day that Princess Victoria arrived.

Because the wedding was a secret,

most of the household thought she was a single mum

and the child was illegitimate,

which would have been a huge scandal, especially during the royal visit.

But in fact, she was married and all was well

so why keep the marriage a secret?

Generally speaking, when a maid married, first of all

they would ask permission from their employers to get married.

And if they got permission which they very often did,

then they would receive a nice wedding present

and have their wedding breakfast paid for by their employers.

But they usually retired to be a good wife and mother,

but of course she may just have kept the marriage a secret

because she was fond of the children

and wanted to go on working in the nursery.

Whatever the real reasons for the secret marriage, the surprise arrival

of a young baby in the downstairs of the house during Victoria's visit

caused quite a stir upstairs.

Princess Victoria, who was only 16 at the time,

was also very intrigued by this and demanded to see the baby

and out of respect for the queen,

the baby was a girl, luckily, and was duly christened Victoria Jane.

What a lovely, lovely story.

As well as a tour of the grounds,

the princess and her mother took a tour of the house,

exploring its long enfilade,

the name for an alignment of rooms

running the entire length of the building.

This is an enfilade.

Literally a series of rooms that interconnect

via a series of doorways,

each of which are lined up precisely.

It's an architectural deceit but there is another purpose

to these series of interconnecting rooms and that's social hierarchy.

The higher you are up the social pecking order,

the more of the rooms that you can penetrate

running along the enfilade.

By the time Holcombe was completed in the 1760s,

this arrangement of state rooms connected by an enfilade

was already considered incredibly old-fashioned.

Families wanted more privacy.

But if you think I've walked a long way down the enfilade,

you've got another thought coming,

because this enfilade is a whopper.

Apparently, 340 feet from one end to the other.

I wonder whether Victoria walked all this way

on her tiny little legs.

She'd be fagged out if she did.

All very well Tim swanning about in the enfilade

while we're still slaving away over our elaborate duck pate entree.

It would have been served

halfway through dinner that was frequently a seven-course affair.

We're moving on to the next stage of our dish with our tiny egg decorations.

I'm going to pick out one of these

and plonk it right in the middle of the ballette mould.

Then I'll go for a white one.

-So you're doing this alternately.

-Alternate rings.

-Yes.

Different colours.

They'll stick to the jelly inside so we now go for another pink one

and we gradually build up a little mosaic pattern in the mould.

So how long would it take to make one of these?

It takes about probably ten minutes if you're good.

If you're a novice, it might take you half an hour.

But just think, this is one mouthful.

It's gone just like that, just like that.

The servant spends all afternoon making them

and it just takes a second to eat them.

I've also got the top. As you can see, it's got a little funnel

on the top, which is very important.

-What's that for?

-Well, that's to pour some more aspic through.

But the next stage is to actually put the filling in.

-Right, which is the foie gras.

-Yeah.

The cooked liver, duck in this case, not goose, is put into the ballette.

-And then I'm going to put the lid on it.

-OK.

Which I'd have to do very carefully.

It's wonderful.

Like so.

Well, all we have to do is to fill it with some cold aspic.

-Yes.

-Now this is setting.

-It's beginning to gel beautifully.

-It's perfect timing.

And these are very cold

so with a spoon you just carefully fill the ballette,

it won't take very much but it will completely

fill all of the gaps inside.

Yes. It's amazingly simple to do when you think about it,

but just time-consuming.

Back upstairs, the entertainment was as important

as the food and they put on quite a show for the teenage princess,

a karaoke session, Victorian-style,

and we know that Victoria joined in with enthusiasm.

Mezzo-soprano Karen Harris has a keen interest

in the music of the era

and a knowledge of the princess' love of singing.

Bravo, bravo! Karen, that was lovely.

Now, do we know what tunes Victoria sang that evening here at Holcombe?

She first of all sang an aria

from the opera Faliero by Gaetano Donizetti.

She also sang a barcarola which is a Venetian folk song

for the gondoliers.

And she sang also an aria

from I Puritani called A te, O cara.

So were those what one might call

-trendy pop-type numbers for a 16 year old at the time?

-Very much so.

Very much so. And she really was passionate about her opera.

Were there any other composers that she was particularly fond of?

Indeed. She loved Rossini.

It is noted in her diary that a couple of years before she came here,

she actually went to see the Barber of Seville.

Princess Victoria clearly loved the opera and to have had the chance

to indulge in her passion must have cheered everyone up.

After all, putting a smile on a teenager's face isn't always easy,

royal or otherwise.

No singing for Ivan and me, we have to add the finishing touches

to our Victorian delicacy, foie gras in aspic.

The Victorians loved to dress their food

and we're arranging artichokes and broad beans to decorate our plate.

In the 19th century, everything was done with such finesse and precision.

Goodness, it's like creating a work of art.

It's always been to look rather pretty, hasn't it?

It is, very pretty.

And here comes some chopped up aspic.

And we're going to lay a bed of it down the centre.

-It's shimmering.

-It's very jewel-like, isn't it?

-It's jewel-like.

-Like diamonds.

There we go. And then we can just even it out.

It looks lovely.

Imagine what it looks like

in candlelight though

because every little facet glistens.

Right, so we're going to get these ballettes

and we need to dip them into some warm water.

-Right.

-Just for a second or so.

-OK.

And that'll melt the jelly on the outside and it will release them.

So ready for number one?

-OK.

-So just count to one, two, three.

They need to be wiped.

And then we can take the top off.

So that should come off. And look.

Oh, look at that.

It's come out beautifully.

Yeah. And then I've got to then very carefully tip it into my hand

and then I'm going to put it exactly,

I know where the middle is...

It's perfect.

I'm so pleased we did that.

-That's fantastic.

-It sits on the jelly.

It looks wonderful, doesn't it? It looks like a mosaic.

It is a mosaic. It's beautiful.

Now, I'm going to finish them.

-One, two, three.

-Out.

That's it.

-Right, one more.

-The final one.

Final one.

-Out.

-Perfect. That's lovely.

Now, I think that looks stunning.

It does but if we're going to follow this recipe exactly,

we've got to dress it with some herbs.

Finally, we sprinkle on chervil and tarragon for flavour,

as well as decoration. I think that's enough.

You know what, something that hasn't changed, funnily enough,

-is less is beautiful.

-Absolutely.

Now, the last thing I have to do is go and present it to Tim.

Well, I hope he enjoys it.

Oh, I say, Rosemary.

Ballette of foie gras a la imperial.

-Gosh.

-What a name.

What a name but what a vision though. It's so beautiful, isn't it?

That is absolutely stunning, it really is. Do you know what it is?

-Haven't got the foggiest idea.

-Well, obviously foie gras.

Yes.

-But what is that?

-Well, they look a bit like spaghetti hoops

-but they can't be, can they?

-Ha! This is egg.

-Egg?

-It's cut out. I must tell you, Tim...

-Yes.

it is so time-consuming.

Only a house with lots of staff

could bring a meal like that to the dining room table.

It is so labour-intensive, it's unbelievable.

-So, would you like some?

-Yes, please.

-There we go.

-So I've got my artichoke.

You've got your lovely artichoke with some broad beans,

with a little dressing on the top.

-Can I have some more jelly, please?

-Some more jelly.

You're being very fussy tonight, Tim.

I want to really get around that

-because I tell you what it looks like.

-What does it look like?

It looks like fractured mineralised ice in some way

which I think is absolutely gorgeous.

So I'm going to cut it vertically,

like that, and then reveal inside, the solid...

-The foie.

-..and delicious foie.

I'm going to quarter that cos it's incredibly rich this, isn't it?

But when you think about it, they had virtually only two mouthfuls

and it would take at least half an hour to make one of these things.

-Can I have my mouthful now?

-Yes.

Mmm. Now that is absolutely stunning, isn't it?

Isn't that gorgeous?

You do get the egg, don't you? And you do get this delicious aspic.

My dear girl, this is just stunning.

Isn't this beautiful?

And I think the young princess would actually loved to have seen that.

I think she would have been really amused by the little balls.

Do you know, Rosemary, I've got a theory

that Victoria was so incredibly happy at her time here at Holcombe,

as a result of all these children,

the little ones, running around, all the little brothers and sisters

from the Cooke family, and of course, she was so young herself.

It must have been great fun.

And the other thing that she was incredibly keen on

was after-dinner entertainments.

All those little opportunities to sing and perform.

And of course, she had a great passion for the opera.

-Oh, I love opera.

-Do you?

-I really do.

-Seriously?

-Yep. Seriously.

-Well, then you're going to thoroughly enjoy this

little treat I've got for you.

This is intriguing.

No hints though.

What a marvellous end to our visit,

listening to one of the young princess' favourite tunes

from celebrated composer Rossini.

The next Victoria visit we follow comes three years later

when she'll be 19 years old, and Queen.

We're off on holiday with her to Brighton.

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