July 19: Kensington Palace

In yesterday's post I forgot to mention that when I went to the Tower of London I bought a "Historic Royal Palaces" membership, which gives me free admission to four places I had wanted to see anyway and a few other perqs as well.  The Tower was the first place and today I saw the second place: Kensington Palace.  David and I saw it from the outside when we walked in Kensington Gardens and today I went in and took the tour.  I thought it might be a half-day outing and I'd do something else later, but like most things on this trip it was both slower to get to and more interesting to see than I anticipated, which means it took up more time than I expected.  No problem; it was a fun day!

Here is one of the formal gates into Kensington Palace.  It's famous as the place where crowds left millions of flowers after Princess Diana died.

They had the exhibits in the palace set up in a very interesting way: there were four "routes" laid out through the public part of the Palace.  Each had a specific subject or theme.  You followed arrows to stay on your current "route".  You could go through them in your own order, and as many times as you wanted.

Each route had some "explainers" who would give short talks at intervals and were available to chat at other times.  They were excellent -- very informative and good at, well, explaining.

The first route I explored was about Queen Victoria.  It concentrated on her as a young woman, rather than the "Widow of Windsor" in black that we so often see pictures of.  The latter was part of her life, of course, but I read a biography of her a long time ago and knew there was more to her than the stereotype and was happy to see an exhibit which emphasized that.  The first room was the room in which Queen Victoria had her accession council.  She was just barely18 and had been kept isolated by her mother for her whole life and had just a couple of hours to prepare herself after hearing the news when a roomful of men descended on the palace for her to take her oaths as the new monarch.  She apparently behaved with great poise and won them all over.  Here is a picture of her as a young queen:

The second route I followed was about royal fashions, particularly displaying clothes worn by the current Queen, Princess Margaret, and Princess Diana.  I don't pay much attention to fashion, but I enjoyed seeing some of the beautiful dresses worn by these women and reading about what royal women have to think about when the dress for public appearances.  Here is one of my favorites:

I can't remember now which of those ladies wore it or the dresses behind it, but it was beautiful.

The third route was about William and Mary, who were very important in the life of Kensington Palace.  These two were the only joint monarchs in British history.  Mary was the actual heir to the throne, but William, the Elector of Hanover, was her cousin and actually fourth in line in his own right.  Mary inherited the throne under difficult circumstances (the "Glorious Revolution") and as a condition of leaving her home in Hanover to come rule in England she insisted that she and William be named joint monarchs.  He was William III and she was Mary II.  Here's their monogram over the front door of Kensington Palace:

When they came to England they found the weather unpleasant and the pollution of London bothered William's allergies.  They needed a country retreat.  They found a house "out in the country" and bought it and made it over into a palace and that's how Kensington Palace came to be.  They retreated there as often as possible.  Here is a statue of William in front of the palace:

Besides rebuilding the house, they created gorgeous gardens around it.  Kensington Palace still has beautiful gardens, although they have been changed quite a bit since those times.

The fourth route was about George II and Queen Caroline.  It was a series of rooms decorated to look like the rooms people would have to pass through on social occasions to get to the king and queen (if they were of high enough status to get that far!).  There would be games to play:

 and women in the latest dresses:

(How did they get through the doors???)

And, of course, musicians to keep everyone entertained:

In addition to all this, I joined a tour of the wonderful gardens around the palace.  This was led by another pair of excellent volunteers.  They concentrated on the history of the gardens and explained to us how William and Mary designed the original gardens to be similar to the kind of gardens they left behind when the came to England, and how later monarchs changed them.  They were very informative and entertaining.  One of the features is a "sunken garden", meant to be looked at from the outside, not walked in.

 
There's a sort of topiary tunnel nearby, with "windows" that let you look out at framed views of the sunken garden:

The gates to the sunken garden are still kept locked, but if you're on one of these special garden tours you get to go in!  There's currently a pair of moorhens nesting in there.  The guides mentioned that they had a nest hidden in the bushes and nobody wanted to get too close for fear of spooking them, but they thought there were 6 eggs in it and that they must be close to hatching.  When we went in, we saw the two of them on a little "island" in the middle of the pond.  The female was staying pretty still and the male was bringing her food. 

Then we realised that they weren't alone; when the female moved a bit we saw that the food was actually for the tiny babies she was sheltering.  I was so excited to be one of the first people to see those new little birds!

It was a lot of walking on a warm day, but lots of fun seeing many beautiful things.

The other time I was in London, Kensington Palace had been covered with scaffolding, with major renovations going on.  There is another wing of Kensington Palce that you can't see very well because there's a tall brick wall around it.  It contains apartments for many members of the royal family, including Prince William and his growing family.  When Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married they lived in there, but things were much different; the wall wasn't there and they didn't have much privacy except when they were inside.  Now they have some outdoor space they can use without being on display and I'm sure they're happy about that.