Prince Edward Visits The Royal Buildings Of Tudor Greenwich | Crown & Country | Real Royalty

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] Greenwich is the dividing point of the world where East Meets West when the foundation stone of this Royal Observatory was laid at precisely 3 14 pm on the 10th of August 1675. it was to have a profound effect on this part of London and it marked the beginning of the universal standard for the measurement of time a unique view of Greenwich today can be enjoyed through this camera obscura the predecessor to the modern day camera just one of the features of the country's oldest scientific institution the Greenwich Royal Observatory [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the creation of this Royal Observatory by Charles II at Greenwich was perhaps the greatest contribution the crown has made to science in this country if not the world [Music] Observatory through which the meridian line runs was built by Sir Christopher Wren for Charles II it was built out of a general surge in scientific learning which the King was encouraging [Music] Britain was becoming a maritime power they really needed to know more about navigation and particular finding longitude there is a wonderfully cantankerous astronomer named John flamstead Who was appointed first astronomer Royal and his first problem was they had to build the building so they went to Christopher Wren who actually as you probably know is a failed astronomer himself Christopher Wren had a great reputation for being able to build buildings on Old foundations so Christopher Wren could do it on the cheap and he built the observatory for less than 500 pounds so John flamseed was set up and spent the next 40 Years of his life every night watching the stars going overhead in order to map them even though Christopher Wren was an astronomer he didn't really build the famous octagon room for observing all the real work was really done in the garden shed because you could open up the roof of the garden shed and watch the stars go over your head so flameseed set up his only Observatory at the bottom of his garden and what he believed to be the accurate Meridian and for the next 43 years he worked in what was little more than a shed lying on a mattress exposed to the night air plotting the heavens [Music] basic setting and with instruments that he had to buy himself flamste devised the most far-reaching catalog of Stellar astronomy ever produced however his perfectionism led to a bitter Feud with another great scientist of the day Sir Isaac Newton Newton desperately needed flampede's research but flamsteads felt that he hadn't really perfected it so he wouldn't let it go so basically what happened was Edmund Halley of Halley's Comet and Newton sort of stole up here in the middle of the night with a royal warrant and said we're stealing all your research they did because it was technically Royal research they published the findings in 400 volumes so what flamstered then was bought up 300 of the 400 volumes and burnt them all and he says I am burning this as a tribute to Heavenly truth John flamsity is obsessive dedication with his work took a toll on his health and he died in 1719. five years later his wife published a corrected version of her husband's life's work to set the record straight [Music] history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we've got unrivaled access to the world's leading historians with hundreds of documentaries featuring everything from Boudicca to the British royal family we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts as you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and a real royalty fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use code real royalty at checkout The Observatory stands today at the center of the oldest Royal Park in London but long before the time of flatitude this area had significant importance the Saxons named Greenwich after its green Harbor and there are still small mans which marked the sites where they buried their dead the park was enclosed in 1433 by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester in the wilderness there are still descendants of the original deer herds brought into the park in 1515 for the Royal hunt it was Henry VIII who brought the park alive through his love of hunting and Sport he organized contests of tilting wrestling sword fights as well as the casting of heavy and light bars the young athletic King also organized special seating from which the queen and the young ladies at court could sit and admire his prowess Henry had great affection for Greenwich it was his birthplace and as a child and young king he would spend most of his time here or at Elton Palace which was close by [Music] Henry would have crossed this bridge in order to get to the Palace as would many of his predecessors way back to the 1400s for it is said that this is the oldest surviving bridge in London like Greenwich The Manor of eltham had belonged to Bishop Odo half-brother of will in the Conqueror it was ideally suited for Norman and medieval monarchs making their way to and from their Continental lands Palace was originally a Bishop's Palace for built by Bishop Beck of Durham and 1280s the palace was acquired eventually by Edward II the 1300s early 1300s and he gave it to his wife Isabella for the next two centuries Elton Palace was the center of power and influence it was one of the largest and most frequently visited Royal residences in the country Edward IV really did most of the work that set up he built the Great Hall which is behind me in the 1470s he extended a lot of the site and it came to its apogee with Edward IV slightly later Henry VII spent most of his childhood here it was quite a quite a keen Gardener really I think and he could retire to a privy Garden it was his private Garden obvious as the name suggests he had a bridge across to it and it's where he would retire just a have time to think and discuss things with his friends he liked ultimate great deal but his later life he went off the building and in quite a way and just really left it transferred his allegiance to Greenwich so the the palace fell into disrepair but it really fell into major disrepair in the 17th century after the Civil War when house was acquired by Nathaniel rich the regicide Rich The Rebel as he was often called he took apart the Great Hall stripped the lead off the roof and dismantled much of the rest of the building ancient medieval buildings have read checkered histories and they they go from the heights of luxury to the being used as Pig stars and other things like that and that was the same with eltham by the time that we come to 1934 when Stephen and Regina Courthouse enter the story they were looking for a House near London easy access to London somewhere where they could make a garden they wanted to design a modern home whilst retaining as much of the old Royal Palace as possible for rent and what they mistakenly saw is his restoration of Hampton Court was their inspiration a wide range of exotic materials and fabrics were used to create a stylish and contemporary interior it became the epitome of the art deco era thank you thank you when the old Royal Palace was that it's Heyday visitors from the capital to eltham which have to cross on notoriously dangerous black Heath which also wrote of two accounts have been mugged on his way to the eltham and perhaps it was in the darker areas of Heath that he met his aggressors the area takes its name from What Lies Beneath the surface not the victims of the Black Death as local Legend suggests but from the Black Pete early activity on the heath seems to divide equally between royal pageantry and revolts against the crown in 1497 one such Revolt led to the only battle to have taken place here the Cornish rebelled against taxation being levied on them by Henry VII for his campaign against the Scottish King James IV the cornishmen marched to London in protest under the leadership of Michael Joseph at Blackheath the rebels were met by the king's Army violent clashes followed many cornishmen were slaughtered and the rebellion was crushed [Music] there had been another Rebellion on the heath some 50 years earlier that would have been led by Jack Cade it has been fueled by anger at the corrupt government of Henry VI but also by the Mysteries surrounding the death of the founder of Greenwich Park and the King's brother Humphrey Duke of Gloucester Humphrey came to Greenwich having acquired a piece of land here in 1427 and over the next 10 years he acquired licenses which were really planning permission from the crown to build for himself a pink brick mansion on the Riverside which must have been a very grand house of which sadly no picture or Trace remains he married a lady called Eleanor Cobham and she was accused of dabbling in the Black Arts in other words if he wanted crudely she was accused of being a witch [Music] Eleanor was denounced for her black Arts by two priests who have been part of her household but had been arrested and then tortured by Humphrey's enemies at court the priests claimed that she had been involved in making a wax Effigy of her husband's brother Henry VI by calling on the devil's help the King's life could be made to fade with the melting of the wax figure [Music] she was charged with heresy and witchcraft since her husband was heir to the throne this made her actions doubly reasonable but her position also meant that she could escape the ax [Music] Eleanor because of her position in the land they had to treat more carefully she had to walk through the Streets of London Barefoot wearing nothing but a black shift and carrying a two pound wax taper which she then eventually made as an offering at the church at the end of her route she was then put into what I think today would be called house arrest she was imprisoned in a succession of castles up and down the countryside Humphrey very sensibly did absolutely nothing at all to help his wife there was nothing he could have done if he'd moved to help her he would have been drawn into the net in 1445 Henry VI married Margaret avonjour even though Humphrey opposed the match he met them when they arrived here at Greenwich and even lent them his Palace for their honeymoon although this wasn't such a good idea [Music] Margaret loved the palace disliked the Duke and always got her way it was a deadly combination on the 23rd of February 1447 Duke Humphrey died following his mysterious arrest for treason it is thought that he must have been poisoned as great pains were taken to expose his body to the public to show that it was unmarked after Humphrey's death marked wrongs you moved incredibly quickly to get that house for herself she changed the name of it from Bella Court to Placentia and she remodeled it she wanted that house she wanted it very much indeed the palace became a focal point for the future Tudor dynasty closed links were forged with the local area and the Parish church at Saint alphage is a possible site for the baptism of Henry VII in 1491. the medieval Church replaced one built previously by the Saxons this original church was dedicated to El Fiji Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred on the spot when the Danes invaded England in 1011 alfieg was taken prisoner he was brought in Chains From Canterbury to the Fortified Village of Greenwich where the main Danish encampment was on Blackheath alfiege tried to escape but was recaptured in the boggy Marshland as punishment the ransom for his release was raised to 51 000 pounds alphage told the impoverished English not to pay up a week later the Danes were celebrating Easter in their drunken stupor they began to Pelt and Hammer alfiege with bones left over from their feasting a man called thrum who had been secretly converted by alphage took pity on the injured Dutch bishop and administered the final blow with an ax foreign [Music] a church in his memory has stood here ever since the building we see today was the first church to be built by Hawksmoor it was also the first built under the 50 new churches Act of 1712. this act was instigated by Queen Anne to accommodate a growing London population it was fortunate that the church was so far up the list as after church number 12 the building work ground to a complete halt foreign by the time of Queen Anne the great palace by the Riverside had been and gone it was replaced by a royal hospital for a tired and disabled seamen the hospital had been built during the reign of William and Mary by Ren on the site of the old Palace [Music] Ren was given free reign with a design except for one important Point whatever he built must not block the view of the River from the Queen's house the stunning results of this request can still be seen and appreciated today [Music] Queen's house had been started in 1616 by Inigo Jones for Anne of Denmark wife of James the first it was left unfinished when Anne died and Charles the first wife Henrietta Maria commissioned Indigo Jones to complete the house it was finished nearly 20 years after the initial work had started it might have been slow in coming but it broke the mold of Tudor style architecture and was seen as the birth of the English Renaissance the house does have one rather curious feature it seems to be a bridge this was the rather muddy main road from Deptford to woolage however Indigo Jones wanted the house to have access to both the park and the river so he built it straddling the thoroughfare Queen Henrietta was forced to leave the house on the arrest of her husband she fled to the continent to raise funds for the king's cause she did return after the end of the Civil War but by then the house was never going to be a prominent residence for the monarch however on the 18th of September 1714 George the first landed at Greenwich and held his first official reception in the house for many years Greenwich lost its connections with the crown until in 1795 the future King's bride-to-be arrived and soon changed all that Carolina Brunswick arrived on route to marry her cousin the Prince of Wales who was later crowned George IV the prince had been forced into the marriage for political and financial reasons he was heavily in debt and Caroline came with a large diary she arrived here in Greenwich and had The Misfortune to be met by Lady Jersey who she knew to be the prince's mistress so it was an inauspicious start they had a very unhappy first meeting they had very different expectations one of the other from portraits that they'd seen and the prince of Wales was shocked certainly by her personal hygiene and also by her appearance and summoned somebody to bring him a glass of Brandy she was also shot by his appearance and she found him rather fat Prince was hopelessly drunk on his wedding day the marriage was consummated that night we know that because princess Charlotte emerged nine months later but shortly after Charlotte's birth they split she first of all lived in Charlton just up the road and then she came to live at Montague house [Music] she became involved with the running of an orphanage where she took particular interest in one boy William Austin rumors began to circulate that he was in fact her child in 1806 an inquiry known as the delicate investigation was set up to look into the Affairs of the princess the court was out to get her but could find no real evidence to incriminate her [Music] sadly William Austin was taken to a mental home and spent the rest of his days there during all her troubles the people of Greenwich remained loyal to Princess Caroline sending her letters of support and Declarations of love [Music] Caroline's Behavior became increasingly bizarre and she was known to bathe in a specially constructed bath in the Grands of her house the sight of which is all that now remains of Montague house thank you it is said that the prince Regent had the house torn down after Caroline returned to Germany well the elderly King George III was very fond of her and in his Lucid periods he gave her the job of Ranger of the park she didn't have any real tasks such as the historic duty to keep the deer but it bought a house with it Caroline's mother Augusta had moved next door into Ranger's house in order to be near to her daughter they were the first members of the royal family to actually live in Greenwich for a hundred years the last Royal resident to live here was Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught he was the third son of Queen Victoria and when he was born on the Duke of Wellington's birthday he seemed destined for a military life by the tender age of 12 he was given a separate establishment at Ranger's house where he studied under his tutor Major General elfingston he was being primed for entry into the Royal Military Academy a couple of miles up the road in woolage the young Prince's life here was extremely disciplined and solitary it consisted mainly of one-to-one tuition with very little to break the pattern of study two afternoons a week some local schoolboys were brought to the house these carefully selected boys were expected to amuse The Prince and then lose graciously at the military games played within the specially constructed fort in The Gardens of the house range is housed at the time of the prince's occupation would have overlooked a very different Park from that which was once the Tudor hunting ground foreign otra Gardener to Charles II who wanted to create a more formal French layout this was never fully achieved partly because of the steep hills and uneven ground however the park did provide the ideal venue for the rather informal Delights of the Greenwich Fair something like 250 000 people came from London to Greenwich on the Easter weekend every year enjoying all the tremendous range of entertainments that were that were here probably the greatest attraction was Richardson's theater Richardson the most extraordinary man one of the greatest showman that this country's ever known I don't think he ever learned to read or write yet when he retired he was a multi-millionaire and his theater booth there in half an hour you had a whole range of entertainment you had comic songs you had a pantomime and you had a most wonderful melodrama all in half an hour and of course the biggest game of all and the worst unique to Greenwich fair was running down the hill people joined hands and ran down these very steep hills that we see in the park well that's fair enough but of course one has to remember that generally they were very drunk and so necks were broken skulls were fractured legs arms broken terrible devastation and very often people were forced to run down there they were grabbed by a drunken party you know you've got to come and and they were very often the victims when the Notre landscaped the park the old growth was cleared away however one tree remained the Queen Elizabeth Oak it is thought that even then the tree was known to have historical significance and was saved from the woodcutters many Legends surround the tree which was planted in the 12th century Henry VII and Amber Lynn were thought to have danced around it during their courting days at Greenwich Palace it's said to have got its name because Elizabeth the first held opener audiences with her courtes beneath the tree in later years the hollow trunk was used as a lock-up for those who broke park rules and then in June 1991 the great tree finally collapsed a new Oak was planted next to it by the Duke of Edinburgh to commemorate the 40th year of the present Queen Elizabeth's reign the tree is a symbolic connection between the past and the present A Silent Witness to so many of the special events that link this part of the world with my family [Music] out there is a little-known city within a city albatropolis is a small part of London named after one of my most illustrious forebears Prince Albert whose Innovation and original thinking helped to transform this part of Kensington [Music] [Music] thank you the science museum the Victorian Albert Museum the Royal Albert Hall the Imperial College of science the Natural History Museum the Royal College of Music were all inspired by Queen Victoria's consort which is the key reason why the Albert Memorial is here considering Prince Albert only lived in the country for a mere 20 years this area of Kensington is a truly remarkable Testament to his imagination and energy yet there is no evidence of the one idea from which all this stems the great exhibition of 1851. concept was both revolutionary controversial even now it's difficult to imagine that they really proposed building a giant iron and glass Conservatory in this part of Hyde Park and then turning it into the greatest trade show the world had ever seen initially though the idea was greeted with a great deal of opposition people expected the event would turn the park into an ideal venue for pickpockets these and all manner of petty criminals but it's partly because at one stage the area was a notorious halt of high women and robbers the threat of being attacked was so great even in 1689 that King William III had 300 lanterns hung from the trees along this route and it became the first Road in England to be lit at night it's also known as rotten row although the name of this famous walk has nothing to do with crime or criminals but is derived from William III who had it built privately it took him from Whitehall Palace the old home of the Court through Hyde Park to his new residence at Kensington up until the late 19th century Kensington was basically a village and regarded as a healthy retreat from the grime of London this was one of the main reasons that royalty came to live here in doing so Kensington was totally transformed from a rural Outpost to the center of Court life the principal Palace at that time was the Palace of Whitehall which is a huge building and William and Mary when they came to the throne and that was their main residence very damp this is very bad for William who was an asthmatic he's very bad for Mary who was claustrophobic she's on one occasion here I am surrounded by walls and water so looking for somewhere else they want a country residence near to Whitehall and they bought what was then known as Nottingham house um which was you know in the in the pleasant Village of Kensington it was a Jacobian house a modest like a number of ones around here and really unsuitable for the king and the Queen and their court so Christopher Wren enlarged it and basically put four Pavilions one at Each corner and later on added the King's Gallery and then the Queen's gallery and it just gradually enlarged until it was a little bit like Topsy it just grew both William and Mary were Afflicted with bad health and it was thought that the good air of Kensington would be beneficial but still the palace echoed to the sounds of incessant coughing at times it seemed William kept himself going on sheer willpower but although the king's Health was hardly good it was the queen whose condition gave greater cause for concern [Music] Mary was only 32 when she contracted smallpox her death greatly affected the Royal household in her last few days the king did not want to leave her side and even moved a small camp bed into her bedroom so that he could be with her all hours of the day and night when she died the king collapsed from nervous exhaustion he could not stay at the palace any longer and locked himself away at his house on Richmond green the King was to continue to rule alone for the next eight years until his own death at the palace he was convalescing from a broken collarbone after a fall from his horse at Hampton Court he used to sit by the open Windows looking out over the gardens and one day fell asleep the chill he caught led to pneumonia from which he never recovered fastened by a black ribbon to the king's arm they found a curl of Mary's Hair in a locket sadly it was removed and not buried with him Anne was a proclaimed Queen and came to live here at the palace which by now was seen as the official residence of the monarch she spent many long contented hours in the company of her close friend Sarah Churchill Duchess of Marlborough Anne had been captivated by the young Duchess since they were children jidmarred her vitality and toughness when Sarah was made Mistress of the robes and Keeper of the privy purse she was also given large apartments at Kensington the women would spend many hours chatting together here in the Queen's Closet Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill took on assumed names this allowed them to correspond through letters with an informality not usually seen between Queen and courtier and called herself Mrs Morley and Sarah Mrs Freeman but this intimate friendship was to come to a very Bitter End politics and everything else came into play I suspect also Sarah got ever so slightly bored with the queen and eventually other people became favorites at court Sarah was gradually sort of frozen out and eventually Desiring sort of bring the matter to her head she tracked the queen down here and they had their final quarrel in this building not so much a quarrel in the sense of a shouting match because the queen sort of sat there and Sarah said well what's going on why don't you speak to me and the queen would say virtually nothing and eventually Sarah made big mistake got up and left uh which shouldn't have done tall because that was it and never spoke again and perhaps one of the most famous and important friendships in our history had finished in 1714 Queen Anne died in the palace she had a stroke which was thought to have been brought on by overeating the queen had grown so Stout that by her death they had to build a huge almost Square coffee and had no immediate heirs for her son William had died shortly after his 11th birthday so she was succeeded by her second cousin George elector of Hanover there were 57 other people who had a better claim to the throne but he was the first Protestant as George the first he set about trying to improve the palace and engage the artist William Kent to repaint the grand staircase and to include members of the Court foreign ly the most unusual is the bizarre character Peter the wild boy who was found in 1725 in woods near Hamlin in Hanover Peter was thought to be about 13 years old he walked in all falls climbed trees with agility of a squirrel and ate grass and Moss Peter was presented to the king who brought him to England he was exhibited as a curiosity and allowed to roam the palace Gardens although all attempts to civilize him failed he outlived the King by nearly 60 years William Kent was responsible for much of the painting at the palace under George the first he got the work by undercutting Thornhill who was the official Royal painter although many alterations and improvements were made it was his son George II who made the palace one of his principal residences it was while living here that the king met one of his neighbors Lady Sarah Lennox was walking through the gardens with her governess when she saw the king though a mere child she ran up to him and addressed him in Italian French the King was so Charmed by her that she was regularly invited to the Palace to amuse him the young Sarah Lennox grew up here at Holland House the house energy this particular area of London is named after Lord Holland who lived here during the 17th century at about the time of the Civil War one of Lord Holland's fatal characteristics was tendency to vacillate and of course Civil War was the perfect opportunity to do this although primarily a royalist at heart obviously it belonged to nobility he also was quite Keen to keep his head so he also was trying to favor the parliamentarian side as well and he tried to play Both Sides off against one another unfortunately this wasn't uh very successful and he was beheaded in 1649. the round heads took over Holland house for a while Oliver Cromwell met one of his principal soldiers General arson here to discuss the problems of the nation artem was so deaf and Cromwell had shout so loudly that he conducted the meetings while walking around the grounds to prevent eavesdroppers there is one strong feature from the time of the Civil War at Holland House Widow lady Isabel enjoyed staging theatrical events even though it was against the strictly Puritan ethos [Music] there is still a theater today in the park perched in the ruins of the old Holland House [Music] it was during a performance of this theater that the king's grandson the Prince of Wales and future George III saw Sarah Lennox perform and was said to have fallen madly in love but Sarah was fated not to become Queen meanwhile the Prince of Wales is Mother Augustus decided to take control of proceedings she decided on princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg his marriage was arranged and the course of true love was to be dashed the irony is of course the victorians now believe the marriage between George and Charlotte to be one of the most successful of all Royal marriages Kensington Gardens was greatly improved by George II's wife Queen Caroline who expanded the palace's grounds and formed the Round Pond and long water the Round Pond was created to keep turtles in possibly for members of the court to eat the serpentine was also dug out to make into a feature the king enjoyed taking early morning strolls around the gardens and it was while on one of these solitary walks that he was robbed A man jumped down from the wall of the garden and approached the king with the greatest respect he told the king how distressed he was that poverty had driven him to steal he then politely demanded the king's possessions the king gave him his money watch and the buckles on his shoes ask the man if he could keep the seal which was attached to his watch chain the robber agreed to return it the next day as long as the king told no one about the incident the man kept his word and returned at the arranged hour the thief handed back the Royal seal intact today the park is used for all sorts of events and celebrations for firing of salutes and concerts however the biggest event in the Park's history is still the great exhibition just held in 1851. it arose from the activities of the Royal Society of arts and probably Henry Cole was the man who was giving most of the push there he joined it in the 1840s and they had a series of small exhibitions of modern products and it was out of those exhibitions that the great big exhibition of 1851 developed Cole and his group of people on the committee of the Society of Arts convinced Prince Albert that it was a good thing and then he gave the very important support from the top and used his influence with the government and other top people and the new thing which Henry Cohen Prince Albert brought to it was that this exhibition was to gather works of Industry from the whole world so far as they could manage it at first there was a public outcry when Queen Victoria gave permission for Hyde Park to be used as its site people felt that the whole area would become a bivouac of all vagabonds they were afraid that Kensington would become uninhabitable a competition was held to find a design for the exhibition building and 230 entries were received Joseph Paxton won with a design based on a conservatory at Chatsworth house over 2 000 men were employed to construct a Monumental Building made from four thousand tons of iron and 400 tons of glass which Incorporated the Trees of the park however the building was overrun by a plague of sparrows which no one could remove they couldn't shoot them because of the glass it was the Duke of Wellington who proposed the solution to the queen dries sparrowhawks man once built it was necessary to test whether the Crystal Palace could withstand the thousands of expected visitors squads of soldiers were marched in and ordered to jump up and down shouting at the tops of their voices the queen of course came to the official opening and and several times beforehand to see how it was going the British section was very highly organized with with a classification system of 36 sections ranging from everything from from very heavy machinery to the products that people use in their ordinary life China stationery clothes and so forth and the the the the the them section the foreign section it was simply too difficult to arrange that within the 36 classifications so each nation was given the amount of space it needed and they showed all their stuff muddled up together when the exhibition closed five months later it had been visited by over 6 million people the following year Crystal Palace was taken down and re-erected his synonym in South London sadly it was destroyed by far in 1936 but the area still takes its name the exhibition was a huge success and Albert was given the title of consort for his involvement with it a profit of 186 000 pounds was made a huge and completely unforeseen Fortune at the time Albert used the money to fulfill one of his dreams he devised a concept for an establishment which would apply Art and Science to the industrial Pursuits the first thing he needed was a plot of land there were expenses of Market Gardens not far from the site of the exhibition in in Hyde Park stretching down the hill towards Brompton and they decided to buy up a lot of land here and that's the land on which the Victorian Albert Museum now stands and the other museums of South Kensington Prince Albert's idea was that this land would be a great Cultural Center for London and he wanted to group all sorts of cultural organizations on it his first choice was the National Gallery but the National Gallery wouldn't move and that held things up for a number of years the Albert Hall was a project like the great exhibition where public subscriptions were sought as the financial basis of the thing and they were only able to get enough money by selling the rights to the seats and to the boxes Victoria bought 20 seats which make up the present Royal box and the Commissioners for the 1851 exhibition who were still the landlords of the hall promised assigned to the peppercorn rent of one shilling a year [Music] the hall was designed from the inspiration which Cole had taken from the Roman amphitheaters yeah facing the Great Hall is a gilded Memorial to Prince Albert which was designed by George Gilbert Scott the site of the memorial was carefully chosen it stands on the bisecting point of two lines one that runs through the sight of the great exhibition and one that runs through the heart of albatropolis the queen took a close personal interest in the building of the memorial and although rather strange he never expressed an opinion of the finished work Scott was knighted for his efforts unlike the hall though the memorial never had an official unveiling ceremony Albert is shown reading a catalog from the 1851 exhibition with emblems and motifs of his influences and interests surrounding him Victoria made rather a habit of renaming places she was asked to visit in 1899 a new extension was needed for the South Kensington Museum and the queen laid the foundation stone it was one of the last official duties of Iran and it seems appropriate that she chose to rename it the Victoria and Albert Museum it was also her final opportunity to pay tribute to her beloved husband and their life together one of the main features Victoria would have seen when visiting the museum was the cast courts these contained replicas of famous pieces of architecture and statues from around the world they were assembled for the benefit of art students who were seldom able to travel to the actual Works themselves [Music] a magnificent replica of Michelangelo's David still stands as it would have done at the time of Victoria's visit the only difference being that he no longer wears a fig Leaf the leaf had been specially designed and added in order to avoid the Queen's embarrassment there is another reason that Queen Victoria always had a special affection for Kensington it was her birthplace and childhood home she was born at Kensington Palace on the 24th of May 1819. her father died nine months after her birth and so she was brought up by her mother and by her governess Louise lazen and restrict regime her life here was simple consisting mainly of schooling walking and family meals she had a passion for ponies and would often be seen riding in a little trap through Kensington Gardens although she describes her childhood as lonely she always had a great fondness for the palace [Music] as a young teenager Victoria was made quietly aware of how close she was to the throne when her mother inserted a page into a book on English kings and queens it added the names of her uncles and then her own when Victoria found the book she is reported to have wept raised a finger and said I will be good it was to be seven years before this was to become a reality William IV died in the early hours of the 20th of June 1837. the Archbishop of Canterbury the Lord Chamberlain and the King's physician set out for Kensington The Duchess was hesitant in waking her child but agreed at six o'clock to bring her down to the sitting room it was into this room that the 18 year old Victoria made her first entrance as Queen she was still in her dressing gown when she received the news she offered her hand for Lord Chamberlain who knelt down before her and kissed it before gently informing her of her uncle's death she then returned to her bedroom and put on a plain black dress at half past 11 later that same morning she held her first privy council meeting here at the palace to confirm her accession so imagine all the Great and the good prime minister her uncles Duke of Wellington there in fact Duke of Wellington described the scene he said and she came in and she was you know literally a slip of a girl and she dominated the proceedings completely she had natural Authority whatever you want to call her she had it in Spades and you know the Victorian age began here at that time she commissioned a man called Wilkie to paint the uh the accession council and and it's a very accurate reflection of the room the red Saloon here and it has the Looking Glass in its position as the Duke of Wellington has the Prime Minister holding the first state paper she signed one big mistake because they're all wearing dark colors Wilkie Potter in white which she could have worn for morning but she actually wore black and the dress survives in fact and she wasn't best pleased um you know she could notice details and she certainly noticed which color she should be wearing by the time of Victoria's accession Kensington was no longer the Monarch's official residence she was only to spend a couple more weeks at her childhood home before moving to Buckingham Palace she records in her diary the sadness that she felt at leaving her poor Palace it had been a place with special memories and none more so than her first meeting with Albert of sex Coburg which took place here in 1836 now of course the palace is most closely identified with Diana Princess of Wales and the extraordinary events that followed her death in 1997. even now a day does not seem to pass without someone leaving a flower to pay tribute the palace is still a royal home and is where Princess Margaret the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and prince and princess Michael of Kent live the area of Kensington has many connections with the crown but has been officially recognized for one in particular in 1900 Queen Victoria was asked to confer the title Royal on the borough in recognition of this being her birthplace sadly she died before it could be officially acknowledged however her aired with the seventh gave the go-ahead on her behalf so Kensington became the first of only three Royal boroughs in the country

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Keywords: Albert Memorial, British history, Crown & Country, Diana Princess of Wales, Greenwich Observatory, History Hit, Prince Edward visit, Real Royalty, Royal Naval College, Tudor Greenwich, ancient royalty, aristocratic heritage, crown jewels, historic palaces, historical figures, monarchy films, noble families, palace renovations, royal families, royal lifestyle, world history

Id: 0tea1jcfHew

Length: 47min 31sec (2851 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023