The Queen's Houses

by Alan Titchmarsh

  The young Princesses out for a drive with their nanny, ‘Bobo’ MacDonald

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century Queen Anne encountered the same economic stringency with yearly cost overruns unsupported by parliamentary grants. As a result her household numbers were cut back, mostly in the departments of the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Horse. In the latter part of her reign, as the Civil List declined once again, servants and suppliers suffered. The result of this chronic underpayment was that most servants resorted to corruption of one kind or another simply to get by.

  With the coming of the Georges, Parliament agreed to guarantee The King’s income for the first time. But with household costs rising inexorably the Treasury stepped in once more and in 1718 demanded tighter controls on spending. To no avail; departmental debts were increasing by the end of the reign of George I in 1727. Sir Robert Walpole engineered a generous Civil List payment for King George II but parliamentary reluctance to inquire into what were considered The King’s private affairs meant that financial scrutiny of household spending was not as stringent as it might have been and midway through the reign of George III the debts had risen once more.

  In 1782 a Bill was enacted to allow the debt to be discharged while imposing swingeing cuts and abolishing a large number of offices and departments. The names of those made redundant – some of them delightfully arcane – give an insight into the wide-ranging nature of eighteenth-century life at court. Letters of dismissal were sent out to, amongst those in a very long list, the Deputy Examiner of Plays, the Vocal Performer in Extraordinary, the Furner to the Pastry and the Turncock and Keeper of the Buckets.

  The balancing of the royal books swung perilously into the red once more over the following reigns, and is to this day still an issue. But here is Gabriel Tschumi again, as he gives us a vivid picture of servant life under Queen Victoria towards the end of the nineteenth century as a kitchen apprentice on £15 (approx. £1500 today) a year. We left him commenting on the lazy ways of his fellow servants but he exempts the royal kitchens, ‘the centre round which the whole life of the Royal Household revolved’. In the kitchens were prepared ‘every day the meals for all the lower servants, as well as the breakfasts and ten- or twelve-course luncheons and dinners served to the Queen, the Royal Family, their guests, and the lords and ladies-in-waiting who were in residence’. Besides the Royal Chef, 18 master cooks sported immaculate white uniforms with the royal cipher and chef’s toques and, of these cooks, eight had their own tables preparing ‘the most elaborate and difficult dishes on the day’s menu’. Gabriel, with admirable ambition, worked in the kitchens of the big London hotels during his time off and judged the royal kitchens ‘vastly superior in every way’.

  The young Princesses with their nanny ‘Crawfie’

  Each senior member of Queen Victoria’s kitchen staff had his own set of utensils, which no one else used, and which were kept sharp and in gleaming order by the kitchen-maids. When the Royal Household moved from house to house nothing was lost or mislaid, and everything functioned just as smoothly whichever the kitchen. The kitchens had ‘the discipline of a barrack room’. Every copper pan was numbered and once finished with immediately washed and burnished and hung in its place. No one sat down – as a result a high proportion of long-serving staff developed fallen arches from standing on stone floors all day and spent their hour off resting in their rooms. There was no talking, except for the giving of orders, because ‘the standard of cuisine insisted on by M. Ménager demanded intense concentration’. Such was the standard of perfection sought by him that the master cooks and chefs ‘brought their dishes to him at various states of preparation to be passed before they could go on to the next stage’. Barons of beef and scores of chickens were roasted in front of open coal ranges. All the bread was baked daily by the bakers as were buns, rolls and cakes. Whenever Kaiser Wilhelm I came to stay, his favourite raised pie consisting of ‘a turkey stuffed with a chicken, inside the chicken a pheasant, and inside the pheasant a woodcock’ was made for him.

  Tschumi paints a delightful portrait of the Royal Chef – on £400 (approx. £40,000 today) a year plus a living-out allowance of another £100 (approx. £10,000 today) – with his bushy moustache, coming to Buckingham Palace each day by hansom cab wearing an immaculate frock-coat and top hat. A quote from Tschumi sums up the royal cooks’ devotion to their task:

  Kitchen staff at Windsor Castle, 1887

  ‘A chef is an artist. And like an artist he strives constantly for perfection. But he has as difficult a task as any man who creates beauty from wood or stone, and there are no memorials to his art. His triumph is a momentary one, between the serving of a dish and the minute when the last few mouthfuls are taken. To achieve that short triumph he must expend all his skill and experience.’

  Gabriel Tschumi worked through the reigns of Edward VII and George V to be pensioned off when economy cuts were once again made to the Royal Household. He was then appointed Royal Chef to Queen Mary at Marlborough House from 1943 until he retired in 1952.

  By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign there were just under 600 domestic servants working at Buckingham Palace; today it is half that. Of that number a very few have become known to the public. Margaret MacDonald, always known as ‘Bobo’ was one. She served Queen Elizabeth II for 67 years, initially as a nursery maid and latterly as her dresser. She died in 1993 aged 89 in her suite at Buckingham Palace and The Queen came down from Balmoral for her funeral service at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.

  Princess Elizabeth (centre) walks her dog with nanny Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford (left)

  The governess to The Queen and Princess Margaret, Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford, served the royal family devotedly for over 20 years, delaying her own wedding for a year when, on the brink of Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, The Queen said to her, ‘Does this mean you are going to leave us? You must see Crawfie, that it would not be at all convenient just now. A change at this stage for Margaret is not at all desirable.’ In retirement Crawfie wrote a series of uncritical articles about her life with the young Princesses, later collected together as a book. While the revelations could in no way be ranked as scurrilous, the action was regarded by the royal family as a complete breach of trust. It is not really surprising. When the majority of one’s life is spent in full view of the media, the ability of close associates to keep confidences is especially valued. Long-term stalwarts of the Royal Household are most revered for their ability to remain low key and to avoid the limelight – people like The Queen’s long-serving and trusted page Paul Whybrew (‘Big Paul’) who was seen alongside Her Majesty, and her corgis, in the filmed sequence for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

  Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret with ‘Crawfie’

  From the private secretaries to the press secretaries, the accountants to the cleaners, the pages to the footmen and the chamber maids, how do such members of staff (the term servants is avoided nowadays) come to be appointed? Most often they answer advertisements in the press and many of them remain in post for a long time. Mark Flanagan, The Queen’s chef, has undertaken that role since 2002 and many other members of staff have been with her for much longer. While the rates of pay may be less than extravagant, the loyalty of staff, the provision of central London accommodation and a huge pride in working for a monarch whom they respect are contributory factors.

  The Queen creates Angela Kelly a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO)

  Perhaps The Queen’s closest confidante is Angela Kelly, who now holds the compendious title ‘Personal Assistant, Adviser and Curator to Her Majesty The Queen (Jewellery, Insignias and Wardrobe)’, the first to hold such a title. Angela Kelly’s dress design and fashion sense has transformed The Queen’s ‘look’ in her later years and her affection for The Queen is clearly evident. Her remark, ‘we have … a lot of fun together’, has caused much comment. She says of her boss: ‘I love The Queen and everything about her,
I adore her – but then so does everyone else.’ It’s a fact that’s true of generations of servants, of whatever rank, over her long reign.

  Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial

  The Queen, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry watch from the balcony of Buckingham Palace as the Royal Air Force perform a flypast during the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations, 2012

  TODAY IF YOU stand looking through the railings at Buckingham Palace you will see the imposing but slightly bland Portland stone facade of the east-wing extension, 108 metres (354 feet) in length. The guardsmen, resplendent in their red tunics and shining boots, topped off with black bearskins, are in their black-and-gold sentry boxes, ramrod straight.

  Three arches pierce the facade; those to left and right give access to the palace and the larger central arch takes carriages and cars through to the inner courtyard. The right-hand arch is used for the day-to-day business of the palace though most of the 800-odd domestic staff who work there use an entrance on the south side (having first shown their passes to the policemen at the gate).

  At first-floor level in the central block is the famous balcony, at which, since 1851, so much emotion has been directed in times of national or royal celebration by the seething masses swirling around where you now stand. Is the Royal Standard flying from the flagstaff above the central block? If so, Her Majesty The Queen is in residence, which she is every weekday except for certain fixed times of year when she is at Windsor Castle, Balmoral on Royal Deeside, Sandringham in Norfolk or Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. At these times, and at weekends, the Union Flag will be hoisted in place of the Royal Standard.

  Buckingham Palace is The Queen’s office where ‘the firm’ that is the monarchy conducts its business and where she carries out the official and ceremonial duties required of her as head of state. It is the ‘youngest’ of the royal palaces, having been transformed from a country house by George IV in the 1820s. He never got to live there, dying before its completion. His brother William IV chose not live there, preferring the comparative seclusion of Windsor Castle. So it was George and William’s niece, Victoria, who really made it the formal seat of monarchy and the court, and her husband Prince Albert who had much to do with its mid-nineteenth-century aggrandizement.

  A map showing the progress of a debutante through Buckingham Palace, 1912

  Behind the building directly in front of today’s visitor lies the courtyard of an older building, which in turn, at its centre, envelops the old eighteenth-century house transformed by George IV with the help of the architect John Nash. The wine vaults below it date from 1760. The whole structure now has a floor area of nearly 80,000 square metres (860,000 square feet), and is pierced by over 1500 doors and nearly 800 windows (each one cleaned every 6 weeks). Seven hundred and seventy-five rooms jostle for space, some huge like the 19 state rooms where the various events requiring pomp and ceremony take place (the biggest, the ballroom, is 36.6 metres [120 feet] long), and others very modest, like many of the 188 staff bedrooms. There are 52 bedrooms allocated to the royal family and their personal and official guests, and 78 bathrooms service the bedrooms. Ninety-two offices complete the room count, used to administer the personal and very complex official life this family leads.

  Behind the inner courtyard, furthest from where the onlooker stands outside the palace railings, is the garden front, a handsome range of buildings in yellow-coloured stonework, which faces a large expanse of lawn – an excellent space to contain the 8000 guests who attend each of the three annual garden parties, gazing over a large lake and a mix of woodland and herbaceous planting, the whole garden stretching to nearly 40 acres of prime London real estate. But it was not always like this. To find out how it grew into such a recognizable national icon we need to go back 400 years …

  Origins of the palace

  It is the late 1620s, and beside a dusty road at old Eye Cross, a sluggish river runs; well, more of a stream than a river to be accurate. The road is uneven, cut with iron wheels of carts and carriages in times of rain. No one could fail to notice the smell, the pungent, gut-heaving stink, a mixture of dead matter and human excrement, intensified by the heat. The Tyburn River is an open sewer. Smells are a fact of daily life, with very few people bathing regularly, and most not at all. The rich wear perfume to mask the constant smell and change their clothes frequently. The poor just stink.

  To the right, a little bridge takes the road over the Tyburn and then curves north towards Chelsea, following the east bank of the river. Passers-by are a little nervous – until recently the swampy area behind them featured crocodiles introduced by the late King, James I, together with camels and an elephant. He had landscaped the park, making elegant walks, surfaced with crushed seashells, and he had also created a mulberry garden in 1608. The whole area had been purchased 200 years before from Eton College by Henry VIII, who then turned Wolsey’s grand York House into yet another of his palaces, to be renamed Whitehall. The land here was his hunting park attached to the palace.

  Almost upon the road and bounded by the smelly river to its east is a newly built house, facing due south, a bit rambling, of modest size but clearly with pretensions. The new cracks in the plaster infills between the studwork beams show signs of haste in building. Surprisingly, this unassuming house in this stench-filled area stands on the site of the future Buckingham Palace, which will become one of the most famous buildings in the world.

  The house was built by a William Blake on wasteland beside the road for his son, also called William, and his new bride. Unlike the present-day palace, it faced south as opposed to east. Blake House went up very quickly because the Blakes were, in effect, squatting on the site. The freehold of the land belonged originally to the Crown and a reversionary lease was granted on it by Elizabeth I, due to expire in 1675. The land had passed by dubious practices through various unscrupulous hands until 1623 when Charles I’s Lord Treasurer, Lord Cranfield, used nominees to disguise his purchase of the lease and also the freehold of nearby Ebury Manor. The purchase excluded James I’s mulberry garden, which extended to some four acres. Cranfield was impeached for corruption the next year and his estates were required to stand surety for the fine imposed on him.

  In 1626 the lawyer, moneylender and rich skinflint Hugh Audley (known as ‘The Great Audley’ because of his wealth) bought the lease and the freehold of Ebury cheaply from the distressed Cranfield and attempted to oust the Blakes, who refused to quit. Somehow old Sir William Blake, another fraudulent character in a litany of unscrupulous men connected with this site, had managed to acquire a deed to supplement whatever squatter’s title had accumulated. Audley contested this for the next 20 years but meanwhile the Blakes, father and son, had died, and Blake House had been sold in 1633 to Lord Goring, later 1st Earl of Norwich, another avaricious and unscrupulous courtier. The early years of what we know as ‘Buckingham Palace’ were far from uneventful.

  Goring enlarged Blake House, by all accounts adding to it rather than demolishing the original, creating a desirable gentleman’s residence renamed Goring House. He negotiated with Audley to buy a further 20 acres of land around his new house, which are now part of the palace gardens. From these acres he evicted a number of smallholders, planted an apple orchard and enclosed the whole area with what became known as ‘Goring great garden wall’.

  Goring approached Charles I to buy out the Crown freehold of the mulberry garden, the only remaining Crown lease. This he agreed in 1640, but before the required legal document could be executed Charles I had fled London. By this date Lord Goring had accumulated nearly all of what was to be the future site of Buckingham Palace, apart from mulberry garden to the rear and the area circumscribed by the Tyburn and the Chelsea Road to the immediate front. Goring was reduced to ruin when all the sinecures granted by The King were annulled by the Long Parliament of November 1640. Consequently he defaulted on the payments still owing to Audley and therefore Audley tenanted Goring’s great garden.

  In March 164
3 Parliament ordered a defensive ring known as the ‘Lines of Communication’ to be thrown up in an 18 km (11 mile) arc around London to prevent it being retaken by Royalist forces. The lines featured intermittent ‘forts’, probably earthen ramparts palisaded with timber stakes intended to hold cannon. One such fort, labelled ‘A Court of Guard at Chelsea Turnpike’ in the John Rocque plan of 1738, was erected in the grounds of Goring House. A later survey required that this should be strengthened: ‘at the corner of Lord Goring’s brick wall next the fields a redoubt and battery where the (guard post) now is; at the lower end of Lord Goring’s wall, the brete work to be made forwarder’.

  While Goring was abroad on royal business in November 1644, Parliament seized the empty Goring House, at first using it as a barracks for Parliamentary troops, then as a residence for the French Ambassador and finally for the Speaker of the Commons, William Lenthall. On his return, Goring failed to wrest the house back from Parliament and, after leading a Royalist revolt, was eventually captured and executed, his death sentence having been commuted on the casting vote of Speaker Lenthall … the tenant of Goring House.