The Queen's Houses

by Alan Titchmarsh

  A guide to Holyroodhouse from 1958

  Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender and grandson of James II, held court at Holyrood in September and October 1745, before the bloody Battle of Culloden the following April saw an end to the Jacobite Rising. The victor that day, The Duke of Cumberland, a younger son of George II, also stayed at Holyrood on his way to Culloden.

  The young Princesses and The Queen Mother at Holyrood, 1937

  In 1822, George IV became the first reigning monarch since Charles I to visit the palace. It was, by then, in too run down a state for him to stay but he held a reception there, stage-managed by Sir Walter Scott, where the corpulent King George presided over a sea of ‘revived ancient dresses’ and plaid pageantry in a swirl of red Royal Stuart tartan. Victoria, with her love of all things Scottish, acquired an apartment in the palace and Albert, with his indefatigable industry, laid out the gardens much as we see them today.

  During the reign of George V modern conveniences, electric lighting and central heating were installed and by the 1920s Holyroodhouse was comfortable enough to be designated the official residence of the monarch in Scotland and the focus for regular royal ceremonies.

  Today The Queen spends one week a year at the Palace of Holyroodhouse where she holds investitures, audiences and garden parties. Prince Charles also spends a week there and performs duties under his title as Duke of Rothesay. At other times parts of the palace, managed by the Royal Collection Trust, are open to the public.

  Grooms work inside the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, 1980

  ‘Few more brilliant or more beautiful sights are to be seen than the royal cortege as it wheels into line. With all the trappings and circumstance of State, the glitter and pomp of uniforms and action, it recalls in some measure the brilliant pageants that were the pride and glory of our forefathers.’

  Royal Ascot: Its History & Its Associations, Cawthorne & Herod, 1901

  GRAND HOUSES CAN usually boast a handsome garage block; a few can even offer accommodation for horses and carriages as well as limousines, though none of them is as regularly used – or in such fine working order – as that at Buckingham Palace.

  The Royal Mews, its entrance facing onto Buckingham Palace Road, was first built in the garden of the old Buckingham House by the architect John Nash in the 1820s as part of George IV’s great scheme to transform Buckingham House, his parents’ country house in London, into a metropolitan palace. It was built next to the Riding School designed by Sir William Chambers for George III 60 years earlier and sited over the old kitchen garden. Generations of royal children have been schooled in this sandy-floored enclosure, including the present generation of royals.

  The Royal Mews in 1888

  The great Nash quadrangle at Buckingham Palace Mews, its entrance gates flanked by the grand house for the Crown Equerry and the matching office and superintendent’s residence facing it, replaced the former Royal Mews in the area now occupied by Trafalgar Square. This was a rambling complex of buildings comprising the Great Mews and the smaller Green Mews divided by the Crown Stables, a long building designed by the celebrated architect William Kent in the early 1730s during the reign of George II. Old engravings from the 1790s show the Crown Stables had a handsome arcaded facade in the balanced, symmetrical, Palladian manner sporting a central pedimented carriage entrance and twin cupolas sprouting from the roofs to either side. It faced an exercise yard – an open area rare in the crowded, narrow streets of the city in those days. In 1826 John Nash was asked to draw up plans for a large public space, clearing the area south of the Crown Stables, which was subsequently laid out as Trafalgar Square. The Crown Stables themselves remained as a menagerie, an exhibition space and a storage depository for public records until they too were demolished in 1835.

  A postcard showing the ceremonial hats of The Queen’s coachmen

  The earliest records of the Charing Cross Mews, at the western end of the modern Strand, date to 1377 as a building where the royal hawks, usually falcons, were kept during their annual moulting or ‘mewing’ time between late April and October, when they were removed from court (Mews comes from the French muer meaning ‘to change’). These building were destroyed by fire in 1534 and rebuilt as stables in 1537, keeping the name ‘Mews’, which is now synonymous with a building used for stabling horses, during the reign of Henry VIII.

  There were also other mews serving the Crown attached to different palaces at different times. St James’s Palace, built in the 1530s by Henry VIII, had extensive stables that stood on the site of Lancaster House, designed in the 1820s. A ground plan of the palace drawn up in 1792 (before the great fire of 1809 destroyed much of the Tudor palace) shows a Stable Yard and ‘a way to sundry stables’. The postal address for Lancaster House today is still ‘Stable Yard’.

  The Royal Mews, 1750

  When St James’s Palace was granted by James I to his eldest son Prince Henry (who died of typhoid aged 18 in 1612), the first documented purpose-built riding house was added in 1607–9 for his education – a Renaissance Prince was required to be an expert and elegant rider – and for his amusement. The riding house, some 39 metres (128 feet) long, was reputed to have been the biggest in the country. The Royal Stables, meanwhile, were at Hampton Court Palace, having been built in 1536 by Henry VIII soon after he took over the palace from Cardinal Wolsey. George II was the last monarch to reside at Hampton Court and when he moved out the stables were much depleted and the east side converted to become the Chequers Inn. In 2009 it was mooted that the stables should be sold to help pay for repairs to other royal palaces. Located on Hampton Court Road they are still used as accommodation for staff and as the headquarters of the Horse Rangers Association. The new stables at Windsor Castle were built in 1839, where previously houses of ‘ill repute’ had stood. The carriages used for the procession at the royal meeting at Ascot are housed there, as are horses for the use of the royal family riding in Windsor Great Park. The carriage horses are also trained there.

  The liveries of the staff of the Royal Mews

  George III acquired Buckingham House in 1761. Moving out of St James’s Palace, he transferred almost immediately those horses and carriages required for his day-to-day needs from the Royal Mews at Charing Cross, leaving behind those required for state occasions. His son George IV died before the conversion of Buckingham House into his new palace was complete and his brother William IV chose not to live there. It was only when the young Queen Victoria in 1837 made Buckingham Palace her home, as well as the centre of state affairs, that the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace really came into its own, a busting village full of activity from morning to dusk.

  The functions required of the Royal Mews have evolved over the centuries. Initially all matters to do with the sovereign and transport were under the control of the Master of the Horse, an important office in the household, third in seniority behind the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain. These titles and the organization of the Royal Household and functions of the office holders originally came to England with the Norman invasion of 1066. For centuries the Master of the Horse provided the sovereign with horses in times of war, for travel and for sport, at first for hunting and later for horse racing. The post continues to this day, though its duties are now a little less onerous.

  Constant travel was a feature of court life in the summer months, particularly in the Tudor period. The sovereign travelled around the country during ‘progresses’, literally taking the throne to the people in an age when most lived out their lives without a glimpse of their ruler. The progress demonstrated the power and magnificence of the sovereign, a necessary activity in an era devoid of any media to spread the message, and was an enormous undertaking, particularly in the reign of Elizabeth I.

  Elizabeth I insisted that her household serve her on the road as if she was in one of her palaces, so each department was required to pack up and transport all the necessary equipment. Each department was assigned carts by the Lord Steward according t
o function, status and position at court: 13 for the jewel coffers, 10 for the wardrobe of the bedchamber, 10 for the kitchen, 8 for the robes and so on down a very long line. The resulting baggage for the court, retainers and household might require 300 or more carts – and more than a thousand horses to pull them. Elizabeth I went on 23 progresses in her reign, during which she and her nobility travelled in carriages pulled by teams of six horses.

  Elizabeth I on royal progress, 1603

  Elizabeth I had a stable of between 100 and 150 horses for her own use and double that for pulling carts and carriages, which swelled dramatically at times of progress. It was the job of the Master of the Horse, to feed, water, house, saddle, shoe and stable them all (he would be today described as in charge of ‘transportation and logistics’). As one writer put it, ‘the sight of hundreds of carts, horses, and bedecked nobility stretched along dusty English roads offered no small dose of pageantry and spectacle’. On the other hand, Thomas Smith, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, writing while on the progress of 1575, wrote, ‘men are weary, the way and the wether fowl, the countrey sore vexed with carriage’. The total number of personnel on such journeys amounted to around 2000 souls, all of whom had to be accommodated by her hosts. No wonder a visit bankrupted more than a handful of them.

  clockwise from top left: Princess Anne riding ‘Blue Star’, 1967; The Queen as Colonel in Chief of the Grenadier Guards, riding ‘Neill’; Prince Andrew at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, 1967; The Duke of Edinburgh presents a member of his polo team, The Prince of Wales, to The Queen after the Combermere Cup; Two sets of blue state harnesses, made in the reign of George III; The Queen and her family in the dog cart at Balmoral, 1966.

  Master of the Horse, Lord Vestey, 2010

  The old offices of state have in many instances become hereditary and ceremonial. Today, the Master of the Horse – Lord Vestey since 1999 – is still the senior officer responsible for the Royal Mews, and the carriages and horses (and formerly the hounds) of the sovereign, together with the royal studs. However, in practice the day-to-day management of the Royal Mews and any travel by horse, carriage or car has devolved to the Crown Equerry, first appointed in 1854. Since 2011 the Crown Equerry has been Colonel Toby Browne, who retired as Commander of the Household Cavalry the previous year.

  When the sovereign rides on horseback or travels by horse-drawn carriage on state occasions – the sovereign’s Birthday Parade and the State Opening of the Houses of Parliament – then the Master of the Horse is in attendance. A nineteenth-century description puts it nicely: ‘at any solemn cavalcade he has the honour to ride next behind the King, and leads the Horse of State’.

  The current Crown Equerry, Toby Browne

  Today the activities of the Royal Mews are consolidated at Buckingham Palace. The carriages and coaches used on state occasions and for schooling the carriage horses are housed there together with their horses, as well as cars used by the royal family for state business. John Nash’s stables, completed in 1825, were built to accommodate 100 horses. More recently some stables have been converted to garages and others into exhibition spaces but there is still plenty of stabling and, today, there are roughly 30 horses in residence at any one time. There are usually around ten Windsor Greys, renowned for their steady temperament (named after Windsor Castle where the breed was kept in Victorian times), which pull the state carriages. Eight of them are required to pull the hugely heavy Gold State Coach. There are usually some 20 other bay horses, mostly Cleveland Bays, the others cross-bred. The Cleveland Bays originated in the north-east of England and are one of the oldest breeds in Britain. Today they are bred at Hampton Court Royal Paddocks, a Royal Stud founded in the sixteenth century.

  A silk Hermes scarf depicts the various coaches of the Royal Mews

  The horses are largely used to pull, roughly 50 times a year, the carriages that take newly appointed high commissioners and ambassadors from one of the 172 foreign missions based in London to Buckingham Palace to present their credentials to The Queen. The Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps leads in a state landau whilst the ambassador’s suite follows in another. There is also a daily messenger service by brougham (a four-wheeled carriage with an open driver’s seat) delivering post between Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace. The working life of a horse in the Royal Mews lasts around 15 years, from the age of 4 when they are broken in to saddle and then to the harness, to retirement around 19 or 20.

  Above left and right: Coachmen prepare the horses for the Diamond Jubilee procession, 2012

  And what of the manure? For a start, it is not called ‘manure’. The waste products from the horses are known as ‘arisings’ and they are composted at Buckingham Palace and used there and at other royal sites as soil enrichment – just a part of the self-sufficient approach to household management.

  The jewel in the crown of the carriage collection at the Royal Mews is the enormous gilded Gold State Coach designed by Sir William Chambers for George III in 1762 and used at every coronation since that of George IV in 1821. Until 1946 it was used also for the State Opening of Parliament.

  The Gold State Coach, built in 1762 for George III

  The carriages are an important part of royal ceremony – allowing the monarch and the royal family to be seen by their subjects. Colonel Toby Browne, who organized The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee carriage procession in 2012, stresses the importance of this: ‘For The Queen …to be seen by the people in a procession like this is incredibly important and is the crowning moment of the Jubilee celebration weekend … we have this great panoply of state on show: troops, carriages, horses, military bands. To see the whole thing come through in one moment is spectacular.’ The Queen, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall rode in the 1902 State Landau (built for Edward VII by Hooper & Co.), most recently used by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their wedding day in April 2011. Other members of the royal family rode in a Semi-State Landau.

  Edward VII prepares for a drive in his Daimler, 1905

  Of the closed coaches, the Irish State Coach, originally built for the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1851, has been used since 1946 to take the monarch to the State Opening of Parliament. The Glass Coach was built in 1881 as a sheriff’s coach but purchased for the coronation in 1911. It is most often associated with royal weddings – it took the newly married Princess Elizabeth and The Duke of Edinburgh from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace in 1947 and Lady Diana Spencer to St Paul’s for her wedding to Prince Charles in 1981. Other coaches on display at the Royal Mews, and also regularly used, include the Australian State Coach given in 1988 by the People of Australia to mark the Australian Bicentenary, and Queen Alexandra’s State Coach of 1865, converted in 1893 into a ‘glass state coach’.

  When a carriage and horses are needed on any of The Queen’s estates – for the opening of the Sandringham Flower Show, for instance – they will travel in a specially equipped horse box and arrive at the function shining and immaculately turned out, with groom and postilion in fine livery.

  A poster from 1910 illustrates The Petrol Era, which powered the reign of George V. The images include a farm wagon, aeroplane, dirigible balloon, motorboat and George V about to enter his Daimler car.

  It was Edward VII who introduced the motor car to the Mews at the turn of the twentieth century. He was given a demonstration in a Daimler by John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, later Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, in 1898 and was so impressed he bought a mail phaeton (a light car without weather protection now on display at Sandringham Museum) in 1900. Two years later he bought a second Daimler, at the same time giving Daimler cars a Royal Warrant. Edward VII was photographed leaving Windsor Castle in his new car in July 1902 and this was reproduced on the front cover of the Car Illustrated. Queen Alexandra wrote to her children that she was confident in their father as a driver. She would sit in the back seat, with The King in the chauffeur’s seat: ‘I poke him violently in the back at every corner to go gently and whenever a dog, child or anything else
comes in our way!’ Edward was so addicted to cars he was dubbed the ‘motoring monarch’ and became the first patron of the Royal Automobile Club in 1907.

  His son George V continued to support Daimlers, then built under licence in Coventry, and purchased two 1910 Daimlers with Landaulette bodies. Later purchases included a 1924 Daimler shooting brake (The King was a crack shot) and a 1935 Daimler limousine for Queen Mary. In 1934 the then Crown Equerry wrote to the chauffeur-mechanic Ernest Capel, who had been with the Royal Household Motor Staff since 1906, informing him that The King ‘wants to be driven slowly in his car, as HMs nerves are not what they were’.

  Daimlers continued to be the car of choice for many years until a persistent problem in 1950 with the transmission of a royal Daimler led to Rolls-Royce being given the contract to supply state cars. The car pool at the Royal Mews today consists of, for official duties, five State Limousines (three Rolls-Royces and two Bentleys, now the most-often used); there are also two Semi-State stretched XJ Jaguars and three Daimler limousines, all painted in royal claret livery. The private cars are painted in ‘Edinburgh Green’, a colour adopted in 1948 for The Duke of Edinburgh’s livery.