Poignant reason the Queen refuses to move out for repairs to her crumbling Palace
NO ONE apart from the monarch and her lady’s maid are permitted inside the Queen’s bathroom. So it was a matter of some delicacy when a workman was admitted to this most private of chambers the other day.
He was there to carry out a repair to the oldfashioned chain-pulled cistern and, according to royal sources, as he worked to fix the problem, he leant against the lavatory and part of the structure came away from the wall.
What started as a routine job suddenly took on larger and more urgent proportions and at the same time served to sharply illuminate just how serious the problem of the crumbling Buckingham Palace has become.
A leaking roof in the Picture Gallery threatening the priceless collection and staining the silk-covered walls is one thing, but when such an intimate piece of royal machinery as the Queen’s toilet is temporarily out of commission the call for action becomes deafening.
This week aides warned the Queen may have to move out of her London home so builders can carry out £150 million worth of refurbishment. it was said the Palace, which has not been redecorated for more than 60 years, has fallen into such a state of disrepair that the wiring and plumbing will have to be replaced and the works could take up to ten years.
Against the reported £3.5 billion refurbishment estimate for the House of Commons and Palace of Westminster, the cost looks almost modest. even so it has soared from a quote only two years ago, when officials predicted £50 million was needed to cover the maintenance for all the royal palaces.
At a time when many are still suffering the hardship of years of economic restraint it may not have been the best moment to ask for more taxpayers’ money. Certainly, the Queen was not amused that her state visit to Germany has been overshadowed by squabbling between her bean counters and the Scottish government over future funding for the monarchy north of the border.
She was particularly dismayed that Sir Alan Reid, her treasurer and keeper of the privy purse, of whom she is especially fond, found himself in the firing line over the matter.
Maintaining Buckingham Palace has always been a political hot potato. Only two years ago, MPs accused Sir Alan of ‘shocking complacency’ over repairs to royal buildings when he appeared before a Commons committee. This was why Reid set out the £150 million refurbishment plan this week.
So is the Palace falling down? And if so, can the Queen possibly live there while refurbishment is taking place? There is no doubt work needs to be done. Staff have had to catch rainwater in buckets to protect works of art in the Queen’s Gallery and the Picture Gallery.
A chunk of masonry the size of a shoebox fell perilously close to Princess Anne’s car some years ago, forcing emergency repairs to re-face the interior of the quadrangle.
Work has been carried out to the clock face and pediment. Now, i am told, the balcony adjoining the Green Drawing Room, is structurally unsound and out of bounds.
Over the past year, the Palace has had to spend £ 300,000 on the removal of asbestos in the basement floor ducts, £700,000 on the resurfacing of roadways and paths in the garden, £ 800,000 on the renewal of slate and lead coverings and £300,000 on the refurbishment of the State Glass Pantry.
Five chandeliers in the Ball Supper Room have been taken down and cleaned by hand, a task that took an incredible two months. On a fact-finding visit, MPs reported cracked plasterwork and discoloured gilding on the staircase. The paintwork in the Blue Room was so faded ‘it was more like a smoky grey room’.
in a month’s time, the Queen will put the bickering behind her when she leaves the Palace for Scotland, where she will spend the summer and early autumn first at Craigowan Lodge and then Balmoral Castle.
After her departure the gates of the palace will be opened to the public at £35.50 a head. For two months visitors will tour the gilded state rooms where investitures, audiences and receptions are held.
A highlight will be the dining table in the ballroom, which will be set for 170 guests, with 2,000 pieces of cutlery, silver-gilt candelabra and tableware, and the Grand Service on which food is presented.
Dresses and jewellery worn by the Queen at state banquets over the years and gifts presented by some of the 110 visiting heads of state she has welcomed to the Palace will be on display. visitors will also have a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the 12 months of preparation that goes into each state visit to Britain, including the selection of food and wine and Her Majesty’s outfits.
ever since the doors were first opened to paying guests in 1993 — in response to public outrage that the taxpayer alone should meet the cost of the devastating Windsor Castle fire — it has been one of London’s most popular attractions.
The public opening is also one of the reasons why the repairs have stacked up. ‘in the old days before the Palace was opened for the summer, an annual maintenance programme was carried out,’ says a courtier. ‘Now that can’t be done in anything like the same way.’
Few of the visitors will see anything but perfection on show. But behind the polished veneer of the official tour, all is not well.
‘All they’ve been doing in recent times is papering over the cracks,’ says a courtier. ‘The place is awash with asbestos, which is enormously costly to remove. The £150 million is just an estimate. After the Windsor fire we budgeted for £40 million and it came in at £37 million so you hope the estimate will come down.’
This week, aides have talked about the Queen having to quit the Palace while renovations are carried out. This would mean having to find somewhere to hold state banquets, investitures and garden parties.
Other members of the Royal Family, including Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and the earl and Countess of Wessex, who operate from the Palace, would also have to find another royal base.
The disruption means the Queen would be reluctant to move. There is also, i understand, a more emotional reason behind this reluctance. ‘She is concerned that if she does leave she has no way of knowing when or whether she will ever return,’ says the courtier.
‘in particular, she is concerned Prince Philip might never return. She is not spelling it out but she is mindful of her own and Philip’s great age.’
Another factor is the Queen’s attitude to money. Careful by nature, her first reaction to learning of damage or the need for repairs is to say: ‘How much?’
Now 89, her habit of switching off electric lights in empty Palace rooms is well known. Apart from three years as a newlywed when she and Philip lived in Clarence House, Buckingham Palace has been her home since the age of ten.
While edward vii called it a ‘ mausoleum’ and the Duke of Windsor likened it to a ‘prison’, elizabeth happily took over the old rooms where she had seen her father at work. Many things have remained unchanged ever since.
After artist Michael Noakes was commissioned to paint the Queen, one of the first things she said to him when he arrived in the Yellow Drawing Room was that she ‘really must do something about the curtains’. Fabric swatches were ordered and the next time he came the samples were lying on the sofa.
‘Four years later when i went back to paint her again the samples were still there,’ he recalled.
AND servants still talk, possibly apocryphally, of the story of the torn tapestry. The Queen is said to have noticed some damage to a wall covering and reported it to a footman. The servant took a pair of scissors to the tapestry, slicing off a strip to remove the offending tear. The Queen, i am told, never mentioned it again.
But while her bonds with Buckingham Palace are strong, it is not her favourite home. That is Windsor Castle where, as she gets older, she spends more time.
Her regular routine is to arrive at the Palace at 3pm on Monday and leave on Thursday afternoon. Usually it is for Windsor, but she and Philip also like the solitude of Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk for their weekend breaks. Because of the rhythm of the royal year — in which the Queen is at Sandringham for Christmas and the New Year, at Windsor for easter, the horse show in May and Royal Ascot in June, and Balmoral in the summer — she spends less than six months at the Palace.
Not long ago some royal advisers were debating whether in these cash-straitened times there was a case for mothballing one or two royal homes. Their thoughts were shaped by Prince Charles, who has let it be known that he thought Buckingham Palace should not be the home of the monarch.
instead it should house royal offices and also be used as a magnificent venue for official entertaining.
But former royal aide Dickie Arbiter is firmly opposed to such an idea. ‘Buckingham Palace is the symbolic head of monarchy,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t expect the Pope to move out of the vatican for a church round the corner. People come to the Palace for garden parties and investitures, and it is a great occasion which no other royal address quite possesses.’
As for spending on the repairs, he says: ‘Buckingham Palace is a building of historic importance, so the money has to be spent. Would let the Tower of London fall down? Or the Palace of Westminster? Of course not.’
The Duke of Windsor mournfully noted: ‘One never tinkers with palaces; like museums they seem to resist change.’ A maxim that could not be more appropriate when applied to Buckingham Palace during the Queen’s reign.