First Look Inside the Room Behind Buckingham Palace's Iconic Balcony

In terms of the East Wing, it's the first wing that has undergone the reservicing programme, which is a 10-year phased programme to replace the essential services. Buckingham Palace hasn't really undergone anything for about 50 years and it's basically also included some additions to the palace in terms of new lifts and an accessible ramp, making the palace actually work better for itself. So we had to decant all the objects, so it was about 3,500 objects. We decanted over a period of six months and then the contractors got to work. We did 47,000 floorboards were taken up, individually labelled. I think there were quite a lot of nails that they kept as well and have reused. It's been a bit like putting a massive jigsaw puzzle back, literally from the floorboards to perhaps any of those Giltbourne's bells on the pagoda. Fundamentally, the East Wing was funded by the sale of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. There is a citative dismay that Queen Victoria didn't like the Royal Pavilion. She did and she thoroughly appreciated all the artworks that had been collected over the years by her uncle, George IV, but she needed to have more accommodation here at Buckingham Palace. Parliament granted £20,000 and the sale of the Royal Pavilion was to make up the rest. So the pavilion was actually sold to Brighton Council in 1850 for £50,000, but they thought the building was going to be demolished, so Queen Victoria and Prince Albert stripped the pavilion of all its artworks, fixtures and furnishings. So the fireplace here originally came from the saloon in the Royal Pavilion. It's one of over 40 fireplaces that were jemmied off the walls and then incorporated into Buckingham Palace. The Chinese bottle vases also came from the saloon and the curling clock mantelpiece. We even have curtain poles in this room that were originally hanging at Brighton. Well, the addition of the balcony was actually Prince Albert's idea because he felt it was a way of the Royal Family engaging with the public, which is still relevant today. It was first used in 1851 at the start of the Crimean War when Prince Albert and Queen Victoria went onto the balcony to wave the troops off. Obviously VE Day in 1945 is another momentous occasion that one remembers, and of course the Trooping of the Colour recently, His Majesty and Her Majesty were out on the balcony. So yes, I hope people are actually really excited to be in the room where they actually line up and then go out onto the balcony.