BLENHEIM PALACE: The 18th Century Seat of the Dukes of Marlborough! 🏰🇬🇧

We have arrived. This is not the stately home. This is the gate to the stately home. I think we need to upgrade our gate. Just a tad. The stately home there, I mean it's not looking its best. It's covered in scaffolding at the moment because they are redoing the roof at enormous expense but this is what Blenheim usually looks like in happier circumstances. We don't mind at all though because it's the interior that we have come to see. Blenheim was built in the early 18th century for the first Duke of Marlborough to celebrate a glorious victory that he had in the Battle of Blenheim in the Spanish Wars of Succession. There is the column of victory celebrating that victory at the Battle of Blenheim just in the distance in the park and that's really far away so it must be immensely huge. Immensely huge. Yes, immensely huge. I'm getting into the whole speech now. Immensely huge. Whilst he was largely away on various diplomatic missions, his wife Sarah oversaw the building of Blenheim along with his architect Vanbrugh. Vanbrugh wasn't actually even a trained architect. He was a dramatist but he had a friend, Nicholas Hawksmore, and a colleague and he was an architect. They worked together. They together designed Castle Howe, the huge stately home up in Yorkshire that was made famous by the Brideshead revisited series and films. Sarah hadn't actually wanted Vanbrugh to be the architect here. She wanted Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's Cathedral. But apparently her husband went to the theatre one night, got chatting to Vanbrugh and gave him the commission. So this building is one of the rare examples of English Baroque architecture. But the building project lasted about 20 years and was not smooth sailing between Sarah and the architect. Many of you will actually know who Sarah is from a quite whimsical film about her relationship with Queen Anne, The Favourite. It's a great movie. This has belonged to the Churchill family ever since and in recent times the most famous member of that family was born here, Winston Churchill. I think we will be able to get to see the room that he was born in. And for those of you watching the Gilded Age, the marriage between the daughter of the railroad tycoon to an English lord is actually based on the marriage of Consuela Vanderbilt, also daughter of a railroad tycoon, to the lord of this stately home in England in the early 20th century. It is her money that saved Blenheim, which is now classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Well you've all seen the images but Philips is going to have to imagine how grand this place looks without the scaffolding. I love the colour of the stone. I know it's so beautiful. But apparently because of the scaffolding we can actually go up to the roof and see the views, which is pretty unprecedented. As soon as you come in on the great ceiling you can see the Duke of Marlborough presenting his battle plans to Queen Anne, portrayed as Britannia. So the moment you arrive you're reminded immediately of that victory at Blenheim that led to this dukedom and this palace. It's amazing how as the work has gone on they've put a copy of the ceiling. Yes, because what I've just showed you is not the original, it's a huge copy of the ceiling. Yes, you can see the scaffolding back there. They're working up there not only to redo the roof but to rescue the painting that was here which had been damaged by the roof damage. But as you can see because of all the building work there's a lot of paintings that are being protected at the moment from the scaffolding. There's the most beautiful painting of Consuelo Vanderbilt as soon as you walk through into the main part of the building. I mean look at the elegance of that dress. And there she is. As soon as we step into the corridor to go to the rest of the house there is a bust of her opposite her actually much disliked husband it has to be said. It certainly wasn't as happy a marriage as it's shaping up to be in the Gilded Age and they went on to live completely separate lives. Winston Churchill was the son of the Duke's younger son. The family were not living here, they were here for a big ball on St Andrew's Day. Unfortunately his mother was not expecting Winston for a little while longer but Winston took everyone by surprise by deciding that the middle of a ball was the best possible time to be born and that is why she was rushed to a small side room just off the ballroom. And this is where he was born. Quite a simple room in such a grand palace isn't it? It's more the paintings of my church let's say than the portraits. Oh I like his paintings. Oh my goodness Philip has found his happy place. We're off to a cracking start. I've even put the glasses on. So the beautiful Maestro from Dresden was a gift to the Duke of Marlborough from the King of Poland Augustus the Third. Do you remember him? Oh I remember him well. And he gave it in exchange for a pack of staghounds, hunting dogs. That was the thing with Augustus. He tended to use porcelain instead of money once he was able to produce it. He once bought a whole lot of porcelain from a king in Germany in exchange for 200 dragoons. Literally. He sent men under his command to go and live and fight for another king in exchange for his porcelain collection. Well you can see where it's coming from. You see the asparagus handles here. That is absolutely gorgeous. Asparagus handles and the lemon top. I love the lemon top. It's a little ribbon there. Yes that little tiny ribbon yes. I think it's lemon peel. So that is obviously what Herod was inspired by. Look at the detailing on the top of this one with almost lattice work on it. This is all servre in this case. Am I right in saying this is your favorite shape of porcelain? It's the ice cream containers. It's more the thing that I'm still looking for. The thing I'm going to have. So you would put ice, crushed ice, in here and also in the very base of this. And the ice cream sits in a little pot that's suspended between the two. Sandwiched in ice. An outer ball and inner ball that's smaller. Yes which can hold more ice. Excellent. Also I will just point out and you'll see them in every room. There are little mice throughout Blenheim Palace. This is the green drawing room and one of Nicholas Hawksmoor's ceilings with 24 karat gold leaf. Hawksmoor was the architect that worked with the hated Vambra. The difference being that Hawksmoor was actually a trained architect. But I think Philip is most excited about the china in this room. There's been quite a lot as we walk around. They have some very beautiful pieces. This is the red drawing room. What's wonderful in this room is the two huge family portraits hanging opposite one another. So there that's the 9th Duke and his family by John Singer Sargent. There is Consuelo. And opposite is a huge family portrait of the 4th Duke by Sir Joshua Reynolds. So 1778 on one side, 1905 on the other. There are two very unusual sofas in this room and the little mice are showing you what they were used for. So that's the clue. Can you guess? They're actually chaperone sofas. So whilst the couple would sit demurely on this side of the sofa chatting, the chaperone could more discreetly sit on that side of the sofa, discreetly facing the other way but still very close to overhear everything. There are two of them in this room and they are fabulous. This is the green writing room and who doesn't need a special room to write in? You need a green editing room. I'd love a green editing room. It holds a very special 17th century Venetian style goblet. You can just see it there in that case. And the Duke, the 1st Duke is said to have drunk from that before and after one of his battles. This huge tapestry depicts the Battle of Blenheim, the vast victory that led to this palace. There you can see the Duke and here they are collecting the French Standard. And when the Queen gave this to the Duke in return for this amazing victory, she gave it with a peppercorn rent. And the peppercorn rent is that every year he would have to symbolically give her a version of this French Standard. And that is a practice that is going on still to this day. They still hand over a copy of the French Standard to the monarch. But the Duke and Duchess did fall out of favour with Anne and in fact Anne stopped the funding for this huge palace. The palace ultimately cost £58 million in today's money to build. Though Philip and I have been wandering around thinking it probably couldn't be built for that in today's money anymore. So maybe now it could be seen as an absolute bargain. There's a bit of a party going on in here. All the drummers is the second state room and there are more tapestries depicting the Duke's campaigns in all of his battles. There are eight in total and they're split through various rooms in the palace. And here's a painting by Winston Churchill of this room. You can see the tapestry and even the flags in the corner there. It looks as though they were slightly brighter in his day than they are now. But looking a little on the faded side. It really strikes me that at the time such a modern painting, this is the 9th Duchess Consuelo again, would have looked really strikingly out of place next to these older tapestries. It was painted in 1894 in Paris and just as in the Gilded Age it was actually commissioned by Consuelo's mother to advertise her beauty to potential suitors. And I think it sits very happily alongside 17th century tapestries. And I love that mixture of different styles in art together. It makes the house feel much, much more like a home, even one as grand as this. The bronze sculpture of a baby is actually the 10th Duke Consuelo's son and we have a lot to thank him for because he was the first Duke to open the house to the public in the 1950s. The extraordinary crib was actually used by Consuelo to rock her sons. It was a gift from her mother and it was a copy of an identical crib in the Doge's Palace in Venice. It has definitely got a very Venetian flair. This room was redecorated in the late 19th century. Some French decorators, a whole team came in to redo it and all these extraordinary overdoors are copies of Louis XIV's bedroom at Versailles. And at the time that this was redecorated, this portrait of Louis XIV was added to this room which is very fitting because he was actually the adversary of the Duke in the battles that he was waging on the continent. So a reminder of who it was that the Duke was beating. So it looks as though the wall up on this room is also heavily based on French design because that's reminiscent of the Sun King. It is Louis XIV. Well that is actually is Louis XIV up there. Well there we go. They really went with their theme. Stunning fabric. Philip and I are also slightly obsessed with the upholstery in this room. It's a raised design. It's so incredibly beautiful. The redecoration of these rooms was a direct result of Consuelo's Vanderbilt money coming in here. What's hilarious is that the Duke used her money to redo all of this in the French style but then afterwards said that he didn't really like these rooms because he found them too French. You couldn't make it up. This is a very exciting dress because this was a dress of a maid of honour to the Queen at the coronation in the 1950s. This belonged to Lady Rosemary who was the aunt of the current Duke and she had an 18 inch waist. Oh it's so exquisite. That is Lady Rosemary and for those of you who've read the book Lady in Waiting, I believe this is Lady Anne Glen Conant. For those of you who haven't read the book, do read it. It's absolutely amazing. We devoured it. Chantal devoured it. Yeah everyone, everyone we've lent it to. Everyone loved it. Not just because of the dress, this is one of my favourite rooms. The green is so beautiful. Now I could spend a lot of time in this room. It is the third stage room. I feel like there's a little lack of imagination going on with the naming of the rooms. It was the state bed chamber and it's now referred to as the boule room because look at the amount of furniture by Charles-André Boulle. The only time I've ever seen this much boule furniture is in the Château de Chantilly when Philip and I went with Ron to see the boule exhibition which was exquisite. If you haven't seen that, I will put a link to it here in case you'd like to see more about boule. I think this is my favourite room. I love the colour. It feels really snug compared to some of the other rooms. It's wonderful. I love the absolute lovely proportion. It's a great room and a great dress. I think we might be going into my favourite room now. You know how I love the library. And this is more than your average library. I mean here it looks big enough but let's just turn around. Boom. And what library doesn't need a massive organ in it? It was in this room that the St Andrew's Day boule was being celebrated when Winston Churchill decided to make his appearance into this world. The library was originally designed by Hawksmoor as a gallery. It would have been the long gallery, a picture gallery, a place for ladies to exercise by taking walks in bad weather and after that it was converted into a library. But as you can imagine it's also used for balls. The floor was laid in 1722 using the English oak trees in the park here at Blenheim. The huge organ at the end was installed in the late 1800s. It's exactly the sort of crazy thing that they would do back then and I love it. I mean who doesn't want an organ recital whilst they're dancing at a ball or reading a scientific treatise in the library. It is agonisingly beautiful. I just cannot get over it. I mean forget being able to spend a lot of time here and just live in this room. And there is Queen Anne. We have just had the most fabulous time. Not only seeing all of these wonderful rooms that I've shared with you but at the moment because some of the rooms are not as glorious as they would be without all of the scaffolding, they've actually opened some of the Duke's private apartments which you can see on the tour but which you are not allowed to film. And on top of that Philip and I booked a private behind the scenes tour where we went up to see the guest bedrooms here and even more excitingly for Philip we went down to see the service corridors in the cellars and to see the silver vaults, the china room. It's extraordinary. So if you are in England I really recommend coming this year because you see so many wonderful things that you wouldn't otherwise see if you booked those tours. But also it means that we can go up to the roof. It's so cool being allowed to go up the scaffolding. This is amazing. We'll never be able to get this close to the top of those columns again in future. And just a glimpse of the building that we're getting going higher and higher like this. Oh Philip is in his happy place. You can see just through here that they've actually taken all of the roof tiles off. They have completely stripped the roof to do all the work. That must be the hunting roof. Look at that. We won't be exploring the gardens today for fairly obvious reasons. Also we don't have the time but the views. Spectacular. From up here we have a perfect view onto the great courtyard and to give you just an idea of how great it is you can't make out the scale from up here at all. It is actually three acres in size this courtyard. It is mind-blowing. The entire width of the courtyard at Lalande is 30 meters. And look at this three acres. And now we can look straight down to that monument to the first duke. We are never again going to get this close to the pediment. It's just colossal. It's like looking at the cleaning of our chapel on a colossal scale. And to put that in perspective the entire renovation of our chapel is running at nearly 600,000 euros so far. So I can't even begin to imagine the cost of this roof. And there we have another great view of the roof that's being redone. And we can say a close-up hello to the statues that grace the very top. Aren't they lovely? This roof covers the area of the building known as Housemaid Heights because the housemaids lived right up at the top in the garrets. They did have fireplaces up here but there was no water so they have to carry all the water they needed for bathing up each night. And whenever there were visitors coming with their own staff they were forced to share their rooms with the staff that had arrived for the duration of their stay. And not only was it called Housemaid Heights by everyone who lived and worked here, even the door leading to the staircase right up here was actually labelled Housemaid Heights. And we noticed that in all of the service areas downstairs the doors were labelled shiny room, silver vault, kitchen, just beautifully stenciled onto the doors. What a building, what a roof, and what land!