The Stately Homes Visited By Queen Victoria | Royal Upstairs Downstairs

For the past few weeks we've been scooting all around the countryside following in the footsteps of Queen Victoria as she visited some of Britain's most spectacular houses and castles. And we have been discovering the most amazing preparations for each royal visit. Upstairs. Wow. And downstairs. I'm so excited about this part. And at each stop-off we've delved into Victoria's diaries. The bedroom was very small and dreadfully cold and drafty. The result has been a revealing picture of our longest reigning monarch. Today we're going to look back and recollect what we found out about Victoria and see how she changed over the years. We've travelled with Victoria during every stage of her extraordinary life. From childhood to teenage queen, becoming wife to Albert, a mother to nine children, and finally in her years as a widow. Today we'll be looking back at her life through the visits she made, choosing some of our favourite stories that helped us get to know that thoroughly modern monarch. We started at Chatsworth House where we met a 13-year-old princess who was being paraded around the country to introduce her to her future subjects. I loved the story of how tiredness got in the way of her first grown-up dinner. She stayed here for four days in October 1832. The host was the 6th Duke of Devonshire, one of the richest men in the land and desperate to wow the princess. She and her mother had arrived late and Victoria probably wanted to chill out. But no such luck. The Duke had laid on a dinner party starting at seven o'clock. He'd even had a dress rehearsal the night before because this particular dinner was so important. This wonderful dining room was the setting for Princess Victoria's first grown-up dinner party. But Victoria in her journal writes, I dined by myself in my room with Laysen. That's Baroness Laysen, her governess. So Victoria didn't turn up. Her first big moment was probably scuppered by tiredness. Well, we all know how much teenagers like their sleep. But the Duke must have been a bit cheesed off. All that effort he'd put in. But it just showed us how these long journeys and visits wore out the little princess. But despite her complaints, her mother, a rather power-hungry old girl who couldn't wait for her daughter to inherit the crown, kept the Victoria show on the road. When we got to Holcombe Hall, three years later in 1835, she was sweet 16. And we heard a great story of how her mother's PR offensive seemed to be working if the reception she got from the locals was anything to go by. When she got to King's Lynn, a group of very enthusiastic agricultural labourers decided to detach the horses from her carriage and then pull her all around the town for a couple of hours as an expression of their extreme loyalty. And I loved hearing about how Victoria's arrival had consequences below stairs at Holcombe Hall when a baby made an unexpected appearance, as archivist Mary Ann Garry explained. So tell me about this extraordinary story that I've heard whispers about. Well, the story goes that one of the children's nurse, whose name was Jane Salmon, had secretly married the head gardener, Hugh Girvin. Really? And was pregnant. And the excitement brought on by the arrival of the royal party meant that she went into a premature labour and gave birth to the baby the day that Princess Victoria arrived. Because the wedding was a secret, most of the household thought she was a single mum and the child was illegitimate, which would have been a huge scandal, especially during the royal visit. But in fact, she was married and all was well. Princess Victoria, who was only 16 at the time, was also very intrigued by this and demanded to see the baby. And out of respect for the Queen, the baby was a girl, luckily, and was duly christened Victoria Jane. What a lovely, lovely story. It's been funny to learn that almost wherever Victoria went, babies were named after her. Luckily for the boys, they were usually called Victor. Well, it's wonderful for us that the young princess kept a diary and she comes across as very different from today's teenagers, royal or otherwise. Just two years after her visit to Holcombe, Victoria became Queen. She was only 18 years old. But the first New Year's resolution after her coronation, recorded in her diary, showed she was becoming a serious-minded young woman. Almighty God, preserve me safely through this year and make me daily more fit for my station. Then, just three years after Victoria had become Queen, wedding bells were in the air. The pace of our journey suddenly hots up. Victoria marries Albert and we find ourselves traipsing all around the countryside, following the newlyweds literally from bed to bed. Every host wanted to make sure she had a comfortable night's sleep and provided her with the most divine divans that money could buy. Almost every house we visited seemed to have purchased a bed from Royal Beds-R-Us. After all, they didn't want a complaining like the princess and the pea. When we visited Warmer Castle in Kent, it was lovely to hear how new hubby Albert brought out another side in Victoria, the romantic queen. They stayed at the castle for a month in 1842 when she was 23 years old and the two lovebirds liked nothing more than to be in each other's company, far from the madding crowds, as Tim discovered in a revealing extract from her diary. Victoria wrote in her diary, at half past nine we sallied forth and walked at least a mile along the beach where there is not a house so different to Brighton. This is so private. One morning, the royal lovebirds slipped out of the castle with their favourite dogs and set off for Kingstown. And according to the Illustrated London News, on her return, she was the very picture of blooming health. And at Warmer, I did the sums and made a rather exciting discovery. Victoria was, in fact, about 12 weeks pregnant when she was there. When we visited Beaver Castle in Rutland, the focus was not on Victoria for once, but Albert, who was not popular with the people. While Victoria clearly loved Albert to pieces, her subjects weren't quite so enamoured with him. On their visit to Beaver in 1843, Albert had to prove himself to the public and ruling classes by taking part in the hunt. Michael Clayton, an expert on the beaver hunt, told me more. Ah, Michael. Hello. Very nice to see you. And you. Most appropriately, with some of your gorgeous girly hounds. Hello, girls. How are you? Look at that. You're a chatter. They are magnificent, aren't they? Fantastic. One of the great packs of England, they are. So your normal field would be how many that mounted? Well, in those days, they would have had up to 200 on a good day with the beaver, although many days they'd have less. But when Albert came? Well, they had up to 800 people came. Mounted? Yes, because people came from all over Leicestershire. Do you think they all came to watch Albert fall off? I think that's always at the back of hunting people's mind when visitors come to their country. They say afterwards, well, he may be good, but he couldn't ride our country. No. Imagine the adrenaline coursing through Albert's veins as the master of the hunt sounded the horn. And so, with the weight of expectation on his shoulders, just how well did Albert do? Albert passed with flying colours. His aids fell off, which probably pleased local sentiment a bit. Both of them, he recorded later, fell to the right and the left of me. Yeah. But Albert did jolly well. He could do it. Victoria was proud of Albert, but like any loyal wife, she was also a bit put out at the stir it caused. She never doubted his prowess. Writing to King Leopold of Belgium, she said, It rather disgusts one. But still, it does good, for it put an end to the impertinent sneering about Albert's riding. In every one of Victoria's visits, the food played a very important part. Every host wanted to show off to the Queen. The chefs and the cooks were incredibly skilled. More than they're given credit for today. And talking of day, our very own Ivan Day. The food historian has enabled us to unlock some of those cooks' secrets. And then it's a very swift and careful movement. And there is our perfect shortbread. One Victorian kitchen gadget that I just loved, used in almost every kitchen we've cooked in, was the mould. And boy, did they use them. From risque jellies. Just put it down. To tipsy cakes. And from OTT ice creams to amazing pies. Originally, they used cardboard to do this. And the fashion was to have a pie that looked a bit like a corset. And you see it's waisted, just like a Victorian corset. And amazingly, originally, this cardboard corset you made to put around your pie, even had laces on the back to pull tight. So you've got that shape. But by the 1820s, they were making these things. And they're beautiful, aren't they? Yes, some of them are extraordinary. The moulds also allowed the food to be so elaborate. Another classic feature of Victorian cookery. I also learned how victorious cooks had to be extremely skilled. Even the most traditional methods of cookery were surprisingly very technical, as I discovered on a visit to Penryn Castle, where Victoria and Albert stayed in 1859. Ivan explained how the wonderful spit-turning mechanisms in Penryn were effective only if you really knew what you were doing. Most people, when they think of spit cookery, think of like campfire cookery. But this is on a different level. It's really sophisticated, very flexible cookery. Timing is absolutely important so that you don't overdo it. Also, I see it almost while you're describing it. It's actually very like a barbecue. This is a high-end barbecue. This is a high-end barbecue, but that's it. The spit or rotisserie was powered by a smoke jack, rotated by heated air rising in the chimney. It was a skilled job to make sure the joint was cooked at the correct distance from the fire, and for the right amount of time, while continually basting the meat in its own fat. A lot of visitors to these old kitchens, they see these extraordinary spits, which are large, and they think, well, they must have roasted a whole pig or an ox on it. But that's not the case, because Victorian meal had lots of roast meats at different intervals in the meal. So what that's for is for cooking lots of different types of meat, rather than one great big massive ox. It was a recipe of a different sort that I got excited about at Scone Palace in Scotland. One for cleaning all those blooming bowls we've used. We're going to use a very old mixture of flour, salt and vinegar. And not given actually any measurements for this. It's all really rule of thumb. Yeah, you certainly got the elbow grease. I certainly have. That looks perfect. Right, now let's get started. I bet those upstairs didn't quite know what went into keeping all this clean. They would never have had a clue. I think most of us have a vision of Victoria dressed mournfully in black, saying we are not amused. And that is a pretty fair picture of her life after Albert died when she was only 42 years of age. But we discovered that much of her life she had a jolly good sense of humour. She liked to laugh. She loved to laugh. Bit like you. And one of my favourite stories involved the Queen, a chair and a giggling fit at Warwick Castle. Victoria was on a tour of the castle during a brief visit with Albert in 1858, part of a wider tour of the Midlands, and was shown the boudoir. As the Warwickshire Standard describes, the boudoir was a perfect picture and fitted up with blue and white satin. But it wasn't quite perfect. Unfortunately for the poor Warwicks, some dodgy seating provided a true moment of farce. A relative of the Earl had a contretemps with a chair in front of the Queen, as the fifth Earl's memoirs reveal. My mother's kinswoman, old Lady Mexborough, was with us, and the Queen, who knew she was even older than she looked, said to her very kindly, please sit down. Lady Mexborough thereupon sat down on one of the new and incomplete chairs. And her partial disappearance was very swift and dramatic. Queen Victoria's strict sense of decorum was not quite proof against this incident. Clearly, Victoria had a complete fit of the giggles. And we came across more laughter at Penrhyn Castle, where Victoria visited in 1859, in a story where upstairs met downstairs. I'm on a grand staircase, and grand it certainly is. It's just the sort of staircase you can imagine a Queen ascending. The staircase was very regal. But it was a heck of a long route to her apartments. The account written about the visit by one of the Penrhyn family, who hosted Victoria and Albert, shows a Queen happy to be a mere mortal. And according to the story, Victoria liked to take a shortcut to her suite of rooms using the spiral staircase. This was a servant staircase. But you must remember, there was no electricity in those days. And the family hired a lamp man. They brought him specially from London to light up the Queen's way. But Adela tells us that the man deserted his duties. And she wrote, When my mother took the Queen to her room, she found the stairs in complete darkness. My mother begged the Queen to wait, while she ran upstairs for a light. But on returning to the head of the steps, she found the Queen had laughingly groped her way up behind her in the dark. Well, imagine Queen Victoria stumbling up these steps without even a candle, wearing the wide, long dresses. She was laughing. What has become increasingly clear is Victoria's intense desire for privacy. Now, whilst there may not have been any paparazzi knocking around in those times chasing her about, her subjects certainly wanted to get as close as possible. None more so than in Brighton. The Royal Pavilion was a family holiday home that she'd warmed to over the years. But during our visit there, I was intrigued to learn that by 1845, when she'd been on the throne for eight years, the public started to overwhelm her. And it was all down to a Victorian invention. Ironically, it was one of the greatest technological advances of the age that led to her increasing headache. The railway arrived in Brighton in 1841. The prospect of rubbing shoulders with royalty attracted tremendous crowds. In fact, the traffic of 50,000 tourists a year by stagecoach increased in the railway age to 250,000 visitors to Brighton every year, all at the cost of 15p return. For Victoria, the sudden increase in the numbers of visitors wanting to get close to her was alarming. OK, here we go. Nowadays, with the cult of celebrity, we're used to it. Well, some of us are. But in 1845, a local newspaper even reported that several errand boys accosted her and lifted her bonnet to get a glimpse of her face beneath the cheek. The young queen could stand it no longer. This vast influx of ghastly people all trying to rub shoulders with her was just too much. There was no privacy in the pavilion gardens and even stopping the tourist trains on the outskirts of Brighton when she was in residence did absolutely no good. She didn't come to the place after 1845 and in 1850, she sold it. At Flores Castle, which she visited in 1867, we discovered a queen who had removed herself from the public's gaze even further. Her beloved Albert had died six years earlier and she was now a lonely widow. Victoria, whose heart, even six years after the loss of Albert, was aching uncontrollably, had this to say from her dowry. The children were close at hand, but the feeling of loneliness when I saw no room for my darling and felt I was indeed alone and a widow overcame me very sadly. It was the first time I had gone in this way on a visit and I thought so much of all dearest Albert would have done and said and how he would have wandered about everywhere, admired everything, looked at everything, and now, oh, must it ever be so? Poor woman. Her grief almost cost her the monarchy itself as I was fascinated to discover at Hughenden, home of her beloved Prime Minister Disraeli. As the years without Albert passed, her involvement in public life had grown ever more distant by the time she visited in 1877. This was much to her advisor's despair as I was fascinated to hear from historian Jane Ridley. Well, he did one terribly important thing, Disraeli. Queen Victoria, after Albert died, retired into seclusion. She was hardly seen, she was always dressed in black and after about 10 years of this, there was a great deal of criticism. You know, the monarchy is supposed to be a public institution and the queen was invisible and the person who really managed to sort of charm Victoria out of this was Disraeli. He was able to sort of persuade her to appear in public, to open parliament. He was able to flatter her and tell her she was wonderful and so, in a way, Disraeli saved the monarchy, you could argue. So, at the end of her reign, it was Disraeli's turn to convince Victoria of the importance of engaging with the public. Just like at the beginning of her reign, when it was her mother, the Duchess of Kent, who had insisted on keeping Victoria in the public eye. So, Rosemary, what do you think the most surprising items were that we found? Well, Tim, I think some of the archive materials we came across in the great houses that Victoria visited was fantastic, from scraps of paper to whole books. Fabulous. At Hatfield House, I encountered the most enormous record book I have ever seen, which showed the amazing lengths hosts went to to impress Her Majesty. This is the biggest account book I have ever seen. Well, this is the account book dating from 1846, which shows the household expenses, and we've got it open on the week of the royal visit. So, you can see along here are all the provisions that were purchased. Right. Over the page here, the week before the visit, they spent £13 on turtle, which would almost certainly have been made into turtle soup. That was very popular, wasn't it? It was very popular, and it was a bit of a status symbol to serve turtle soup because it was so expensive. Expensive, and of course, nowadays, illegal. I love this. The turtles came to £13, five shillings and eight pence. Indeed. That would be an incredible £800 today. Well, they certainly pulled all the stops up for Queen Victoria's visit. They did. They spent over £1,200 during the week on food. That's some food bill. In fact, today's money, that's over £70,000. And I think the most astonishing piece of archive was at Bournemouth, where the royal family stayed in the Duke of Wellington's residence in 1842. It's the actual slip of paper that reveals the medical records of the royal nippers. Wellington's own physician, one Dr Hulk, was called to attend the family. Warmer still has his amazing journal that reveals a day-by-day account of treatment for the royal tots. Dr Paul Grasby, a pharmacist with knowledge of the Victorian era, deciphered the good doctor's squiggles for Tim. On the 14th of Monday, it says, gave her googly googly googly guck in a powder. Can you decipher what those are, those drugs? I can actually only make out one drug, which is magnesium carbonate. Now, I think on this occasion, the doctor actually was using some fairly simple powders, and I think this equates to something like liver salts or something like that. Because you see, by the time we get to the Wednesday, he's saying, the Princess Royal passed a good night. She ate her breakfast, that's all very nice. But the prince had his diet slightly altered. Arrowroot, the bowels being a little relaxed. So this is the one-year-old, all right. Something's happened in the old jippy tummy department overnight. Would you prescribe arrowroot for that, jippy tummy? I'd prescribe arrowroot for anything. Oh, good. Arrowroot, it's not going to hurt anyone. It's mainly composed of starch. You powder it up, you can make it into a paste, and it's useful for all sorts of things, because it coats the throat, which can be quite good for coughs, sort of mimics some of the cough mixtures we have today. At the same time, the child actually gets quite a lot of carbohydrates. So if they're off their food, they're taking in some carbohydrate. Taking in a lot of starch, if you are a bit loose down the bowl area, it can sort that out as well. But for sheer commemorative beauty, I don't think the very personal scrapbook at Stoney Abbey can be topped. The Lee family were delighted and honoured to have their beloved monarch come to stay, and it shows. We've got all these delicious images, look. Oh, wonderful. Got her. Look at Albert. Albert looking so proud. Yes. And so this thing goes on. Each of the memories exquisitely preserved. What a wonderful record. Isn't it lovely? And just look at this bit here. They've actually preserved and pressed. Look at that. The posy that she was carrying. I mean, really special, isn't it? That is very, very special. Well, Tim, I have left a real surprise until last. We have got Queen Victoria's favourite tipple. It is claret and a single malt whiskey. I beg your pardon? It's claret and single malt whiskey. Mixed. Mixed equal quantities. Gosh. I may not like it, but maybe that's what kept Victoria going. But even she succumbed eventually. In January 1901, Victoria wrote in her diary, I am feeling so weak and unwell. It was to be her last entry. Two weeks later, at the age of 81, she died. Her monumental reign was at an end. I think we should toast Queen Victoria to our longest reigning monarch. Cheers.