Inside Windsor Castle - Secrets Of The Royal Palace Revealed

Ever since William the Conqueror came here almost a thousand years ago, Windsor, on the banks of the River Thames, has been home to a castle. Windsor Castle isn't just one of the Queen's favourite palaces, it is absolutely central to the monarchy. It has been a royal palace for longer than any other building in Europe. The story begins around a thousand years ago, the Normans arrived here, they conquered England in 1066 and they chose this spot next to a strategic river crossing over the Thames and dominating London to the west as a place for a stronghold. They built this artificial mound, they put a tower on top of it and since then kings and queens have enlarged and invested on a gigantic scale. Edward III turned this into one of the great royal residences, spending more money on this than any other secular project of the time and as a result today it is magnificent. To get an exclusive tour I'm meeting curator Kate Hurd. Hello Kate, how are you? Hello, hello. Thanks for having me in your castle. Now I always think of Windsor as a sort of medieval fortress but actually it's like a palatial stately home isn't it? It is. Whose fault is that? Well it's a medieval castle but the castle you see today is largely the work of George IV who was king from 1820. And he turned it into a sort of a modern house? He did, he inherited a castle which had been changed from the medieval castle in the 17th century, his parents had made some changes and for him it didn't work as a modern royal residence so he set about this huge programme of rebuilding and reconstructing and redesigning. This is beautiful here isn't it? This is just wonderful, this is his original entrance hall so he opened it up so his visitors would come through that door and would be able to walk into this magnificent space. But this feels a little bit to me like a 19th century gothic but we think of being later in the century do we? It is absolutely, it was always the entrance to the castle but it was a smaller entrance. George III had had a staircase coming up but George IV opens it up but he's so aware of the medieval history of the castle he does it in that gothic, that gothic style. So for people who don't know I'm talking about this like kind of fake really. It's reimagined gothic, fake in a sense but reimagined. They were very consciously looking back to particularly the reign of Edward III who was another great builder at the castle. It's amazing. It's stunning isn't it and yet and so I guess visitors come here and think oh medieval in fact it's only 150, 200 years old. Absolutely, George IV had been wanting to get his hands on Windsor for so long and he really goes to town with this medieval history when he does. You say that, is that because Windsor is in some ways the sort of spiritual core of the of the English and British monarchy? It's the medieval fortress, he's very interested in medieval history. It's possibly the most imposing residence. Remember Buckingham Palace which is now really grand, when he inherited it was quite a small townhouse his mother had lived in so this is the grandest and most imposing of the royal residences. And I guess it's the one associated with Edward III that they all love. Absolutely, absolutely. Charles II was very fond of it here as well. He'd also lived here as a boy, I mean remember it's his family home as Prince of Wales so he has a great fondness for the place. So this is their, are they allowed to say, but is this their sort of premier residence? I think for George IV it is the one that he is becomes most interested in, it's the one that he really, we know that he spends hours poring over the redesigns, he becomes really occupied by it. So I think for him it is the castle, the residence that he spends the most time on. And what about the subsequent, what about Victoria, his niece, what did she make of it? Well Queen Victoria inherited it and she also made great changes to the castle so the space that we're in, you can hear it echoing, you can hear the size of it, she bricks it off because she changes the staircase again, she bricks it off, she doesn't want this grand entrance and it's only now that it's been opened up again and we can appreciate that great vision of George IV who wanted his guests to come up that wonderful approach, the long walk and through those doors. Definitely, why did Victoria brick it off? I think she just, again it's a different time, the castle has different needs, you know each generation needs something different from it. Amazing, right where are we off to next? I think let's go to the State Apartments. Let's do it. This staircase I've never seen in my life. Isn't it wonderful, it's the entrance to the State Apartments with George IV looking over it. Looking at all the visitors to his new rooms. Absolutely, yes. Weapons, arms and armour. Yes, open world collection, that historic collection that goes right the way back but George IV is a big collector of arms and armour as well. He's obsessed with the military isn't he? Absolutely, everything he can do, he's not allowed to fight but he cleans this incredible collection. Even more muskets and swords here. Absolutely, in the medieval castle this space would have been a guard chain, it would have protected the State Apartments so that these displays reflect that function. I'm trying to think, Winter Castle, I think it was threatened during the Civil War at King John when Prince Louis came over. Was it besieged at the time? No other sieges as it were, Henry VIII I know, during the Pilgrimage of Grace was here and there was a worry that it would be besieged but it wasn't. Isn't it stunning? Wow. This is the Waterloo Chamber which holds this incredible series of portraits largely by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the men who were responsible for the defeat of Napoleon in the early 19th century. We've got Wellington up there. Absolutely. Commander at Waterloo, his key ally at Waterloo. It's an incredible series of portraits. Emperor of Austria. Yes. So George IV is very kind to let his dad go above the mantle. George III is the monarch who is ruling the country so at that point our George is Prince Regent so he acknowledges his father's role but he puts himself in very clear second place. I love this because this is basically all the crowned heads and the leading aristocratic military leader of all for whom Napoleon represented an existential threat so this is a giant celebration. Yes and this commission starts before the Battle of Waterloo. It dates from 1814 when they thought that Napoleon had been defeated and George sends Thomas Lawrence out to make these incredible paintings and the half-lengths are his statesmen as well. He's acknowledging the role of statesmanship in creating that piece after Waterloo, after the fall of Napoleon. Was this room always a sort of banqueting hall? No, in the medieval castle you're standing in the open air so you're in one of Edward III's courtyards in the middle of a run of apartments and George IV had commissioned these incredible paintings. He wants a Waterloo gallery and this space is earmarked for it but it's not really finished until after his death so it's roofed over and then these wonderful lights are added and it's not really finished until the reign of Queen Victoria. I always think it's a very modern idea which you take your big atrium, your big courtyards and turn them into an atrium but actually they were doing it in the 19th century. Absolutely, it's a wonderful use of the space and the space also looks back to the earlier castle, to the 17th century castle. You can see these wonderful pieces of wood carving and they're taken from Charles II's chapter whereby Brinley and Gibbon is reused in this space and they work wonderfully here. Wow. This is St George's Hall. The world famous. Fantastic and has always had the function of a great hall for meetings, for feasting, for great occasions. And this was a medieval hall? Originally this space was Edward III's. We still have Edward III's under Croft beneath which is just recently opened up for the first time. It becomes under Charles II a baroque space. It looks very different with wall paintings. Under George IV it's turned again into a medieval looking space, a gothic space and he lengthens the hall by essentially knocking the chapel and the hall together but it's not entirely successful. His gothic ceiling is quite low and everything is plaster, essentially a plaster cake for a medieval building. The 1992 fire affected this space very badly so what you see again is the reconstruction in 1992 of this great sort of gothic space. This amazing hammer beam ceiling roof designed by Giles Downes, it's in green oak. It's a masterpiece of craftsmanship which the hall has always been all that way back. It's amazing, it's something so British about this that it's a reconstruction of a reimagining and yet so it's both very historic and very long but also ever-changing. Ever-changing but always grounded in history and it reflects the importance of the castle as the seat of the Order of the Garter which is the oldest order of chivalry founded again by Edward III in 1348 and so the shields you can see decorating the space are the shields of the Knights of the Garter on the way back. Really? Yeah. That's a remarkable continuity isn't it? It's stunning. A lot of arms and armour on the walls again. I'm noticing a theme here. Yes. That's wonderful. That is the champion's armour which was last used at the coronation of George IV. What's that? That is traditionally, going all the way back to the middle ages, a champion defends the king's honour after he's been crowned and issues a challenge to anyone who may want to challenge the new king and throws down his gauntlet and that is the armour that's worn by the champion. It's a hereditary weapon. Oh really? Whoever that was and his father would ride through the coronation? It's the Dimmock family, absolutely. George IV was the last person to have the champion appear at his coronation. And so he rides a horse through the party and throws down the gauntlet? He does indeed. Through the coronation banquet for George IV in Westminster Hall, the horse rides in as part of his ceremony. What happens if grandson Dimmock is a bit of a softy? He still gets to do it. And they still have functions in Westminster Hall. It's still used as a space that is for feasting, for special occasions. It's still used in a way that Edward III would have been familiar with. As we leave, there's George IV. There's our George again, yes. Looking down on what he's built. It's a nice little room, isn't it? Isn't it fantastic, that octagon? Looking back again to the medieval precedent, places like Ely Cathedral with the octagon there. Who's this? Is this Henry VIII? This is Henry VIII, yes. I don't believe it, that's so cool. You get that sense of the figure, don't you? That really imposing presence, just amazing. You must have had to let that out slightly, did you? Yes, well I think it was probably made for him in his mature years. And then we've got all the silver and the... Some of that wonderful silver and gold from the Royal Collection, really stunning pieces. Can I suppose this just accumulated over hundreds of years? Absolutely, just added to by each generation. That's amazing. That's unique, the continuity of the British state and its royal tradition means that you must just have centuries and centuries of all these treasures. Absolutely, yes. Each monarch is also aware of the history, so you get George IV looking back to the Middle Ages and looking back to the Baroque period and building on that when he's building his own collections. You get that awareness of the layers. Where next? This way. So this is the really wonderful Crimson Drawing Room. Wow, this is peak George IV. It's just so opulent and gorgeous, isn't it? It is, it was one of his private apartments, it was one of his major reception rooms, so he would have private guests here, but it's one of his. So we're getting close to his tastes and his... I think we're right in the middle of his taste here. It's very different from the rest of the castle, it's in this French neoclassical taste that he loved all his life. It's a stunning space. And it's this French... these objects that he purchased are now so famous at Buckingham Palace and everywhere else because he just hoovered this stuff up, didn't he? Absolutely, I mean all this wonderful furniture was commissioned by him to furnish. Obviously he's got a small residence as prince and then he gains Buckingham Palace, he gains Windsor Castle, he needs all this furniture to fill it up, so he commissions wonderful suites of furniture, just stunning. Some of the gilding on the doors was bought from Carlton House again and so he brings quite a bit of material from Carlton House. The fireplaces actually dates from 1807 before this room was established and is from Carlton House and was brought here when Carlton House's London residence was demolished. Does this room survive the Great Fire? No, very sadly this room was very badly damaged but it was reconstructed using the original documents from George IV's reign and when George IV is planning this room a set of really magnificent watercolours are made for him to show what the room might look like and that archive he uses in planning his spaces has been reused in the 1990s for planning this space and it's beautiful. He would have felt very at home in this room even though it is marginally reconstructed. So in the centre of this gigantic royal palace, administrative headquarters, medieval court, you think this is kind of George IV's personal space? I think this is where we meet him most of all, the place where he would have relaxed, he's got his portraits of his sisters on the wall, I think he would have enjoyed this. And he was a sad man in many ways, he was extraordinarily infirm with a variety of illnesses towards the end of his life. It's strange to think of him sitting here in those declining years when he was almost a recluse wasn't he? He was a recluse, he didn't like people looking at him, he'd been tortured by satirists, he really did withdraw during his reign, that ten-year reign, but he surrounded himself with these incredible objects he'd collected and he clearly takes such pleasure in craftsmanship and beauty and this beautiful skill in creating things in textures and colour, so you can imagine we're very happy in these rooms. Isn't it funny that he probably felt insecure because compared to say George II or the Duke of Cumberland, you know his martial relatives, he'd never fought on the battlefield and yet actually what the modern world looks for now is a collector and his reputation's probably higher than ever. We can appreciate him now for these amazing things he left us, this incredible collection he formed.