Inside The Duke Of Wellington’s Hidden Residence

Right in the heart of London now. We've got Buckingham Palace over there where the royal family lived. We've got Hyde Park. We've got historical monuments, memorials all around me but my favourite is this one here. Come and have a look. It's a little bit hidden but you can come visit this place as well. It is absolutely superb. Pretty much the best thing to do in London. Just through here. Come check it out. This is London's triumphal arch. It's called Wellington because it's named after Britain's greatest general, the man who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, Arthur, Duke of Wellington. And it's in exactly the right place because over there, that very handsome building is the Duke of Wellington's London residence and that's where we're off next. Today I've been given a special invitation to explore the home of the Duke and his remarkable personal collection. Iconic uniforms, swords and medals. These are some of the most amazing historical artworks I've ever seen in my life. To priceless artworks, relics from the biggest battles in European history and downright wacky devices. So this is a very ingenious invention. It's a walking stick with a hearing aid on the end. Wow. Join me as we go inside Apsley House. Apart from everything else, this house has also got the coolest address in London. It was number one London, not for its famous inhabitant, but because the road leaning in from the countryside to the west went through a toll gate just here and this was the first property you came to as you entered the city. This is the magnificent entrance hall and straight away I know exactly whose house it was. The Duke of Wellington. Look at that. The first Duke of Wellington. Arthur Wells Lear's. He was in his former life. Magnificent portrait. One of the most famous portraits there and look at that, look at that bust. Wellington, Wellington, Wellington, Wellington. There you go. So this is the house of the Iron Duke and actually some of his descendants as well. There's the current Duke up there and that is the Duke of Wellington who gave this house to the nation. That's why we're lucky enough to have this house as a museum run by English Heritage. His descendants still have access to some rooms here though. They can still live here while they're in London and the art collection is fabulous. We've got, that looks to me like Napoleon crossing the Danube. I think it is at the Battle of Wagram fighting the Austrians. So lots and lots of wonderful art from this period and but this room here is like nothing else in London. It is heaven. It's heaven. Ready? Check this out. It is a, well it's a museum room really containing all sorts of wonderful artefacts gathered together by the Duke during his life and the most surprising I think is this one here. This is an astonishing and very eccentric centrepiece for a grand banqueting table. It was made by Napoleon, it was ordered by Napoleon, for his wife Josephine as a divorce present. So sorry I have to marry this Austrian princess. I'm now giving you this very, very weird thing to remember me by. Napoleon obviously is, is, is one of his foundation myths. He'd gone to Egypt, he'd conquered Egypt before he became Emperor of France. He was obsessed with Egyptian art and architecture and you can see the dinner service. So all of this porcelain down here, it all has motifs of sites and objects from ancient Egypt that were captured by the Egyptologists that accompanied Napoleon on that expedition and this is inspired by the temple at Karnak. This, this long line of statues is classic in Luxor and Karnak. You're still going to see it today. The hypostyle hall, this magnificent hall finished off by Rameses II and then also inspired by the temple at Philae in Aswan. So this was given by Napoleon to his, well soon to be, ex-wife. She said no, she didn't want it. So it stayed in Napoleon's collection. The King of France when he got back out of Madeleine didn't want it either and so he sent it to Wellington. Bizarre and here it is today. Stunning but it was not all that was sent to Wellington because this room is just full of amazing dinner services. So a dinner service was a very posh present that you might give each other if you were an aristocrat or a royal. There's wine coolers, there are serving dishes, there are gravy boats and of course they're all going to be matching because you've got to have your banquet table looking completely matching and so this was something that only the very richest people could afford to give or receive and this one was sent from the Prussians who were his allies at the Battle of Waterloo. There are other dinner sets from all over Europe. Above me though, check these out. Imperial standards of the Grande Armée, of Napoleon's army. The famous golden eagles on top. Look at this one here, N. You've got the bumblebees which was the symbol of Napoleon and then you've got L'Empereur Napoléon, then the unit that would have carried these standards and and these would have been laid at the feet of Wellington when he entered Paris and these are just some of the unit's standards that ended up in his collection. As we walk past all of this wonderful silverware, a grateful Europe, the Portuguese here, everyone making unimaginably valuable gifts. Wellington say thank you for defeating Napoleon Bonaparte finally but the most extravagant and extraordinary of them is right here. Look at that, the Wellington shield. It's appropriate that it's a shield because it's a gift from the merchants and bankers of London. They were the people who had made a lot of money over the previous decades and Wellington, well, he literally was their shield. He was protecting them from the French, from invasion, from revolution. So they're pretty grateful and they put their hands in their pockets and they came up with this absolutely astonishing gift. It cost £7,000 which was a fortune at the time. On it, in the middle, you can see Wellington, always recognisable because he had a very prominent nose, something that I've always had in common with him, sadly that's all I've got in common with him and he's surrounded by notable generals, cavalry commanders like the man who would be Marquess of Anglesey, commanding his cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. And there he is, look, trampling down the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, his crown tossed off his head, his eagle standards on the ground and around the edge are engravings from important moments of Wellington's life and career. They start here where Wellington almost died, he was Sir Arthur Wellesley at the time, he almost died at the Battle of Assaya in India, one of his first battles he fought as a commander. He fell off his horse, trampled to the ground, you can see Indian troops swirling around him, there's a melee, he almost was killed. Then you've got the beginning of the Peninsular War, 1808, he fights the Battle of Vermeer, pretty much right up there, one of his first battles of the Peninsular War. He helps stop the invasion of Portugal and there, look at that, that's the Battle of Toulouse, well that's after the Battle of Toulouse, he's been welcomed by all the happy French people who he's liberated from Napoleon's regime. These women are giving him flowers and things though, everyone's very happy about that. This is history from Wellington's point of view here folks and there he is, the Prince Regent, the future George IV, making him a Duke, putting the coronet on his head, so that's him becoming a Duke there. So this is just biographical, it says so much about Wellington, his life and the esteem in which he was held by the British ruling class. The treasures and gifts that adorn the museum room here at Apsley speak to the scale of admiration the British public felt towards the Duke after his successful campaigns on the continent. Just around the corner stands another man whose admiration for himself perhaps trumped that of any of his subjects. This is one of the most bonkers objects in this house, possibly in the world. This is Napoleon or it's supposed to be, it's Napoleon depicted as Mars, the Roman god of war, Mars bringing victory, holding his hand, Mars who's achieved peace through strength. It was commissioned by Napoleon right at the beginning of the 19th century when he organised a peace with Britain but by the time it was finished Napoleon and France were mired in a seemingly unending war and perhaps for that reason Napoleon didn't like it but there are many other reasons why Napoleon might not have liked it because it's completely mad. It's not a portrait of Napoleon, it's a depiction of Napoleon in this classical form, he has the body of a god, he apparently didn't like it, he said it was too athletic and he thought his bum looked too big. It's bad enough that Napoleon didn't like it but let me tell you I can guarantee you that the returning kings of France certainly didn't like it and so the British government got them out of a bit of a bind really, they offered to come in and buy this boondoggle, it was brought to the UK and then the British government in turn gave it to the Duke of Wellington as one of his many rewards and gifts for winning the climactic battle of Waterloo in June 1815. They had to knock the front of the house out to move it in here, it has never been moved from this spot since Wellington had it installed, they built the staircase around it and underneath here there's a wine cellar and to support the 30 tons of weight of this statue they've had to put a big column of bricks in there which takes up most of the space in the wine cellar. It is pretty symbolic that in Wellington's house there is a gigantic statue of the man he defeated who portrayed himself as the Roman god of war. Oh there's the famous one, that's the most famous portrait of Wellington, he liked that one, he had this one commissioned and doesn't it just sum up his his cruelness, his detachment, his aristocratic, he's looking down on everyone I think it's fair to say, he had this one painted oddly for an American woman that he really fancied, gave it to her and thankfully she gave it back to the family after his death because it's become one of the most famous images in British history, it was on the five pound note for a long time. Another great fact about this room is I'm feeling it now, I've got an extraordinary acoustic effect thanks to the architecture which means that you can hear beautifully this room was designed for music recital. The famous composer Rossini played here in the 1820s and you can come and try and find the exact spot I'm on now where it sounds like your voice is just coming back at you. A house with a room designed for music concerts would surely be incomplete without a Luckily the room in question was only a hidden door away. This is an overwhelming room, look at this dining room, down the middle of the table a silver service donated, given to Wellington by the Portuguese royal family. 1,000 pieces, it took 150 craftsmen four years to produce and it's just filled with classical and mythical scenes, you've got representations here of the continents Asia, Africa, the Americas, you've got these mythological griffins with strange headgear here each with the carrying the name of one of Wellington's victories. It's such an astonishing piece of art, it would have dominated the table, things like his annual Waterloo dinner on the anniversary of the battle, his senior commanders would have sat around this and you can imagine the candlelight from the chandeliers and the candles on the table casting all sorts of extraordinary light and shadows on this. It is unbelievable really but that's not the most important thing about this room, very interestingly this room also emphasises Wellington's role as a diplomat as well as a soldier and also his status really as the brother, as the contemporary of kings and princes and tsars. Up on the walls here we have King George IV dominating up there in his ridiculous Highland tartan that he had produced for the occasion of his visit to Scotland but we've also got other kings of Europe, we've got the Tsar of Russia there, we have got the Emperor of the Austrians there and France was seen to be very much of this brotherhood of nations. France, Wellington had rescued France from the despotism of Napoleon and returned it to its rightful place as one of the major kingdoms, civilised kingdoms of Europe, that's how they thought at the time and that's why we've got Louis, King of France up there who Wellington restored to the throne, a Bourbon king back on the throne of France. So this room is about grandeur but it's also about the seismic consequences of Wellington's career. He has ensured that these men sit securely on their thrones and working together they restored peace and harmony in Europe. Delivering peace and harmony in Europe did not come without a fight. Throughout his military career the Duke is thought to have taken part in some 50 or so battles and engagements, the relics from which Olivia Fryman, keeper of the Wellington collection at Apsley House, has agreed to show me. How tall was he? So he was about five foot eight which was actually quite average for the day but he was extremely slim. He was quite delicate wasn't he? Yes, yes he was and you can tell the waistline for some of these is really quite tiny. Wow so I was about to ask if I could travel on but I suspect for many reasons that's going to be impossible. Lots of different uniforms, how come? I mean was he just celebrated and given uniforms by every country in every unit? Yes, so he was made a field marshal by eight European nations which I don't think anybody before or since has managed. So we have a selection of these here, the British one, Spanish, Austrian and Portuguese and his Colonel of the Grenadier Guards uniform. This was a very prestigious appointment, Colonel of the Grenadier Guards is normally reserved for members of the royal family so this was a really really important position to be given and it was worn with a wonderful bearskin hat that you see there, a really amazing sort of addition to the uniform. So imagine just working out what he wanted to go dressed to the courts today as he's going to go as a Spanish field marshal, thank you very much. He could pick and choose his uniforms to suit the occasion, they were often used to make diplomatic statements if he wanted to impress an ambassador or if he went to a court in another country he would wear the uniform for that nation. So they're a good way of showing solidarity with your allies and of course they're incredibly splendid, they really show off his status. They are so beautiful but ironically he had all these uniforms he didn't, which what would he have want actually when he was doing the dirty work, when he was on the battlefield? So Wellington was actually famous for not wearing uniform on the battlefield, he preferred for reasons of practicality and comfort, he preferred to wear cream breeches with a dark frock coat and a dark cloak but he would wear the bicorn hat which is quite a kind of symbolic Wellington item. So he knew that his, because his hat was almost a kind of focal point that they could see that on the battlefield, his troops like okay we're all right. So this is a British one that we've chosen here. Yes so this is his Colonel of the Grenadier Guards uniform and you can see that we've got these wonderful grenade motifs on the collar, this was the motif for the Grenadier Guards and they were called the Grenadiers because they defeated the French Grenadiers in the Battle of Waterloo, this is how they get their name. And the uniform's also one with these wonderful epaulettes, these are a bit like sort of power dressing in the 1980s with your suit, made you look bigger, more formidable to the enemy but of course they're also another surface for more embellishment or decoration and embroidery. And then finally the sash, the wonderful crimson and gold sash that was worn with the uniform adds extra a little bit of bling. It's just, I would give anything to be able to wear a uniform, I also deserve to wear a uniform like that. It's interesting isn't it because it's got the Colonel's emblem there so all the others are Field Marshals, that's actually interesting as it's a bit of a lower rank but albeit one with real status. Real status, a very very important position to hold but certainly the Field Marshal is your highest ranking position in any army so these were the ones that were the most prestigious. It's funny even 200 years ago there's still elements of this uniform that we still see today in the army, so these buttons have got the Royal, is that a cypher? What is it? The Royal Cypher, yeah, GR for George IV. George Rex, yeah. And today they'd have CR. Yes they certainly would, yep. The uniform stand front and centre of the Wellington collection here at Apsley but it turns out that only scratched the surface when it came to objects from the Duke's military career. Okay what have we got here? So this is Napoleon Bonaparte's sword. No way. Yes. That is too exciting. Is this battlefield loot? It is, so this was recovered from his carriage at the end of the Battle of Waterloo. It was taken by Prussian soldiers who managed to capture his carriage and this is a dress sword, it's not the type of sword that you would have carried in battle so the most likely thing is that this was the sword that Napoleon intended to wear had he been victorious for his triumphal entry into Brussels but of course he wasn't. It's captured by the Prussians and it's given to the Duke of Wellington. It is absolutely extraordinary for its craftsmanship. You can see here that these mounts here and that little inlaid decoration here, this is all gold. It's made by a Parisian goldsmith called Bionnet and it has these wonderful spare scabbards for you to accessorise with. This one in crimson velvet and this one is tortoiseshell inlaid with tiny gold stars. Because you might, depending on his outfit. Exactly. You've got different options. Oh my and that's not gold these stars are they? These are gold stars inlaid into the tortoiseshell. These are some of the most amazing historical artefacts I've ever seen in my life. Aren't they beautiful? And this is actually a tiny little portrait of Napoleon here. I was going to say surely that's the man himself. A Roman emperor of course, there he is. Yeah and we've got the Napoleonic eagle here, the imperial eagle and these wonderful trophies of arms down the sword and actually interestingly this part of the sword you'll notice is slightly darker. Steel has been what was called blued which is where they would heat it and cool it to different degrees and the steel would turn a lovely blue colour. So this would have been really quite vibrant originally. I just, that is breathtaking. How I'm so happy that those Prussian soldiers, someone gave them a lot of money and they ended up in your collection because they could easily have got lost on the battlefield couldn't they, been torn apart for the gold. Exactly these trophies were really very highly prized and Wellington's given a number of different sort of yeah trophies of war after Waterloo. Well those are astonishing aren't you? They are but come and have a look at this one here. Okay this looks like a sword that might have actually done something on the battlefield. Exactly so this is a sabre, the type of sword that would have been carried by cavalry or infantry officers and this was the sword that the Duke of Wellington carried on the battlefield at Waterloo. He was armed with a proper weapon at Waterloo. He was yes, very unlikely that he would have had the chance to use it but if there came you know a situation came to be where he had to defend himself this would have been what he would have used. He was in the thick of the fighting wasn't he? He was, he was and you know what's interesting about this is it's actually quite a utilitarian object you know you could have a very decorative sabre many officers like to have a very decorative handle and hilt here lots of decoration on the mounts but Wellington being a very no-nonsense kind of guy this is quite plain and simple. Do you know what the contrast in the two is so powerful isn't it because you've got Napoleon the most ridiculous fancy swords imaginable and he's spending nearly all the battle quite far behind the lines. Wellington right up on the front line with this very sober weapon. Yeah exactly I think it's a really really interesting reflection of their two different personalities. Speaking of Waterloo we've got some other fascinating objects here. These are orders that the Duke of Wellington wrote during the battle to send out to various officers in the field. They're written on vellum in pencil and you can see that they're written in response to some changing situation. We've got some orders here another one written here but it's all been crossed out where he's changed his mind or I don't need to say that now I need to convey this information instead. And this one in particular is really interesting because Wellington is describing a barn a part of a farm where a fire is broken out and he's worried about the soldiers there who are quite close to this barn and he's writing to the officer in charge please make sure that none of the soldiers are injured by the falling of the roof because the roof has caught fire. So you know even while he's directing you know vast numbers of troops across the battlefield he's taking care that no men are lost in this particular situation. I see that the fire has consumed the farm the roof of the chateau that's wild isn't it. Yeah so he I would say that Wellington was a bit of a micromanager he has his eye on everything that's going on on the battlefield no detail escapes him and this is a really nice illustration of that. And is this his handwriting or is he dictating these to one of his young officers around him? No this is Wellington's handwriting and you know he would have given it to one of the messengers who would have ridden around on horseback on the battlefield and delivered it to the to the correct person. Take care that no men are you know you can see him really well and I'm sure the officers didn't really need to hear that yeah thanks Wellington. I mean exactly they probably thought well that is a little bit obvious we'll make sure that nobody's going to be injured in the fire. But it's such an important reminder that at Waterloo he really was overseeing the whole thing personally he wasn't just a sort of figurehead he was galloping around on that horse he covered a huge amount of distance didn't he? He did yeah. Everywhere where there was a moment of crisis he was right there. Yeah and you know you can see his involvement in pretty much every single decision that's taken on the Battle of Waterloo field. So yeah they're a wonderful example of his direct involvement in the welfare of his troops making sure that you know that they were they were safe in this fire. I can't imagine the stress he was under when he was scribbling these notes down certainly they're a lot neater than mine would be in that situation. It must have been enormously stressful but he was rewarded he became one of the nation's most famous famous people and he received a number of important medals. So this is the Peninsular Gold Cross that Wellington received for his action in the Peninsular Wars in Spain and Portugal. Leading up to just before the Battle of Waterloo. Just before the Battle of Waterloo this cross has the most clasps so these are clasps for every single battle that he took part in during the Peninsular War and nobody else was given a Peninsular Cross with this many clasps. Well I bet they weren't. No look at that. So there you can see all of the names of the major battles where Wellington served. Yeah some of the infamous Battle of Terrible Battle of Victoria that he got made a Duke afterwards. Yes 1813 very significant. And then finally Toulouse the final what they all thought was going to be the last battle that the Brits would fight in the Polio Wars but then Waterloo happened. Indeed and this is Wellington's Waterloo Medal. So this was actually a medal that was given to all soldiers who took part in the Battle of Waterloo. It was given in 1816 and rather lovely to see this is engraved with the Duke of Wellington around the outside so we know that this was his personal Waterloo Medal. So even the enlisted men no matter who they were they all got that. They all got one of these. But he got a special one. He got a special one with his name engraved yes. Wow. War was obviously a crucial part of Wellington's life but off the battlefields the Duke maintained a plethora of other interests and hobbies. One only has to look around the many rooms at Apsley to see what one of these passions entailed. This is one of the most sumptuous magnificent rooms in Britain in the country let alone this house. It is a room that Wellington ordered to be added onto the house when he became This befitted his new status as really the most famous the most celebrated aristocrat in Europe. He was inspired by what he saw in Versailles outside Paris and so he created his own version of Louis XIV's perfect entertaining space. Along the walls a priceless collection of art including these ones here which are very interesting. A lot of this art you can see anything with a black star on it was the spoils of war. They were looted from the battlefield. As the French army were retreating from Spain, this army of occupation, they'd stripped the country of all of its valuables, all of its paintings, all the wonderful things and Wellington's army intercepted them, fought a battle and that loot fell into a British allied hand. Now Wellington offered it back to the King of Spain but the King of Spain said you've got it, you keep it, to the victor go the spoils and that is why these astonishing paintings like these Velazquez's here which were in the Spanish royal collection are now sitting just on Hyde Park corner in little old London. Fascinatingly we know what Wellington's favourite piece of art in this house was. It's just down here it's not one that I would necessarily pick out but it's one that obviously meant a huge amount to him. It's this little one down here it's called the Look you can see it's Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and you can tell it's Wellington's favourite because he had a little key which he put in this keyhole up there and the glass would slide down and he'd clean it himself with his own hanky. There's something about this painting perhaps the loneliness of being a leader, perhaps the responsibility, the responsibility for enormous number of lives. There was something about this painting that he was hugely drawn to. One of the purposes of this room was to be an appropriate setting for what became a real institution, the Waterloo banquet. On the anniversary of that climactic battle Wellington himself would host the senior officers, the survivors of that battle and there would be speeches and conversation and reminiscences. They had a magnificent table laid out here with that Portuguese silver service down the middle. What I would have given to be a fly on the wall, a time traveller back to that room it would have been extraordinary and this was the ideal place to hold that event. The annual Waterloo banquet memorialised one of the most pivotal battles in European history. Depicted in perhaps the most accurate detail by William Allen the original painting rests on the walls inside the striped drawing room. Just look at this, this is one of the finest depictions of Waterloo. Wellington saw this, Wellington bought this, he called it good, he called it very good in fact. So we've got to take it from the great man himself. If you're looking for an image that gets you close to what Waterloo might have been like that fateful day in June 1815, well this according to the Duke of Wellington is probably as close as we're going to get. There is lots of romance, lots of symbolism here. Just look at the clouds for example, you've got the blue skies of liberty over Wellington and the British troops on this ridgeline that protects the route to Brussels and then you've got the grey clouds, it's all the storm clouds are gathering over poor old Napoleon sitting on his horse over here. But we've got to allow that little bit of artistic exaggeration for effect. If you get a sense of the geography here, this ridge is where Napoleon was watching the battle from, there's a valley in between, a very gentle slope up to the ridge on which the British and allied forces were. Wellington's there, you can see he's in his modest blue clothes with his bicorn hat, he's not in a gaudy uniform. Napoleon has heard that the Prussians are closing in on him over here from the east, he is determined he has to win this battle in the next hour if he's to stand a chance of victory and he sends into battle his veterans who have never been defeated in battle, his imperial guard. Here they go marching in these these big sort of rectangular blocks of troops, they march down across the valley up the other side where they are being met by the thin red line. These two ranks, perhaps three in some places, of British infantrymen, you've got the guard here, the British guardsmen in particular, you've got other units, they are pouring musket fire into the imperial guard. This could be Marshal Ney, Napoleon's so-called the bravest of the brave, and he led the imperial guard in this final attack. It was said at the Battle of Waterloo that Ney wanted to die but death didn't want him that day, his clothes were covered in bullet holes, somehow he survived this battle, he was always in the thick of the fighting. And so you've got these red-coated infantry, these British and allied troops pouring fire into the imperial guard. I think we're being told over here perhaps, Napoleon is being told, he's looking a bit grim, he's grasping his telescope, he's wondering all his fortunes now, his crown rests on this last attack, and is he being told by a messenger that the guard are being repulsed? Is he being told that his hopes, his dreams of being restored to great power in Europe are at an end? We don't know. So much of what we know about the Duke of Wellington stems from what happened that fateful day in June 1815. His name forever immortalised in the history books as the But for Wellington, duty to his country and public service did not end with victory on the continent. Before long the Iron Duke found himself back in Whitehall as part of Lord Liverpool's government in 1818 and ten years later not simply commander of the British army but Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One thing I think is so fascinating about Wellington is how he has this amazing afterlife as well. He reaches the zenith as a military commander then he goes on to become the most important politician in the country. He does, in 1828 he's made Prime Minister. Turned out he wasn't as good as being Prime Minister as he was a military commander but we have some lovely objects that relate to his kind of afterlife, his life post-Waterloo. This is a set of duelling pistols. Wellington actually famously fought a duel with the Earl who accused the Duke of potpourri, refused to apologise and Wellington challenged him to a duel. He called him a Catholic? He accused him of potpourri, a big insult. So they fought a duel? They fought a duel at Battersea which was then on the outskirts of London and Wellington fired the first shot that missed. He was actually quite a poor shot rather ironically and then Wilter C decided that he wanted to end the conflict by firing into the air so that was the end of that. He didn't want to kill the Duke of Wellington? He definitely didn't want to kill the Duke of Wellington. So there's still a bit of gunpowder around it even when he's being a politician. Are we getting into the older years here? Yes, so there are some lovely items here in the collection that give us a sense of Wellington's more human experience. We know a lot about him as a military leader, a politician but there's a lot that can be learned about his human experience here at Apsley House. This is a set of his false teeth, the best false teeth money could buy I'm sure. You could pop them in today. I think they look incredibly uncomfortable but no doubt the best possible quality for the Duke. And are they made of human teeth? They're made of real human teeth which were more widely available for dentistry following the Battle of Waterloo because of all the dead soldiers. So the Waterloo victims became famous, all their teeth were pulled. Waterloo teeth was the name for dentures in the 19th century. Do we know if those were someone who fell at Waterloo? Unlikely, they date from a little bit later on in Wellington's life but nevertheless real human teeth. A good set of gnashers. Yes, this is a rather lovely memento, this is one of the hooves of Copenhagen who was the first Duke's horse that he rode famously at Waterloo. And adored him? He did, he absolutely adored him and Copenhagen had a lovely retirement at the Duke's country house after his life on the battlefield. When he died actually one of his hooves went missing, one of his hooves was cut off much to the Duke's upset. It was later returned to the second Duke of Wellington who had the hoof made into this rather interesting inkwell. So it ended up back in the family? It ended up back in the family and became a prized sort of memento. We also have a pair of the first Duke's reading glasses and these are rather lovely because if you look closely you'll see that these glasses predate the invention of the kind of curved arm that goes over your ear. Instead they've got a little loop on the end of each arm that would have been attached to a ribbon that you tied around your head. I see, okay they haven't worked out to loop around. They hadn't worked that out yet. I feel like you need a big technological, it feels like a reasonably easy invention. So there we are, so pre-modern day glasses. So his teeth are falling out, his eyes are going, age comes to us all, even the great man. Even the great Duke of Wellington. But this is perhaps one of our most interesting objects, do you have any idea what this is? No, was it a pipe? Not a pipe, so this is a very ingenious invention, it's a walking stick with a hearing aid on the end. So in the 1820s the Duke got too close to an artillery gun that was being tested and it perforated his left eardrum and this, essentially he lost all the hearing in his left ear and this combined... So he survived all the battles of the Peninsula and the Waterloo campaign and it was actually in peacetime that he lost his hearing? In peacetime he lost his hearing, he was very very deaf and then as he grew older this was kind of compounded by age-related hearing loss. So towards the end of his life he was very hard of hearing and he had various hearing devices but this one is my favourite because the Duke was a very sociable man, he would be out walking, he would be out seeing friends and this allowed him to walk around, you know he could go out into the park or you know go out into town and if he met somebody he wanted to have a conversation with he could just pop the hearing aid up to his ear, this is the little earpiece made of ivory and then the ear trumpet would allow the sound to be carried through here. And he'd go and shout into his ear? Yes exactly, so a really interesting survival that gives us this amazing sense of yeah some of the sort of frailties of the Duke. Yeah all of these are sort of connected with his later years and then that physical decline but he obviously fought against it, he wanted to keep eating, keep seeing, keep hearing things. Yes he was a very sociable person, it's only really at the end of his life that he finds being in company quite difficult and that was just you know he felt he couldn't hear people, he couldn't have conversations. An extraordinary contraption made for an exceptional statesman but if there's one object the Duke is perhaps best known for in the modern age it's this. So this is a pair of original Wellington boots. Wow that's great, they changed a bit. They have, so the Duke was actually quite a fashion forward kind of person and he was particularly interested in any sort of invention that improved comfort and practicality in clothing. So he had his bootmaker make some new boots that improved on the Hessian boot, the boot traditionally worn by soldiers, that wasn't really very practical. Wellington had this new design made, so these are lower than a Hessian boot, they're cut much closer to the leg and they don't have any of the sort of tassels and decorative bits that the Hessian boot had. So they're much more slimline, they're much more practical and they really catch on. The aristocracy start wearing what became known as Wellington boots and then in the 1850s when the rubber gum boot was invented, the manufacturers of this made it to a similar shape and of course to help with their marketing they named them the Wellington boots. This is the kind of ancestor of our Wellington boots that we wear today. Yeah I wonder if in years to come if that's really all that most people remember him I wonder how you'd feel about that. I don't think you'd mind too much, you know this is a very practical boot and he was a very practical man. Better to be remembered for something than nothing at all. Indeed. That's my destiny. So I have one final thing to show you that's very special in the collection. This is the first Duke of Wellington's death mask. This is a cast of a plaster mould that was taken just shortly after his death and you can see it's a very good impression of what he looked like in old age. You can see his very prominent nose he was so well known for. I would like to see a guy with a big nose. You can definitely see it was very very prominent there. You can see some of the wrinkles in his forehead, his eyebrows but most notably this cast was taken after his false teeth had been removed so his mouth has this slightly strange sunken appearance but it's a wonderful impression of what the first Duke looked like at the very end of his life. What an amazing thing to have. It is, it's quite unique and I think it really captures his humanity. Well that's it for one of the best collections of historical objects and art in London and that's saying something. 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