Kensington Palace - A Royal Home Since The 17th Century

The royal residence called Kensington Palace is set in Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London and has been a residence for the British Royal Family since the 17th century.  As we approached the palace on this cold winter day, the exterior was still dressed up for Christmas giving the grand royal mansion a warm welcoming appearance.

I have been to Kensington Palace a few times and on each visit, I am struck by the atmosphere of intimacy in this small palace. You can imagine royal family life being lived there. This atmosphere may be the reason that members of the current royal family still live in apartments that are part of the palace complex. 

Kensington Palace began life in 1605 as two-story Jacobean Manor built in what was then, the village of Kensington. It was purchased by the 1st Earl of Nottingham in 1619.  Shortly after William and Mary assumed the British throne as joint monarchs in 1689, they began searching for a residence better situated for the comfort of the asthmatic William.  Whitehall Palace was too near the Thames and its fog and floods which were detrimental to William's fragile health.

Above left photo credit: "King William III of England, (1650-1702)" by Sir Godfrey Kneller - historicalportraits.com. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Above right photo credit: "Lely Queen Mary II" by Peter Lely - (Original text: Collection of James Stunt). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia

The royal couple determined that Nottingham House would be the perfect “country palace” and immediately purchased it. William and Mary bought Nottingham House in 1689 from the 2nd Earl of Nottingham and then instructed renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren, to begin an immediate expansion of the house as well as later additional improvements. The Queen’s Apartments were located in the north-west pavilion and the King’s Apartments in the south-east.

In 1694 Queen Mary died at Kensington Palace of smallpox, at the age of 32 and eight years later, King William also died at Kensington after a fall from his horse.  William and Mary had no children, so Queen Anne, Mary’s sister and cousin to William succeeded to the throne. 

Queen Anne moved into the Queen’s quarters and completed the work William and Mary had begun.  This resulted in the section of the palace known as the Queen's Apartments, with the Queen's Entrance, and a private staircase which was constructed with shallow steps so that Anne could walk gracefully down the stairs to her beloved Dutch garden.

Above Photo Credit: "Willem Wissing and Jan van der Vaardt - Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark, 1665 – 1714 - Google Art Project" by Willem Wissing (1656 - 1687) and Jan van der Vaart (1647 - 1721) - 3wFl3A1dHhLPdA at Google Cultural Institute. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Queen's Bedchamber

The Queen's Dining Room

Queen Anne also focused on building the Orangery and enhancing the Formal Gardens

Above left photo credit: The Orangery (1704-5), Kensington Palace, by Nicholas Hawksmoor  Licensed under Wikimedia  Commons CC BY-SA 2.0  Above right photo credit: "Kensington Palace view" by George Tsiagalakis - Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons

Anne left no surviving children even though she had eighteen pregnancies with five live births, so she was succeeded by her second cousin George I  of the House of Hanover.  

Upon ascending to the throne in 1714, King George I spent lavishly on new royal apartments at Kensington Palace.  The core of the old Nottingham House, which still survived at the heart of the palace, was replaced by three new state rooms, the Cupola Room, the Privy Chamber and the Withdrawing Room. In 1722, he hired William Kent to decorate the state rooms, which he did with elaborately painted trompe l’oeil ceilings and walls.

Above Photo Credit: "George I as Prince of Hanover" by after Sir Godfrey Kneller - Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Cupola Room

The walls of the grand King's Staircase were painted by William Kent as a vivid recreation of George I’s court.

Above Photo Credit: Kensington Palace, Great Staircase, by Charles Wild, 1819 - royal  via commons.wikimedia.org

The largest and longest of the state apartments at Kensington Palace, the King's Gallery looks pretty much as it was when decorated for King George I in 1727.

The last reigning monarch to use Kensington Palace was George II, who did not undertake any major structural changes to the palace.  George II died at Kensington Palace in 1760 and when George III ascended to the throne, and for the next, six decades; only minor royalty lived at the palace. 

One of those minor royals was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III, who was allocated two floors of rooms in the south-east corner of the palace, below the State Apartments.  Since the rooms had been unused since the death of George II, they were very dilapidated, so the Duke had several renovations done to make his family comfortable.

Above Photo Credit: "Duke of Kent (1818)GeorgeDawe" by George Dawe - Genealogy of the Royal Family of Great Britain and Hanover. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

 Above Photo Credit: "Duchess of Kent and Victoria by Henry Bone" by Henry Bone - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3560626/Queen-Victoria-the-original-peoples-princess.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Duke of Kent’s daughter Alexandrina Victoria was born on May 24th, 1819.  She was christened in the Cupola Room the following month. Sadly, the Duke died nine months after the birth of his daughter, and she grew up in the confines of the palace in an unhappy and lonely childhood. Little Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent continued to live at Kensington until the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.  She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no legitimate, surviving children.

Unfortunately after Victoria left Kensington, many years of disuse and neglect allowed the palace to fall into decay.  It was only Queen Victoria's love for the palace in which she had grown up that saved it.  In 1898, the queen is reported to have said that ‘while she lived, the palace in which she was born should not be destroyed'.  The State Apartments were opened to the public on Queen Victoria's 80th birthday, 24 May 1899, beginning the palace’s new dual life as a museum and a royal residence.

Queen Victoria’s rooms also serve as a museum and are filled with so many amazing artifacts from her life.  The clothes, toys, photos and memorabilia from her childhood, and also personal items and dresses and pieces from her life with her beloved husband and consort Prince Albert and their children are fascinating to see.

According to the Kensington Palace Website, today the palace “continues its long history as a residence for members of the Royal Family. Princesses still live around Princesses’ Court. The best known resident in recent years was Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-97) who occupied apartments in the north-west part of the palace from 1981 to 1997. Since 2013 the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have made Kensington Palace their home.”

Above Photo Credit: “Diana, Princess of Whales while at The Leonardo Prize ceremony in 1995” by Nick Parfjonov - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

My favorite exhibit in the palace displays selections of Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe in the 1950s, Princess Margaret from the 1960’s and 70s and Diana, Princess of Wales in the 1980s during their fashion heyday.  I spent a long wandering through this last exhibit.  The vintage dresses were fabulous!

If you love visiting palaces (as I do) and enjoy learning about the more intimate history of the British Royal Family, Kensington Palace is a fascinating place to visit and who knows, maybe you’ll run into a prince or princess!