Buckingham House

Treasures of London – King George III’s military maps…

by exploringlondon

King George III’s massive collection of military maps, views and prints forms a key part of the Royal Collection and to mark the 200th anniversary of the King’s death, more than 3,000 of which have been published online.

The publication of the selection from the more than 55,000 items in the collection marks the culmination of 10 years of research by Dr Yolande Hodson who has catalogued the contents of the collection which dates from the 16th to the 18th centuries and provides a contemporary account of theatres of war in Britain, Europe and America.

The collection includes everything from so-called “presentation maps” of sieges, battles and marches to rough sketches drawn in the field, depictions of uniforms and fortification plans.

Highlights include two-metre-wide maps of the American War of Independence (1775–83) which designed to hang on purpose-made mahogany stands in Buckingham House – among them is a map of the final British defeat at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, the only known copy to survive outside the US.

There’s also a memorandum written by Scottish military engineer William Roy to the king in 1766 in which Roy proposes a national survey of Britain based on his map and survey experience during the Seven Years War (1756–63) – it’s regarded as the founding document of the Ordnance Survey.

And there’s a rare engraving of the Siege of Malta (1565) showing how the Fort of St Elmo was overrun Turkish forces, resulting in the death of 1,300 Christian knights, captains and soldiers (pictured).

The collection can be found at militarymaps.rct.uk.

PICTURE: Matteo Perez d’Aleccio, A view of the Turkish assault on the Fort of St Elmo, Malta, on 23 June 1565. From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. (Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020)

 

The Royal Wedding – London’s royal reception venue

by exploringlondon

Following the wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey on Friday, the now married happy couple will head in a carriage via a processional route down The Mall to Buckingham Palace.

There, they will enjoy a champagne reception with 600 guests hosted by the Queen before, at 1.30pm, appearing on the balcony of the palace to wave to the crowds and watch an aircraft flypast expected to include a Lancaster, Spitfire, Hurricane, two Typhoons and two Tornados.

Buckingham Palace, which has served as the official London residence of the reigning monarch since 1837, has a long tradition of hosting royal events. Then much smaller and known as Buckingham House, the property was built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1705.

It passed into royal hands when it was bought by King George III in 1761 for his wife, Queen Charlotte, to use as a family home located conveniently close to St James’s Palace where many court functions were held.

The house was extensively remodelled in 1762 and again, this time on the orders of King George IV, in the 1820s (after initially wanting to use it, like his father, as a family home, the king decided after the works had started to instead transform it into a palace, created to the designs of architect John Nash).

When King George IV died in 1830, his brother King William IV ordered the works to be continued albeit with a new architect, Edward Blore (the spiralling costs of Nash’s work are said to have cost him the contract). The king himself never lived in the house – even offering at at one stage as a seat for Parliament after the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire in 1834 – and it wasn’t until the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 that the palace became the sovereign’s official residence.

Further works were subsequently needed to ensure there was adequate accommodations for the Queen’s family and it was during these works that the monumental Marble Arch – designed as the centrepiece of the palace’s courtyard – was moved away to its present location on the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park.

The palace, which now boasts 775 rooms including 19 staterooms, has since been the site of numerous royal wedding receptions – it was on the balcony  where Queen Elizabeth II and Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, greeted crowds on 20th November, 1947, after their wedding in Westminster Abbey and, similarly, where Prince William’s parents, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, held a reception before greeting crowds on 29th July, 1981, after their ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Buckingham Palace was also the location for Queen Victoria’s wedding breakfast following the ceremony in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace on 10th February, 1840.