23rd July: Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace opens to the public today for the summer season. Whether or not you're planning to visit, I hope you find these facts about it interesting.

1. The first monarch to make the palace their official residence was Queen Victoria. When she first moved in, there were no bathrooms, so she had to bathe in her own bedroom with a portable tub. It was reportedly very cold and dirty at the time, with lazy staff.
2. Today things have improved considerably on the bathroom front - there are now 78 of them. The palace has 775 rooms altogether including 19 state rooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, a chapel, post office, doctor’s surgery, cinema and swimming pool. The Palace has its own cash machine in the basement, especially for members of the royal family. There are 1,514 doors and 760 Windows - the windows are cleaned every six weeks. The building has more than 40,000 light bulbs and 350 clocks. There is a member of staff whose full time job is winding and maintaining the clocks.
3. The largest room is the ballroom. It's 36.6m long, 18m wide and 13.5m high. When it opened in 1856, it was the largest room in London. The first event to be held there was a celebration marking the end of the Crimean War in 1856 and it was was the first room to have Electricity installed in 1883.
4. The palace was built in 1705 by John Sheffield, 3rd Earl of Mulgrave and Marquess of Normandy, as his London residence. In the same year, Sheffield was made the Duke of Buckingham and he named the house after his title. It was known as Buckingham House but was bought by George III for wife Queen Charlotte, when it became known as “The Queen’s House”.
5. There was once a village on the site owned by Edward the Confessor, and Henry VIII reclaimed it for the Crown in 1531. James I planted a mulberry garden there in order to cultivate Silkworms - but he used the wrong type of mulberry bush and was unable to successfully produce any silk. When Parliament burned down in 1834, King William IV considered turning Buckingham into the new Houses of Parliament.
6. Edward VII (1841–1910) is the only monarch in the palace’s history who was born and died there.
7. There are tunnels under the palace connecting it to the Houses of Parliament and St James's Palace. When the Queen Mother and King George VI explored them, they found somebody living in them. He was from Newcastle, had apparently been invited to stay there by a friend and had never gone home. He was reportedly "very polite".
8. More than 50,000 people visit the Palace each year as The Queen’s guests at banquets, lunches, dinners, receptions and garden parties. There are occasional uninvited guests, as well. In 1838, a 14 year old boy called Edward Jones broke in and was caught by police nearby with Queen Victoria’s underwear stuffed down his trousers! He broke in twice more, was sent to Brazil, but escaped and came back. He was eventually sent him to Australia where he worked as a town crier until he died in 1893. Then in 1982 Michael Fagan managed to get past the gates and the royal guard, scale the walls of Buckingham Palace and even have a brief conversation with the Queen before being thrown out.
9. The palace gardens are the largest private gardens in London. They cover 40 acres and contain tennis courts, a boating lake, a Helicopter landing pad and over 300 species of flowers. Yes, the place is literally big enough to have its own postcode: SW1A 1AA.
10. During World War II, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth publicly refused to leave the palace, which put it at risk of being bombed. The buildings and grounds suffered nine direct hits. The Queen Mother described one bomb as causing ‘a tremendous explosion’ but cheerfully added that 'everybody remained wonderfully calm’.