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| THE OFFICIAL BERKSHIRE RESIDENCE OF HM THE QUEEN |
History of Windsor Castle
For over 900 years there has been a castle at Windsor. William the Conqueror chose the site, high above the River Thames and on the edge of a Saxon hunting ground. It was a day's march from the Tower of London and intended to guard the western approaches to the capital. Since those early days Windsor Castle has been inhabited continuously and improved upon by successive sovereigns. Some were great builders, strengthening the Castle against uprising and rebellion; others, living in more peaceful times, created a palatial royal residence.
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Nine centuries after its foundation, the Castle continues to perform its prime role as one of The Queen's official residences. Pivotal to this role are the State Apartments, which are the formal rooms used for Court ceremonial and State and official occasions. They range from the smaller intimate rooms of Charles II's Apartments to the vast area of the Waterloo Chamber, built to commemorate the famous victory over Napoleon in 1815.
The rooms are furnished with some of the most important works of art in the Royal Collection, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Rubens, Holbein and van Dyck as well as magnificent French and English furniture and porcelain.
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Windsor Castle provides a step back into history, and within its precincts stands St George's Chapel, the resting place of 10 sovereigns. Founded by Edward IV in 1475 and completed by Henry VIII, the Chapel is dedicated to the patron saint of the Order of the Garter, Britain's highest Order of Chivalry, and ranks among the finest examples of late medieval architecture in the United Kingdom.
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| The Precincts, Queen Mary's Dolls' House, The Gallery, The State Apartments, St George's Chapel and the Albert Memorial Chapel are open to visitors. |
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Fire
On 20 November 1992, the forty-fifth wedding anniversary of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, nine principal rooms and over 100 other rooms over an area of 9,000 square metres, approximately one-fifth of the Castle area, of the Upper Ward of Windsor Castle were damaged or destroyed by fire which began in the Private Chapel when a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over a prolonged period and ignited the material. Some 250 firefighters from five fire brigades tackled the blaze using one and half million gallons of water - equivalent to the amount of water flowing over the Niagara Falls every two and a half seconds - before the fire was finally extinguished 15 hours after it had started.
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| Windsor Castle is the largest occupied castle in the world, and the restoration project that followed the fire was the greatest historic building project to have been undertaken this century, six times the size of the project which restored the seventeenth-century wing of Hampton Court Palace after a similar catastrophic fire in 1986. After five years' intensive work the restoration of Windsor Castle was completed six months ahead of schedule on 20 November 1997 at a cost of £37 million (US $59.2 million), £3 million below budget. |
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Restoration
For five years more than 4,000 skilled workers representing over 200 contractors and subcontractors have been busy at every level of the Castle. Several exciting archaeological finds by English Heritage came to light during the course of building work; these included a 42-metre medieval well that reached down to the level of the River Thames; fragments of Antonio Verrio's seventeenth-century mural for Charles II's St George's Hall; fourteenth-century timbers in the Great Kitchen; and, from the same period, grooves for the portcullis at what was then the gate-house to the kitchen courtyard.
Overall control of the project was in the hands of the Royal Household Property Section, reporting to The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. An advisory committee under the chairmanship of The Duke of Edinburgh oversaw the decisions on how the nine principal rooms affected by the fire would be treated, while a subsidiary committee, chaired by The Prince of Wales, was tasked with recommending the architect responsible for the new designs. |
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