The Enchanted Palace: A Magical Day Out in London by Hermione Cameron
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Something strange and wonderful has started to happen at Kensington Palace, in London’s Kensington Gardens. First, we notice that Queen Victoria’s statue overlooking the pretty Round Pond is looking more spritely and animated than usual.
Behind her, The Sunken Garden and the Orangery appear picture perfect with spring flowers freshly planted as precisely as little silk knots of colour on a child’s antique needlework sampler.
Then we notice that the gardens south and east of the Palace have changed dramatically: where have all the trees gone? As little princes and princesses will now rush to discover, a flurry of activity all around Kensington Palace reveals that ‘an enchantment’ has taken place.
Trees have started growing inside the Palace. “In the Room of Beginnings, a tree sprang up overnight,” says Chris, The Explainer. As a warder at Kensington Palace, he hasn’t seen anything like it, in the nine years he’s worked there.
“And that’s not all. There’s talk that Peter the wild boy is running around causing havoc again and Mrs Elliott, the housekeeper, is nowhere to be seen. But then again she is a ghost.” He says with an inscrutable smile.
This isn’t the Kensington Palace we normally hear about.
Sheaves of Poetry
In recent memory the Palace has been very much associated with the life and tragic death of Princess Diana and an air of sadness has surrounded it. But like the castle in Sleeping Beauty, the Palace is reawakening, shaking off formality and inviting more children, in particular, to enjoy a behind-the-scenes magical experience; one which brings real stories from its history to life.
Not knowing what to expect, we climb a staircase surprisingly covered in children’s drawings and are given a map, an invitation to explore the rooms of the Enchanted Palace.
The lavishly decorated State Apartments house the artefacts from four hundred years of history, but glimpsed this time in low lit mystery. There are glamorous gowns, baby bonnets, royal portraits, toy soldiers, a beating heart, a throne of knitting, statues, clocks, maps of the world, a cabinet of curiosities, silver footprints, messages written in stones, and bottles of joy and sorrow. The formal cordons are gone, or disguised, replaced with garlands of flowers, paper dolls and sheaves of poetry.
Children are running around saying “Come in here, come in here. Come and see this”. A dress of thousands of paper birds flies over a Princess’s bed in the room where Queen Victoria slept as a child. The bed, piled high with soft mattresses reminds you of the story of the Princess and the pea. There’s a giant spindly highchair, as tall as the ceiling, for a governess to watch the Princess as she sleeps. Somewhere, a child’s voice can be heard, softly telling us a nursery rhyme.
Promenade Performance
In another room, tears of happiness and sadness have been collected in tiny beautiful glass bottles and labelled for each emotional occasion.
Suddenly there’s a great kafuffle as a baby in a pram is declared “A prince!” to nods all round. Another youngster is asked where her tiara is, by the unusual staff. With very determined looks, they scurry around, tiny headlamps to inspect, aprons to protect, keys to unlock secrets, in an interactive promenade performance that draws you into scenes from Palace history.
We get goose-bumps as we hear music drifting from the Gallery of Dancing Shadows, where a boy stands mesmerised by silhouettes flitting across the ceiling, watched by princesses. He whispers to his mother, “This is breathtaking”. We grown-ups certainly agree.
Ingenious Theatre
The ingenious theatre company WildWorks, together with fashion designers including Vivenne Westwood and William Tempest have woven together this beguiling experience based on the lives of seven princesses who lived at Kensington Palace: Mary, Anne, Caroline, Charlotte, Victoria, Margaret and Diana.
Bill Mitchell, director of WildWorks is in real life a very jolly pirate - with a gold front tooth and a sparkle in his eye - which is just what you want from the creator of a fantasy world. As we descend a mirrored staircase and reluctantly turn to leave, we ask him where the ideas came from. “From the ether” he twinkles “from the Palace itself”.
And we have to say that to tell you more would be to spoil the other surprises at The Enchanted Palace. So we’ll head off now, for a very smart afternoon tea at The Orangery, for coffee and cakes fit for a princess!
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