Last night team members of the White Tower Conservation Project, HRP’s three year project to clean and conserve the Norman keep at the Tower of London, attended the prestigious Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Awards at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.  These awards are designed to celebrate the highest standards of excellence in the built environment across the country.

As you’d expect, competition was fierce, but not only did we walk away as winners for the Building Conservation Award, HRP was also awarded Best Project for the London region so we’ll be going forward to the Grand Final in the autumn.  Hurrah for us!

Chance of a Lifetime, the learning programme for the project, allowed over 5,500 people to access the scaffold and experience HRP’s world-leading conservation programmes first-hand.  RICS Judges showed a particular interest in Chance of a Lifetime during their assessment and praised HRP’s commitment to helping the public understand the important role conservation plays in ensuring this great building can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Here’s a photo of Tracy Simmons, Project Manager for the project, with the first of the two awards. Well done Tracy and the team!

The photo features the 15 new British citizens standing outside the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers building in the Tower, alongside the Constable of the Tower of London General Lord Dannatt, Speaker of Tower Hamlets Council Cllr. Milan Chaudhray and Chief Yeoman Warder Alan Kingshott. This was the fifth citizenship ceremony which we have held at th Tower, and it is now an annual event.

The ceremony was conducted by the Superintendent Registrar of Tower Hamlets Catherine Sutton in the Officers’ Mess. Citizens made heir oaths and pledges to Queen and Country, and we’re presented with their certificates of nationality by the Constable before everyone sang the National Anthem.

Several groups embroidered flowers in muted tones at the end of 2011 and early 2012 for curtains in the room about Prince Albert’s death. It was lovely that some of the participants were able to see their work in situ and see how their flowers add to the atmosphere of sadness and mourning to the room. Their embroidery pieces will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people each year.

Each new British citizen in Tower Hamlets, Richmond, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea will receive a copy of our guide to Historic Royal Palaces, giving them a short history of each of our famous buildings, as well as information on community projects, volunteering and work opportunities. 18,500 people have received the older version of the booklet over the last three years, and we hope that the newly refreshed guide will be popular with many more new citizens.

After a tour through the grand King’s Apartments, the community guests were taken into ‘Victoria’s Bedroom’ (where Princess Victoria became Queen Victoria in 1837) for afternoon tea. The Mayor raised toasts to the guests, the community and The Queen.

It was so nice to have the groups at the palace, particularly as for many of the attendees they find it very hard to leave their homes, so getting to Kensington Palace was a real effort. Hopefully they might be able to come back to the palace again in the future.

The stories were researched by members of the Tower Education Service, and written and performed by actress and storyteller Claire Chard. We are currently in the process of editing the podcasts ready for uploading to our iTunes U site very shortly, so watch this space!

Catherine at the Tower

Well that was just one of the fascinating facts I learnt at Kew Palace last week, when we were joined by the delightful Dr Annie Gray – researcher, costumed interpreter, TV broadcaster and all-round historic food buff extraordinaire.

Annie regaled us of the alarmingly exacting rules of the Georgian dinner table, which involved laying out the table in such a way that each dish complemented the one next to it (not to mind opposite it) – through taste, look, smell and texture! As noted by a contemporary commentator: ‘the direction of a table is no inconsiderable branch of a lady’s concern, as it involves judgement in expenditure; respectability of appearance; and the comfort of her husband and those who partake their hospitality.’  No pressure then…

As if her informative talk wasn’t enough, Annie also treated us to a tasting of some Georgian desserts, made to authentic historical recipes. The gingerbread was much harder to chew than our modern tastes would expect – though they’re perfect dunked in hot chocolate apparently. Meanwhile, the whipped syllabub was truly delicious. You know you really can’t go wrong when you simply mix ingredients of cream, white wine, brandy and sugar together. Yum. My campaign to bring it back to 21^st-century dining tables starts here!

Click here to listen to the podcast

After refreshments in the mew Duchess of Kent Community Room, readings and historical stories took place in Victoria’s bedroom.

Victoria famously read ‘Oliver Twist’ and found it ‘excessively interesting’, so the first reading had to be from that great novel. After that attendees learnt more about how Victoria attended several plays in which Charles Dickens was a performer, rather than a writer.

The next reading was from ‘Great Expectations’ – having read about Miss. Havisham, we discussed how Victoria went into such deep mourning after the loss of her husband and wore the lace from her wedding dress later in life and kept her husband’s memory alive by having his clothes laid out for decades after his death, as well as warm water in a bowl for shaving.

Attendees learnt about Victoria’s meeting with Dickens months before his death in 1870 whilst he was writing his final novel ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’, and at which she gave him a copy of her book ‘Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands’. We read extracts from both books.

We all had a super time and are very grateful that we could run this event in conjunction with the Library Service of Kensington & Chelsea.

Working with the illustrator and artist Emma Rios, people at the Avenue Club in Kew (Richmond) used specially designed screens to print jubilee motifs onto tablecloths in a workshop last week. Before the printing began, the participants learnt about the only other Diamond Jubilee – Queen Victoria’s – and shared their stories about celebrations from their own lives.

A range of different groups will be making tablecloths over the coming weeks, and they will be used first at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Party on the 2nd of June. This will be a fantastic event – the palace gardens will be opened for free, entertainment and activities will be on hand and hundreds of tables and chairs (plus masses of bunting) will be laid on so that all people need to do is bring their own picnic and have a great time celebrating the Diamond Jubilee!

It was such a lovely evening and great to see so many people there. It was the perfect way to end a fantastic residency and also to thank Natalie Ryde for all her hard work over the last year.

For more information about the residency please go to out learning pages

Jenny