As two centuries of lumber was cleared out of the abandoned Georgian kitchens at Kew Palace in west London – the smallest of the royal residences – a unique and poignant piece of royal history was uncovered.
The brown tin tub found stashed away in a chimney opening was the bath in which King George III took regular soakings in hot water, a prescription to calm him as he and his attendants wrestled with his terrifying bouts of mania.
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At that time, the early 1800s, he was assumed to have been mad; he is now believed to have developed the hereditary condition porphyria. He was virtually imprisoned at Kew to prevent a political crisis if the full extent of his condition became known, as the previously gentle and clever king roared obscenities and terrified his wife, Queen Charlotte.
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The discovery bears out a Kew legend that the tormented king took his baths not in the sumptuously furnished main house, but amid the domestic clatter of the royal kitchen.
Curator Susanne Groom believes the bath was set up for King George in a small room normally used for keeping silver under lock and key, which would have given him some privacy. It had a fireplace and so could be made comfortable, and was next door to the main kitchen with an endless supply of hot water from the copper boilers. The bath will be displayed in this room in May, when the kitchens open to the public for the first time after a £1.7m restoration. The main building will reopen in April.
The kitchens will be displayed using sound and light to evoke a significant date, 6 February 1789, when George was judged well enough to be given back his knife and fork, and sat down with his wife and daughters to a meal.
The menu survives in the national archives, and includes soup, pigeon pie, veal, sweetbreads, pike, chicken, a leg of lamb and a roast goose, pheasant, blancmange, anchovy salad, a mille-feuille gateau and pancakes.
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Groom was told the story of the bath in the kitchen by a descendant of a visitor. In 1823, after Charlotte died, the palace was virtually abandoned and the kitchens fell into their long twilight. The visitor had been told by the royal housekeeper, a Mrs Tunstall, that George insisted on bathing in the kitchen to save staff the trouble of carrying heavy cans of hot water to the house.
“That has to be true, that is George to the life,” Groom said.
Because the kitchen block gradually filled up with junk and stores, it escaped being fitted out with Victorian gadgets and is now a rare and historically important survivor. Original elm tables and dressers, bread ovens and roasting spits, hooks for hams and sides of meat, and a large cupboard where the precious spices were kept have all survived.
“Since the palace reopened, the question we are most often asked is, where was the kitchen and where was the bathroom? Now we can answer both,” Groom said.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
