Buckingham Palace is the London residence and administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Originally known as Buckingham House, the building at the core of today’s palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703. Ownership of the site changed hands many times; owners included Edward the Confessor and his queen consort Edith of Wessex in late Saxon times.
About Buckingham Palace in brief
Buckingham Palace is the London residence and administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Originally known as Buckingham House, the building at the core of today’s palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703. Ownership of the site changed hands many times; owners included Edward the Confessor and his queen consort Edith of Wessex in late Saxon times. After the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror gave the site to Geoffrey de Mandeville, who bequeathed it to the monks of Westminster Abbey. The last major structural additions were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the East Front, which contains the well-known balcony on which the British royal family traditionally congregates to greet crowds. A German bomb destroyed the palace chapel during the Second World War; the Queen’s Gallery was built on the site and opened to the public in 1962 to exhibit works of art from the Royal Collection. The palace has 775 rooms, and the garden is the largest private garden in London. The state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to thepublic each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring. The site of the future palace formed part of the Manor of Ebury. The marshy ground was watered by the river Tyburn, which still flows below the courtyard and south wing of the palace.
In 1531, Henry VIII acquired the Hospital of St.James, which became St James’s Palace, from Eton College, and in 1536 he took the Manor from Westminster Abbey, these transfers brought the site of Buckingham Palace back into royal hands for the first time since William the conqueror had given it away almost 500 years earlier. By then, the old village of Eye Cross had long since fallen into decay and the area was mostly wasteland. The first house erected within the site was that of a Sir William Blake’s in 1633. The next owner was Lord Goring, who extended Blake’s garden and developed much of today as Goring Great Garden. When the Royal family lost interest in the mulberry garden in 1640, Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington was able to purchase it and move it to Goring House. Unbeknown to him, however, the lease on the freehold interest in Goring Garden was terminated when he fled London, which helped the royal family regain control of it. It was this critical omission that helped them regain the royal freehold under King George III in 1761. The freehold was inherited from the property tycoon Sir Hugh Audley by the great heiress Mary Davies by the next owner, who from 1624 to 1640 was Lord Goring’s son-in-law, Lord James Davies. In the late 17th century, the site became known as S. James’s, and it was used as a silk factory for the production of silk.
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This page is based on the article Buckingham Palace published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
