Historic Royal Palaces

The special approaches to cataloging architectural drawings that were developed in the analog era of printed catalogs have persisted for over half a century. But the growth of digital technology in more recent years has created new challenges and opportunities for custodians of architectural drawings that have yet to be fully explored. This article examines traditional approaches to cataloging architectural drawings in the United Kingdom, including the highly influential system developed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in the 1970s, alongside recent literature and examples of modern finding aids to reveal the impact that digital technology has had on the practice of archival description, together with the possibilities that new technology offers for presentation and access to online descriptions. By highlighting the key developments in digital cataloging and relating them to the medium of architectural drawings, this article will enable custodians of architectural collections to ensure that their catalogs are fit for purpose in the digital age.

Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, less formally known as the Tower of London or simply ‘the Tower’, was the seat of royal power in England for several centuries following its construction by William the Conqueror in 1078. While now a popular tourist attraction, it remains the home of the Crown Jewels, is a working barracks and maintains many ceremonial traditions of state. Two chapels are located within its walls. Foremost of these is the late eleventh-century chapel of St John the Evangelist (St John's), located within the White Tower, noted as a rare surviving example of early Anglo-Norman ecclesiastic architecture. To the north-west, the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (St Peter's) has an equally remarkable history and is a building of singular importance even within the Tower complex. Its origins may be traced, like many London parish churches, to a small, private house-church in the ninth century, before being subsumed within the boundaries of the fortress. The chapel, the latest of three documented iterations, was constructed between 1519 and 1520 and is the burial place of many notable figures, including the sixteenth-century queens Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey, together with Cardinal John Fisher and the former Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More, both now venerated as martyrs and saints in the Roman Catholic Church.

Seven contemporary commentators whose experience has been touched by Queen Victoria’s history and its legacy address the question: how should we curate Victoria today?

<p class="first" id="d5629863e106">Historic tapestries are textile artworks usually found hanging inside historic buildings. They form part of the European heritage have been exposed for centuries to diverse environmental conditions some of which have permanently damaged them. To inform better appropriate conservation practices, their physical behavior when exposed to environmental changes must be understood. The research conducted aimed to assess how the internal environment conditions in a historic building affects the tapestries’ structures and produce change in their strain. For this a series of experiments on a historic 19th century tapestry inside an environmental chamber carried out and cycles of moisture adsorption and desorption tested. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and magnetic sensors developed by were used to test successive stages of expansion and retraction of the tapestry given different levels of relative humidity (RH) in the environment.

Historic Royal Palaces researches and interprets histories of gender and sexuality in the palaces it cares for. Work on LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer) histories and identities has increased in museums and heritage sites recently. There is a pressing social need for this work, as LGBTQ people continue to experience various kinds of discrimination and prejudice. Evidence suggests that the work of museums and heritage organisations can have a positive impact on LGBTQ lives and rights. There are many examples of queer lives and identities in British royal history, but this paper shows that beyond the ‘usual suspects’ (such as James VI &amp; I and Queen Anne), the histories of courtiers, servants, artists, and designers around the royal court are rewarding areas of study. This paper suggests that material culture studies could be used more effectively, and histories of creative queering of monarchy can inform perceptions of the institution itself.

Caroline Boswell’s book investigates the convergence of ‘the micro-politics of everyday life’ and ‘the politics of the nation’ during England’s eleven years of republican experiment. Her analysis owes itself to another convergence: that of various recent researches into the politics of early modern people who neither governed nor chose those who ruled over them. Such studies have highlighted the social depth of politics in early modern Britain and, by extension, the magnitude of popular political participation, but also the everyday ‘micro-politics’ which played out across disparities of power between men and women in the household, marketplace and victualling house. By acknowledging how such sites were ascribed with meaning, she draws on a further development in early modern historiography: the ‘spatial turn’. Boswell’s claim is that the revolutionary cataclysm of the 1640s and its republican aftermath mutated the ‘interpersonal relationships, communal sociability and the practices of everyday life’ (p. 12). Contingent on this metamorphosis, typical modes of early modern ‘disaffection’—gesture, performance, seditious and scandalous speech, and violence—constituted existential threats to successive fledgling republican experiments whose fiscal, religious and social reforms, and related search for legitimacy, had far-reaching consequences for English men and women. Rather than labelling such behaviour ipso facto ‘royalism’, Boswell contends that varieties of disaffection were successfully co-opted by the exiled Charles II and his sympathisers to return England to monarchical and, later, episcopal government.

Ceiling and wall paintings pose significant challenges for historic house management due to their position at the interface between the environment and the building. Tight restrictions to modifications on built heritage prevent total control of the environment, resulting in temperature and humidity fluctuations. Different hygrothermal responses within the wall painting stratigraphy frequently lead to fracturing and lifting of paint layers, necessitating remedial conservation to readhere areas of detachment. Assessing the success of readhesion interventions is difficult due to the hidden nature of the treatment and, often, limited access. This paper presents comparative results of two different adhesive treatments employed during the conservation of the baroque ceiling painting in the Queen's Staircase at Hampton Court Palace, analysed with unilateral nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This non-invasive technique enabled monitoring of the adhesive systems, based on Jun Funori and BEVA® 371 adhesives, up to a depth of 3,500 μm into the ceiling by providing specially resolved proton density profiles before and after treatment. The results offer a unique and pertinent assessment of treatment areas within a strictly limited timeframe. It is shown that the solvent carrier leaves the system within 24 hours and that the ultimate deposition of the adhesive can be identified.

This paper describes the development of a collection risk management strategy within Historic Royal Palaces, which is a thriving commercially-based visitor attraction. The approach is two pronged. It first comprises a steering body, the ‘Agents of Decay’ Board, for strategic direction and collaborative decision making for risk mitigation measures that are supported and implemented. Second, at operational level, it offers a team approach between conservators and commercial staff to achieve conservation risk management goals whilst delivering a financial and client or visitor successful business. Collection risk management is woven into the activities of the palaces enabling the Historic Royal Palace business to be successful, which in turn leads to the generation of more funds for conservation.

This study was performed to construct sound performance DB of royal palace buildings and to examine the special quality more scientifically. Research target of royal palace were Changdeokgung and Gyeongbokgung. Sound insulation performance between the adjacent room and facade, room acoustics of Pyeonjeon and Chimjeon which is representative building in royal palace were examined through field measurement. Measured values of RT() at Pyeonjeon were 0.78 sec. and 1.03 sec. in Seonjeongjoen and Sajeongjoen, respectively. The RTs of both Pyeonjeon buildings were estimated suitable for speech and lecture considering their volume. The RT()s at Chimjeon were measured in range of 0.29~0.55 sec. This meant that the acoustic energy in rooms was decreased by sound transmission through mulberry paper(Hanji) of traditional windows and doors. As a sound insulation performance, the single-number quantities() of the building facades in Pyeonjeon and Chimjeon were measured 4~20 dB. Also the single-number quantities() between the adjacent rooms in Chimjeon were measured 3~18 dB. Sound insulation performance of traditional building elements such as window and door depended strongly on their layers and area.