Windsor Castle | 1,000 Years Of Royal History | From William the Conqueror To Charles III

Windsor Castle is the largest and oldest inhabited castle in the world. It's an official residence of His Majesty the King and site of great state occasions such as state banquets and royal weddings. The castle was founded by William the Conqueror. First recorded in 1070, it was probably constructed soon after the Norman conquest of 1066. Initially it wasn't intended to be a royal residence but a defensive fortress and its position on the banks of the River Thames was most likely to control and defend a bridge or other river crossing. It would also have served as a military base from which to suppress any unrest in the local population. The original castle would have been a traditional Norman motte and bailey castle with a timber-framed tower on top of the motte which was the large mound of earth which at Windsor still survives right at the heart of the castle for almost a thousand years. The bailey was a fortified courtyard at its base. The next major development was brought about by William the Conqueror's youngest son Henry I who added two additional baileys known as the Upper Ward and the Lower Ward today and that marks the moment the castle first becomes a royal residence. In the late 12th century Henry II replaced the wooden fortifications with stone so building the first round tower and setting the curtain wall which has essentially defined the footprint of Windsor Castle up until today. The first large-scale chapel to be built within Windsor Castle was constructed by Henry III beginning in 1240. This was the great medieval building monarch responsible for Westminster Abbey as we see it today but unfortunately his chapel here at Windsor dedicated to Saint Edward the Confessor only survives in fragments. A hundred years later Edward III spent vast sums of money transforming the royal lodgings into one of the most magnificent royal palaces in medieval Europe the area that today we still call the state apartments. He built a great kitchen and a 14th century undercroft to store vats of beer and wine which today we use as our cafe and this serviced great feasts which took place in the room directly above here in Saint George's Hall. When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 he almost immediately began to rebuild the impressive gate tower entrance which today is known as Henry VIII Gate. It was also Henry who completed the rebuild of Saint George's chapel that had begun by Edward IV in the 15th century but Henry completed it with its spectacular fan-vaulted ceilings. Henry VIII was buried in Saint George's Chapel as were many successive monarchs over the centuries until most recently Queen Elizabeth II. In the 1670s with his architect Hugh May, Charles II embarked on a huge rebuilding project turning the medieval castle into a modern building with apartments for the king and the queen. A series of rooms a new way of meeting the monarch and their consort called an enfilade. The paintings that you can see today in the queen's ballroom are all by van Dyck and this led in the 19th century to that room being called the van Dyck room. There's depictions of Charles II with his siblings as a child in this space. In 1820 when George IV came to the throne after the long reign of his father George III he decided to refurnish private apartments into semi-state rooms. Rooms that although still very grand and beautifully coloured and gilded were meant for more private entertaining and dancing and they were furnished in beautiful silks. There's reds, blues and beautiful oak carving designed by Geoffrey Wyattville in a recreation of medieval gothic period. George IV was a really keen patron of new English furniture and purchasing historic French furniture from the art market. This suite of furniture by the English furniture makers Morell and Seddon a part of a suite that is in four or five different colours of upholstery throughout several state rooms here at Windsor and also at Buckingham Palace in London. You can tell it's the same suite of furniture because the gilt wood is all the same design but here in the crimson drawing room the upholstery is in crimson silk to match the wall hangings. Windsor Castle was incredibly important to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They spent their honeymoon here in Lancaster Tower and every one of their married Christmases with their eventual nine children. In this painting by Winterhalter you can see them with their eldest daughter Vicky the Princess Royal so you can imagine the importance of this place as a sense of family as well as a castle operating for the great events of state. The castle played a very important part in the Second World War. It's where Princesses Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret spent most of their time. For Christmases between 1941 and 1944 the Princesses put on pantomimes to raise money for the Royal Household Wool Fund which would use wool to knit warm clothes for the armed forces. The Princesses would wear fancy dress as with the rest of the cast and behind the huge full-length portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Waterloo Chamber hang surprisingly modern backdrops for those Christmas pantomimes painted by the future film director Claude Wattam. In 1992 a devastating fire broke out in the northeast corner of Windsor Castle. The fire broke out in Queen Victoria's private chapel when a lamp overheated came into contact with a curtain which then ignited and then the flames spread instantaneously through the roof voids in multiple directions and was utterly unstoppable. The fire destroyed nine state rooms and multiple other service rooms in that part of the castle but very soon afterwards a committee was established to oversee the restoration of this magnificent site chaired by Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh. In deciding how to restore the rooms the committee decided that some were to be taken back to how they had originally looked historically. One of these is the Grand Reception Room. The enormous malachite urn in the window covered in the thin veneer of the semi-precious stone malachite was too heavy to remove and the intensity of the heat and the coldness of the water meant that the veneer pinged off to form heaps on the floor which had to be painstakingly restored piece by piece. Some of the other rooms such as Queen Victoria's private chapel were completely changed. Rather than restoring the chapel in that spot it was decided to turn it into a lobby area, the Lantern Lobby, using a modern interpretation of the gothic style. So too St George's Hall which was rebuilt in the medieval tradition using original techniques to create a modern take on the medieval past. Today Windsor Castle is open to the public and visitors can see for themselves how over a thousand years successive monarchs have shaped the castle according to changing tastes and requirements. But unlike some historical sites frozen in time this is a working palace. It still hosts great events of state. It still serves as a home for the monarch and members of the royal family exactly as it had done 900 years ago.