Restored, Victoria’s sun terrace with her bridal bouquet tree
WHEN the Duchess of Cambridge walked down the aisle, she carried with her a sprig of myrtle in a bouquet, in line with royal tradition dating back to Queen Victoria.
Tomorrow, for the first time, the public will be able to see, smell and touch that same myrtle tree for themselves, as the garden terrace enjoyed by Victoria and Prince Albert opens.
The lower terrace of Osborne House is known as a favourite spot of Queen Victoria, who used to sit there to paint watercolours while on the Isle of Wight.
More than a century later, it has been made safe as part of a £600,000 English Heritage restoration project.
The restoration is part of a project started in 1986 when the charity acquired the house, which had previously been a convalescent home and naval college.
It means visitors will be able to see Victoria’s seaside terrace and its panoramic views over the Solent, which Prince Albert compared to the Bay of Naples, just as the royal couple would have enjoyed it.
The terrace’s centrepiece “Andromeda” fountain, which was bought by Queen Victoria during the Great Exhibition of 1851, has also been restored to working order, English Heritage said. The shell alcove, decorated with thousands of seashells from the beach below the house, on the northern coast of the Isle of Wight, has been returned to its former glory, painted in bright blues, reds and turquoise after white emulsion was scraped away to find the original pigment underneath. The walls of the terrace, designed by Prince Albert, have been returned to the Italian-sun inspired “Osborne yellow”, to match the rest of the house. Visitors will also be able to see its Victorian planting scheme and the royal myrtle plant, given to Queen Victoria by Albert’s grandmother. The couple brought back the plant from Germany to the Isle of Wight, where it has thrived.
By tradition, the myrtle has been used in royal weddings since the marriage of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria. It was included in bouquets carried by the Duchess of Cambridge, Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen.
Samantha Stones, English Heritage properties curator at Osborne House, said: “Queen Victoria loved to be outside in the fresh sea air and the terrace was a place of peace. Opening up this previously closed space to visitors gives them another glimpse into the private lives of the royal couple. Our conservation project now reinstates Albert’s original vision. Matching the yellow of the walls, restoring the beautifully decorated shell alcove with its aqua blue canopy, and seeing the Andromeda fountain with her surrounding sea monsters in working order has truly brought the terrace back to life.”
Victoria had written about the wonders of her terrace in a diary,
On July 17 1853, she recorded: “Everything in great beauty. The roses out in profusion on the lower Terraces. The new fountain there is beautiful.”
‘Our conservation project now reinstates Albert’s original vision’
The nude and rounded form of Andromeda might not sound a strictly Victorian object of contemplation, but Queen Victoria’s eyes lit up when she saw the life-size bronze, sculpted by John Bell, at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Just the thing for her new house and garden at Osborne on the Isle of Wight. There it remains – and from today it is open to the gaze of commoners. Miniatures of the artistic subject were turned out in Parian ware for many a suburban conservatory, but amid the ferns and aspidistras the goddess was much diminished. Altogether, the private terrace now open at Osborne – the myrtle, shell-alcove, Italianate yellow-washed walls – are worth a ferry ride. Ours, too, can be a view of the Solent that oddly reminded Prince Albert of the Bay of Naples. What things Victoria and Albert left for our enjoyment!