Queen Victoria’s tomb to open again after five years of ‘drying out’
QUEEN VICTORIA’S tomb will be reopened to the public for the first time in more than a decade after the royal mausoleum at Windsor is restored to its former glory.
The damp-infested mausoleum is being dried out and will undergo extensive restoration work later this year.
Situated within the private grounds of The Home Park at Windsor, the mausoleum was opened by Queen Victoria in 1862 following the death of Prince Albert. She was later interred there in 1901.
The Grade-1 listed building has been closed to the public since 2007, with officials declaring it unstable due to dampness.
Last night a source in the royal household confirmed that the main phase of works would begin this year, while the expectation was that it would be reopened to the public. A letter obtained by this newspaper written by Sir Michael Stevens, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the Queen’s treasurer, indicates that conservation work will take at least five years while the building is allowed to “dry sufficiently”.
During the drying phase, groundworks and excavations around the structure will be carried out in order to reduce further damage from damp.
The announcement follows a decade-long campaign by Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP, to restore the building.
Yesterday he said he was delighted that “the resting place of one of Britain’s greatest and longest-reigning monarchs” would be reopened, adding that it was a “building of great historical significance”.
“When we think of Napoleon in Les Invalides and Lenin in his tomb in Red Square, it is humbling and somehow typically British to think that one of our country’s greatest monarchs is buried in an almost forgotten resting place,” he said. “I hope one day it will be better known, and I am glad to see further substantial restoration will commence shortly.”
Designed by Ludwig Gruner of Dresden, plans for the mausoleum were first drawn up in December 1861 just days after Prince Albert’s death. The building is shaped in the form of a Greek cross and Italian Romanesque in design, while the interior decoration is in the style of Raphael, Prince Albert’s favourite painter.
It is more surprising than delightful to catch sight of Prince Albert’s bare knees in a funerary sculpture of him and Queen Victoria standing in the royal mausoleum at Frogmore near Windsor Castle. They are in fancy dress described as Saxon, he in cross-gartered stockings and a tunic edged with the initials V&A, she in a knotted kirtle, a plain crown and a snood. The work is by William Theed, the sculptor who took Albert’s death-mask and chiselled racier statues of insect-winged Psyche and fig-leafed Narcissus on display at Buckingham Palace. Unlike the Palace, Frogmore’s mausoleum has been closed for a decade. Damp and decay are now being banished so that we may again marvel at its marble encrustations. It convinces the visitor that Victoria’s era was another country to ours; to see it open will be as good as a foreign holiday.