Untold Lives: A Palace at Work at Kensington Palace

Have you ever wondered what it takes to keep a palace running smoothly? This new Historic Royal Palaces exhibition at Kensington Palace, included in the price of admission to the palace, delves into the array of roles employed to keep royals of every age refreshed, primped, pampered, diverted and protected, from cooks to wetnurses, seamstresses to security. 

The timeframe covered is the 17^th and 18^th centuries, where the royal court could number up to 2,000 people traveling from palace to palace, everyone from assorted dandies to toilet scrubber. The amount of organisation the whole entourage must have taken is mind boggling. These behind-the-scenes lives, largely forgotten, have been brought to the forefront here. 

The show uncovers women who took on traditionally male roles. Frances Talbot and Louisa Flint both served in the grandly titled “keeper of the ice and snow”, who performed the physically demanding job of cutting ice out of lakes and rivers, insulating it for as long as possible and preparing it for the drinks of the palace guests. The imposing giant saw used for this is one of the varied items on display. 

People from all over the world and all walks of life came to work for the royals. We find the stories of Abdullah, a wild-cat keeper from India, and Mehmet von Könsigstreu, “keeper of the privy purse” for King George I, whose portrait is on display here. Both roles involved some danger but of wildly differing sorts. Hopefully both men were suitably recompensed for their nerves of steel.

This is an interesting piece of social history from a perhaps unexpected source. The exhibition neatly circumvents the expected gaps in knowledge in dealing with lives that were lived largely unrecorded by commissioning contemporary artists to pay tribute to the people history didn’t deem worthy of recording at the time. Untold Lives shows that every life is interesting. 

Jessica Wall
Photo: Courtesy of Kensington Palace

Untold Lives A Palace at Work is at Kensington Palace from 14^th March until 27^th October 2024. For further information visit the exhibition’s website here.