London - Kew Palace, Kew Gardens, Richmond - government postcard c.1960s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Kew Palace, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Publisher: Crown [government - probably Ministry of Works as was at the time]
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Kew Palace is a British royal palace in Kew Gardens on the banks of the Thames up river from London. Originally a large complex, few elements of it survive. Dating to 1631 but built atop the undercroft of an earlier building, the main survivor is known as the Dutch House. Its royal occupation lasted from around 1728 until 1818, with a final short-lived occupation in 1844. The Dutch House is Grade I listed,^[1] and open to visitors. It is cared for by an independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, which receives no funding from the Government or the Crown.^[2]Alongside the Dutch House is a part of its 18th-century service wing, whilst nearby are a former housekeeper's cottage, brewhouse and kitchen block – most of these buildings are private, though the kitchens are open to the public. These kitchens and Queen Charlotte's Cottage are also run by Historic Royal Palaces.

Beneath the Dutch House is the undercroft of a 16th-century building. This was on land owned by John Dudley and restored to his son Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, childhood friend and court favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, in 1558. It belonged to a west-facing brick building and may be identifiable with a house in Kew in which Robert Dudley entertained Elizabeth in 1563 – one of Elizabeth's main palaces at that time was the nearby Richmond Palace.^[3]

In 1619 the building above the undercroft was leased by Samuel Fortrey, who finally demolished all but the undercroft in 1631, erecting a new larger south-facing manor house in its place. The father of the author Samuel Fortrey, Samuel Fortrey senior was a merchant descended from a family originating near Lille, though later confusion over his ancestry led to the building becoming known as the Dutch House. That name also originated in the house's supposedly Dutch style of architecture, known as Artisan Mannerist and dominated by Dutch gables^[4] – this style was actually more prevalent in London, East Anglia and East Kent than the Netherlands at the time.^[5] In 1697, Fortrey's descendents leased the building to Sir Richard Levett, a powerful merchant and the former Lord Mayor of the City of London, who later left it to his daughter Mary.^[4][6][7]

Facing the 1631 house was another mansion, possibly of Tudor origin. It was often visited by the diarist John Evelyn and passed from Richard Bennett to his daughter Dorothy, wife of Henry Capel. Dorothy and Henry remained childless and so the house then passed to Dorothy's great-niece Elizabeth, wife of the Prince of Wales's secretary Samuel Molyneux and then of Molyneux's physician Nathaniel St André.^[8] This mansion was also the site of James Bradley's observations in 1725 that led to his discovery of the aberration of light. William IV marked the site of the observations with a Thomas Tompion sundial in 1832, transferred from Hampton Court Palace to a plinth to the Dutch House's south-east. This was replaced with a replica in 1959 and moved to its new and different site directly to the south of the Dutch House.^[9][10]

In 1727 Queen Caroline and George II came to the British throne. By that time they had six children living with them at their summer residence at Richmond Lodge. In 1728 Caroline leased the Dutch House to house her three eldest daughters Anne, Amelia and Caroline and another nearby building which became known as the 'Queen's House', though the intended occupant may have been her son William rather than the queen herself.^[12] This left Caroline's two youngest daughters Mary and Louise with her at Richmond Lodge.

George and Caroline had come to Britain in 1714 when George's father took the throne as George I, leaving their eldest son Frederick behind in Hanover aged 7. When George II succeeded his father, Frederick became Prince of Wales and so was finally allowed to come to Britain. He arrived in December 1728, less than a year after his mother had taken the lease on the Dutch House. Now aged 21, knowing little of his sisters and possibly wishing for a family rapprochement, he soon took a long lease on the old Capel House at Kew and in 1731 also purchased its contents from St André. Frederick then set about remodeling it with assistance from William Kent – it then became known as the White House due to its plastered exterior. Frederick also added a large new separate kitchen block, open to the public since 2012 as 'the Royal Kitchens'.^[13][14] There was also a stable block of an unknown date serving the White House, located a short distance to its north-east and demolished in the late 19th century.

A oil-on-canvas musical portrait from 1733 shows Frederick and his three eldest sisters playing mandolin, harpsichord and cello. It was painted by his librarian and art agent Philip Mercier and exists in three variants, two of which show the Dutch House in the background (National Portrait Gallery^[15] and National Trust^[16]) – the third variant in the Royal Collection shows the same group in an interior, possibly Kensington Palace.^[17] Anne married and left England the year after the portrait was painted and Caroline left Kew in 1743, retiring to St James's Palace, where she died in 1757.

Along with Cliveden, the White House became Frederick's main family country home, where he entertained poets such as James Thomson (author of The Seasons) and Alexander Pope (who had moved into the area in 1719 and built his eponymous villa at Twickenham). In 1738 Pope gave Prince Frederick a dog, with the following verse inscribed on its collar:

I am His Highness' dog at Kew.

Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?^[18]

 

....

 

George IV also planned to demolish the Dutch House, but this did not come to fruition. Possibly influenced by having been married there in 1818, his brother William IV commissioned plans for adding a west wing to it and bringing it back into use, but this too did not come about. William did offer the Dutch House to his sister-in-law Victoria, Duchess of Kent for her and her daughter (the future Queen Victoria), but she turned it down as "an old house quite unfit for the princess and me to occupy, being very inadequate in accommodation and almost destitute of furniture".^[34] Queen Victoria briefly sent three of her own children there in summer 1844, but the following year she and Prince Albert began remodelling Osborne House on the Isle of Wight as their summer residence. The Dutch House thus remained unoccupied until 1898, when she transferred it and Queen Charlotte's Cottage to Kew Gardens to mark her Diamond Jubilee. By this time the palace's stables and most of the Dutch House's service wing had been demolished, probably in 1881. A replica 17th-century Dutch garden was added to the house's rear in 1969.

The Dutch House remained open to the public until 1996, when a major restoration project commenced. This not only included physical restoration to the building, but also weaving of period draperies and other fabric décor carried out by master weaver Ian Dale of Scotland. An external lift shaft was added on the west wing for disabled access, in the place of a privy shaft which had been demolished in the 1880s. The building was used to hold a dinner hosted by Charles, Prince of Wales to celebrate the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II on 21 April 2006 – a few days later it reopened as a visitor attraction. The Palace was featured in the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tales from the Palaces. It is run by Historic Royal Palaces, which has also taken on responsibility for the Royal Kitchens (reopening them to the public in 2012^[35]) and the Pagoda (intended to re-open to the public in 2018^[36]).