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Kensington Palace set for £12m revamp as jubilee gift
Ruth Bloomfield10.07.09
Plans for the biggest revamp of Kensington Palace and Gardens for a century have been drawn up to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
The £12 million proposals would see the creation of a moat around the Grade II-listed statue of Queen Victoria in front of the palace. A 60cm channel will be dug around the plinth and filled with water to draw attention to the monument, as well as to deter vandals.
The plan echoes the nearby Diana Memorial Fountain, but to avoid the problems which beset that memorial a water circulation system is planned and algaecide will keep it clean. Visitors will be discouraged from entering the water.
Grass terraces will also be built around the statue. Details of the proposal, which has been submitted to Kensington and Chelsea council planners, were published today in Building Design magazine. It is the gardens' most significant work since a sunken garden was created in 1909. The public entrance to the palace, the former home of Princess Diana, is to be overhauled amid concerns that it is too unobtrusive. “Visitors often have difficulty in finding it because it is smaller than they expect,” the planners' report said. “The palace seems private and unwelcoming and many people are unaware the gardens are open.”
Critics are concerned the design involves significant alterations to the Grade I-listed building. A glass-roofed entrance gallery will be built on the palace's eastern side with an inscription commemorating the jubilee.
The gardens there will also be redeveloped, with plans to open the view from the palace into Kensington Gardens over the Round Pond, restoring them to an “evocation of their mid-18th century layout”. The high fence around the palace gardens will be removed and replaced with 1.4m railings.
Historic Royal Palaces, which commissioned the project, believes the work, which is due to begin next March, will attract 100,000 extra visitors a year. Its bid for lottery funding was turned down, but HRP claims it will pay for the work itself, with help from supporters.
