Renovations at Buckingham Palace Have Revealed Fascinating Artifacts Previously Lost to Time Lodged in Its Walls and Floors

A home improvement project at Buckingham Palace—London’s preeminent royal abode—has accidentally uncovered a collection of historical, revealing detritus. The artifacts, ranging from a newspaper clipping of 1889 theater showtimes to a typed schedule for one of Elizabeth II’s diplomatic receptions, reflect the daily lives of palace staff and inhabitants. The reception schedule, from 1977, reveals that the late queen planned to quite literally make her rounds at the gathering—socializing through the ballroom in a “clockwise direction,” reports the PA News Agency.

Buckingham Palace began as a duke’s grand house, built in 1703. George III bought it in 1761, and in the 1820s, his son George IV had it expanded into a grand palace. Buckingham has been the official residence of the British monarchy since 1837, when Queen Victoria moved in.

Almost a decade ago, experts began reservicing the palace, having deemed its infrastructure “in urgent need of a complete overhaul,” according to the royal family’s official website. The 775-room palace’s electrical, plumbing and heating systems were in danger of causing “long-term damage to the building and its contents.” The almost $500 million renovation began in 2017 and has proceeded “wing by wing,” construction program director Luke Willis said in a 2018 video posted to the Royal Family Channel on YouTube. Workers aim to repair “mechanical and electrical infrastructure—essentially, pipes and wires—that is outdated and hasn’t been replaced since the 1950s,” Willis said.

The ten-year project is scheduled for completion in March, reports BBC News’ Ruth Comerford. As workers peeled back floorboards and dug into walls, they discovered hidden artifacts. Some are remnants of leisure and entertainment: blank 1957 betting slips from Littlewoods Football Pools; an empty Silk Cut cigarette box; and an 1889 London Evening Standard clipping that lists West End shows, per the PA.

Another leisure-related artifact, found embedded in a clump of gravel, is a paper ticket to a whist drive, a charity event at which people played the four-person, trick-taking card game similar to euchre. Dated to April 1949, the ticket is from the reign of George VI, the monarch whose stutter was immortalized in The King’s Speech. Besides detailing the direction in which the queen would navigate the reception, it outlined such specifics as which rooms guests could enter, a strict smoking prohibition and a rigid schedule, including drinks from 9:30 to 10 p.m.

Also uncovered was a 1966 Daily Express newspaper page headlined “‘Maximum Security:’ Photonews Goes Inside the Train Robbers’ Jail to See What These Words Mean.” The article reported on the new Durham Prison lives of the men behind Britain’s Great Train Robbery. Three years earlier, a gang led by Bruce Reynolds robbed a Traveling Post Office train from Glasgow, making off with some £2.3 million (about $60 million today). Per the Express, “The men who were found guilty of stealing a fortune in mailbags spend their week stitching them for nine shillings.” During the palace renovation, workers also extracted red cabling made of vulcanized Indian rubber—a significant fire hazard for the building.