BUCKINGHAM PALACE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 16

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

PLANS FOR REBUILDING,

Few palaces have a history less splendid than Buckingham Palace, now reaching the centenary of its rebuilding by George IV. and Nash, and the centenary and a half of its settlement on George lll.'a Queen in exchange for Somerset House. Buckingham Palace, had not been built when Prior made to the French courtier the famous retort, "The memorials of my master's greatness are in many places but not in his own house," but the saying might well be the motto of Buckingham Palace, says'a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." Perhaps we ought to be thankful that a wholesome fear of Parliament and the Treasury made it impossible to lavish on our King's palace .in his capital the' vast sums spent at Potsdam or at Berlin or at Versailles or Fontainebleau. The last attempt to build a really magnificent London palaca was that of the Stuarte in Whitehall, and fate overwhelmed them before they had gone far with their plan. Buckingham Palace was cheap enough at tho outset, for it cost George 111. £21,000, but his subject* were not grateful. It was declared that he had made alterations ■which had robbed it of its few beatuies; "dull, dowdy, and decent" was another description ; "of mean appearance, being low and built of brick"; "nothing more than a large, substantial, and re-spectable-looking red brick house." George IV. wanted to build a new Palace on the site, but Parliament wag in no mind to give him a free hand, and so Nash had to do the best he could, and a very poor best .it was. "The new palace," wrote Creevey 'in 1828, "still remains the devil's own," and. in 1835 he denounced it as a "specimen of wicked, vulgar profusion." By that time a good deal of money had been - spent on it, but the "Brunswick Hotel" was in great disfavour. "The costly ornaments -of the state rooms exceed all belief in their bad taste and every species of infirmity ; raspberry-coloured pillars without end, that quite turn you sick to look at.". Another large sum was expended in 1847 on the east front, but the refacing of 1913 was really the only creditable event in , its architectural history.