MEMORIES OF THE PAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21649, 20 May 1932, Page 5

MEMORIES OF THE PAST

ROOMS USED. BY ROYALTY “TO LET” NOTICE IN WINDOW

DECAYED SPLENDOUR , AND DUST,

Fifty pounds a year will rent a suite of Royal apartments right in the shadow of Windsor Castle. They are lofty rooms, emblazoned with heraldic devices and haunted by the memories of Wellington, Palmerston, the Prince Consort, and the greatest of all Victorians, Queen Victoria herself. The rooms are the former magnificent suite of waiting rooms at Windsor Station, specially built and allotted for the reception and comfort of Royalty. , Royalty use the rooms no more, for when the King and Queen go to Windsor they usually travel by road. Since the death of Queen Victoria the rooms have been kept under lock and key. Recently a “To Let ” notice has been in the window'.

A recent visitor to the rooms says: We stopped before an unobtrusive door in the wall of No. 3 platform. The key grated in a lock stiff with disuse, the door creaked open, and I crossed the threshold of apartments which great courtiers of the past had entered to bow the knee before a little woman in black who gave her name to an epoch. Decayed splendour met the eye everywhere. The lofty rooms might have served for a setting of the abode of the Sleeping Beauty, for long streams of cobwebs festooned the elaborately plastered ceilings from which had once hung magnificent candelabra. Dust lay thick on a magnificent Tudor fireplace in one of the inner rooms. Here, before a roaring log fire. Queen Victoria had warmed herself after enduring the discomforts of early railway travel 80 years ago. Here the gallant Disraeli had advanced to kiss her hand and whisper compliments. Outside the gates, which bore the Royal Arms and “ V.R.” monogram, an old man leaned on a stick and looked mournfully at the building with its “ To Let ” notice. He was Mr James Bunco, who has been for many years a Thames ferryman near the station. “ I was born 81 years ago, the very year that this Royal waiting room was built,” Mr Bunco said. “ Many’s the time I’ve seen Queen Victoria arrive at this station and step into her waiting room, set out with flowers and rich carpets. Aye, and I mind the Prince Consort coming, too, when I was a lad, and more lords and ladies than I could remember, in a month of Sundays. “In those days I was a lamplighter up at the castle. I saw John Brown, the Queen’s famous gillie, arrive with her all splendid in his kilts. Once he came to Windsor when the Queen was not in residence and watched me • light the lamps one night. He was a | canny Scot, was Brown, and he said to me, ‘ Hoots mon, dinna light the lamps, but save the good gas while the Queen is no’ here to have the benefit of it.’ “ And now they’re letting the Royal waiting room. Well, times have changed, and more’s the pity.’*’