Project Details
In 1616, fresh from a tour of Italy, the English architect Inigo Jones was hired to design a royal residence in Greenwich for Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I. Drawing on his newfound fascination with Palladian architecture, he built the Queen’s House, which, when it was completed 19 years later, became the first consciously Classical building in Britain. But Anne died before it opened, and for the next several centuries it languished, beloved by architectural historians but rarely visited by its royal owners—or, since it was opened to the public in 1937, tourists.
That may be about to change. This fall the Royal Museums Greenwich, which oversees the Queen’s House, completed a $3.78 million, 15-month renovation, including its stunningly restored, double-height Great Hall. Around its ceiling and upper walls flit glittering flourishes of 23-karat gold leaf—a new work that the museum commissioned from Turner Prize–winning artist Richard Wright.
In recent decades, the house was used as a gallery, so much so that several fireplaces, windows, and doors were covered over to create more wall space for hanging paintings. “There had been piecemeal changes across the house, so the design got fuddled,” says Christine Riding, curator for the Queen’s House. In an effort to return some sense of the house’s original feel, the renovation team of 100 curators and outside specialists opened those back up, while reprogramming the museum’s gallery functions to accommodate not just paintings, but vitrines and free-standing displays. Post-renovation, Queen’s House can accommodate three times more objects than it did before.
Other considerations were more mundane. Wiring and plumbing, which were added during one of the previous modernizations, were outdated. “The basic services were about to die,” Riding says. Some of the wood floors had deep cracks, so they replaced many of them with new French oak boards. Wi-Fi now runs throughout the building. The cornices in the King’s Presence Chamber, which, besides the Great Hall and Queen’s Presence Chamber, is perhaps the grandest room in the building, needed complete regilding. The work was carried out by London-based Carvers and Gilders, a Royal Warrant–holding restoration firm, and involved about 21,850 leaves of 23.5-karat gold leaf.
Even with the building closed to visitors, the renovation process was far from easy. The Queen’s House is a Grade 1 site on Britain’s Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, placing it in the same category as buildings such as Tower Bridge and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ Lloyd’s Building (the youngest ever to be listed). Buildings on the list are heavily protected, and every step in the restoration, down to the most minor detail, had to be approved by preservation authorities. “You can’t just knock a wall through,” Riding says. “Working in a building like this was a daily challenge.”
The result is a building that Anne of Denmark would recognize, but a 21st-century visitor will find inviting and comfortable. “Without being slavish, we wanted to get back to the idea of this being a house, not just a gallery,” Riding says, and perhaps most importantly for Jones’ legacy, “we wanted the architecture to speak.”
Project Credits
Project: Queen’s House Restoration, Greenwich
Client: Royal Museums Greenwich
Curatorial Restoration: Royal Museums Greenwich
Historical Paint Consultant: Patrick Baty
Gilding Consultant: Carvers & Gilders
Artist: Richard Wright
Cost: $3.78 million
