Ever since I found out the name of my niece I knew I wanted to take her to a special place in England: Kensington Palace. Yes, my sweet mini me shares her name with a famous royal abode. I’ve always thought of Kensington as a princess, so it makes sense that there would be a palace named after her. Actually, it’s not named after her (shocking, I know), and it wasn’t always named Kensington Palace.
Queen Mary II and William III (her husband) purchased what was called Nottingham House in 1689 and transformed it into a royal home. The famous architect Sir Christopher Wren took an early 17th-century mansion and enlarged and renovated it for the new monarchs, and subsequent royals continued to transform it to fit their needs. For instance, Mary cultivated what we now call Kensington Gardens because she loved plants.
Upon Mary’s and William’s passings, Mary’s sister, Queen Anne, lived at Kensington Palace and had Wren add an elaborate greenhouse–an orangery–to the grounds. This is now the site of a restaurant where you can have afternoon tea. More on that later….After the Stuart monarchs passed the monarchy onto the Hanover line, two King Georges lived at Kensington. George III didn’t like the palace, so he let other family members live there, the most important being Edward, Duke of Kent, whose daughter would come to define an epoch.
Yes, Kensington Palace was the childhood home of Alexandrina Victoria, who became Queen Victoria in the summer of 1837. She had an important meeting (her first council meeting) in the red saloon room of the palace, and a year beforehand she met her future husband there. A few weeks after the 18-year-old queen began her reign, she decided she needed to live somewhere else: Buckingham Palace. After Victoria left the palace, family members lived there. Eventually, the palace’s state rooms were opened to the public (as they are now).
However, royals continued to live at the palace. Prince Charles and Princess Diana raised their sons there, and now Prince William and Princess Kate live at the palace when they are in London.
What history to associate with the name of my beloved niece. For a decade I’ve wanted to visit this palace with my niece, and on July 7 that finally happened! I wanted to take Kensington to her first afternoon tea, too, and I figured The Orangery would be the perfect place to do that. It was.
If you haven’t visited the palace, it’s a must-see. Although it sits in the middle of a borough, once you enter the grounds you forget about the rest of the world. The beauty of the grounds and the buildings take you back in time.
When you tour the home, you are walked chronologically through the state rooms opened to the public. It really is a walk down history lane. You begin with William III’s rooms and eventually find your way to the red saloon where Queen Victoria held her own in the midst of men who mostly doubted the small monarch’s ability to lead a vast empire. Within the rooms you get to see amazing feats of architecture and design. You see gorgeous painting and objects, including a magnificent clock and an anemometer. You can listen to guides talk about the rooms, and you can follow along on a headset to learn more about the rooms as you walk through the palace. We did all of this!
Of course, my background in studying 17th- through early 19th-century British literature and culture leant itself my enjoyment of the pre-Victoria narratives shared at the palace. I haven’t really spent much time studying Victoria as a monarch–like any good student of literature I’ve been aware of the basics of Victoria’s reign in service of understanding the culture and literature of the age. Before I visited the house I decided to learn more about the queen’s parents, adolescence, and early days on the throne. This was important for a visit to this childhood home. Actually visiting it and thinking about the little Victoria inhabiting her rooms was a real treat. If you visit the palace, learn a bit about the young Victoria beforehand. It will enhance your visit.
In addition to the visiting the public rooms, we also got to see an exhibition called Dress Codes. It included clothing from royals and then young designers’ modern interpretations of those clothes. That was cool! It’s kinda funny that the visit to the palace concluded with a tour of clothes because my sister and I spent months talking about what we’d wear to the palace. My sister and niece wore two new flowery dresses, so I wore a flowery skirt to complete the theme. We took summer garden vibes seriously. 🙂
It’s funny that until this summer I had forgotten that I actually had tea at The Orangery with my dissertation advisor and grad school chum in 2007. Then when I decided we’d have tea there I realized I had tea there before. This time would be different. In 2007 I was on my first trip to England and anxiously still figuring out how to be a traveler. In 2025 I’m now a confident world traveler, and I have more knowledge of British history than I did 18 years ago! This time I was the trip leader, not the follower.
Check out the pictures to see how much we enjoyed our tea. I didn’t remember enjoying it tremendously in 2007, but I can now say I loved having afternoon tea and eating those adorable sandwiches, scones, and sweet treats. It was superb!
To end our perfect day, we walked to the gardens pond across from the Victoria statue and watched people do something they are not supposed to do: feed the birds. Yep, people were feeding the swans, geese, and other fowl. Let me tell you: don’t mess with swans. They are not to be trifled with. They are beautiful and bold, and they get what they want. 😀 Check out the pics below, and someone let me know what that final sign is warning us about. Don’t slip into the pond? Don’t slip on bird poo? Don’t turn into swamp monster?
Well, that was not quite the end of the day. We had to get back to our flat. Kensington had not had the opportunity to ride in a double decker bus, so we hopped on one. Little did we realize that the trip would take twice as long as scheduled. There were closures, traffic, and even a weird moment where the bus driver pulled over and told everyone to get off the bus! Luckily, we could walk back to our flat by that point. Public transportation is fun, eh?
In the next blog post, I’ll talk about day 3 of the trip: our visit to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London!
Misty Krueger 
Leave a comment