What It's Really Like Living That Buckingham Palace Life
A pool, a movie theater, and more — Buckingham Palace staff have all they need on palace grounds. Here's what life is like for those who serve the Royal Family.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00A pool, a movie theater, and more, Buckingham Palace staff have all they need on palace
00:04grounds. Here's what life is like for those who serve the royal family.
00:07If you get a job as a live-in employee at Buckingham Palace, you could theoretically
00:11never leave. In Buckingham Palace, you can eat and work and stay healthy, over the added
00:15experience of seeing people in real life. Almost everything you will ever need is within
00:19the palace complex. Details about what facilities are available to staff at Buckingham Palace
00:24have leaked out over the years. According to a Channel 5 documentary on the royal palaces,
00:28Buckingham Palace has a staff post office. However, the sole ATM in the building is owned
00:32by the UberPosh Coots Bank, and is for the royal's use only.
00:36There's a pool, a movie theater, and a doctor's office. Hello! Magazine reported that there's
00:40a chapel and a staff cafeteria. That covers pretty much every major need one could have
00:45— from healthcare to entertainment to exercise to religion to food. Although, considering
00:49those who live there are in the bustling heart of London, it's probably worth leaving from
00:53time to time and enjoying what the city has to offer.
00:56While many foreigners think of Buckingham Palace as the most famous location where the
00:59royal family lives, there are plenty of other options for them even in just the center of
01:05London. It's not required that anyone live at Buckingham Palace, and despite the fact
01:09it's basically its own little town, none of them choose it as their main home.
01:12The late Queen Elizabeth II moved permanently to Windsor Castle around 2020. But even before
01:17the pandemic and old age made it more logical for her to stay there, she spent as much time
01:21as possible at Windsor, King Charles' official residence's clearance house. And many royals,
01:26including Prince William and Kate Middleton, had their London base at Kensington Palace.
01:29By the way, you have to be careful what you say now, because these guys, they're filming
01:32everything.
01:33I know!
01:34But some royals have staked out their own corner of Buckingham Palace for temporary
01:36stays. According to Women & Home, other royals who keep apartments there include Charles'
01:40youngest brother, Prince Edward, and his wife, Sophie, his only sister, Princess Anne, and
01:44the now-disgraced Prince Andrew.
01:46A former Buckingham Palace maid claimed in the British tabloid The Sun that Andrew had
01:5072 teddy bears on his bed at the palace in the 1990s, when he was very much an adult
01:55and would get angry if they were out of order.
01:57One of the reasons no royal has chosen to make Buckingham Palace their main home is
02:00that the place isn't really built to be a home. It's more like an office. That can seem
02:04ridiculous considering its size and the gorgeous photos of grand ballrooms and dining rooms.
02:09But at its core, Buckingham Palace is the nerve center that keeps the monarchy running,
02:13which means it has lots and lots and lots of offices.
02:16This means the staff that does live there full-time are essentially living in a very
02:19fancy version of one of the many office buildings in London. The total list of employees who
02:23work in the palace is long, as there are 92 offices in total. Britain, the official magazine,
02:28says that the late Queen Elizabeth considered the palace her office. After all, it was where
02:32she lived during the working week and did the day-to-day tasks she was constitutionally
02:36required to do. For example, her weekly meeting with the prime minister always took place
02:39at Buckingham Palace. She also met foreign dignitaries and ambassadors there and held
02:43most day dinners in the palace.
02:45For the late queen, Buckingham Palace meant work, while Winter Castle was what she considered
02:49her home. It's likely King Charles approaches this in a similar manner.
02:53The late Queen Elizabeth was iconic for many reasons, but one of the things associated
02:56with her was her dogs. Some of the queen's corgis, which she had been raising and breeding
03:00since she was a child, became celebrities in their own right. The queen adored her dogs,
03:05and she usually had a small herd of them at any time. While they were undoubtedly adorable,
03:09if you lived at Buckingham Palace during her reign, you would find that the corgis were
03:12really in charge of the place, and the issues they caused might lead to the enjoyment wearing
03:15thin.
03:16The book Not in Front of the Corgis explains that, at the time, the dogs were allowed access
03:20to any part of the palace, but staff themselves could not have dogs live with them or bring
03:24their pooches to work. This was a change of policy in 2018 after hundreds of years of
03:28dogs being palace-approved, according to the Express.
03:31"...007 escorting the queen to the Olympics this summer. But it was her corgis that stole
03:38the show."
03:39While Buckingham Palace projects an era being a pristine example of royal architecture,
03:43in reality, it's coming apart at the seams. Buckingham Palace isn't even that old by British
03:48history standards, with the oldest sections originally built in the early 1700s. But it's
03:52been in constant use since then, and the fact that royals and staff live there means it's
03:56hard to do important maintenance. In 2018, according to Insider, the palace began a major
04:01$483 million renovation that will take a full decade.
04:04Currently, butlers and other staff have to make long treks and climb lots of stairs,
04:08since most of the really old elevators don't work. Part of the renovation involves replacing
04:12all of them. Old cables, pipes, and wiring that have been in the walls for six decades
04:16are getting replaced as well. There's also mice, asbestos, and falling masonry, according
04:21to the Daily Beast.
04:22As Buckingham Palace serves multiple purposes, the place is always full of people. According
04:26to the royal family's official website, the palace has 188 staff bedrooms, as well as
04:3152 for royals and important guests. Then there are the 92 offices, which can be filled with
04:36hundreds of employees at any time, not just normal weekday work hours.
04:40Over the summer, tourists can pay to wander around the staterooms of Buckingham Palace,
04:43which they do, in droves. Even if you assume that staff will never have to see the visitors
04:47who come in off the streets, even the specially invited guests number over 50,000 per year.
04:52They are invited to official events, casual lunches with the monarch, and more. Insider
04:56puts the total number of guests much higher, at 100,000, and the number of tourists at
05:0015 million.
05:03While live-in staff at Buckingham Palace have job titles and specific tasks to perform,
05:07part of working there involves needing to be flexible about what tasks fall under your
05:11purview. According to people who have lived and worked there, every single day on the
05:14job is different, and you will be asked to do things that have nothing to do with your
05:17job title.
05:18One former employee told Silver Swan Recruitment,
05:20It's a really multi-faceted job. One day you could be looking after military uniforms,
05:25and the next day you could be wearing pink tights walking alongside the monarch's golden
05:28carriage.
05:29When hiring a housekeeper in 2016, the royal household was clear to state that, quote,
05:33this is no standard housekeeping role, according to Forbes. At the time, the palace was also
05:37looking for some footmen, butlers, and someone to take care of all the antique vases. For
05:41those who live in, housing and food are technically free. Although, since the royals are notoriously
05:46stingy with salaries, those perks are very necessary to make taking the job worth it.
05:51While no royals make Buckingham Palace their main home, they still spend a lot of time
05:54at the place. Everyone from the king to minor royals can pop in and out as they please.
05:58This means that staff, especially the ones who live there, can have regular, unexpected
06:02encounters with royalty. They can end up seeing so much of the royal family that they get
06:05to know them quite well, far more than a regular person could ever dream of if they
06:09worked literally anywhere else.
06:10It's being part of a team where everyone matters and everyone contributes.
06:14One former royal footman who worked there during Queen Elizabeth's reign told Silver
06:18Swan Recruitment he was constantly amazed, quote, how up close and personal you really
06:22are with the royal family. He went on,
06:24Within my first day, I had already met the queen. And to think that I was at home one
06:28day and the next I'm living in Buckingham Palace face-to-face with the queen, it blew
06:31my mind.
06:32Another former employee told the agency,
06:34Occasionally I spoke with the queen. She is a completely open book, just as you see her.
06:38She is very kind and realizes everyone is nervous when meeting her, so always does her
06:42best to make you feel at ease.
06:43However, yet another former butler told the Kyle and Jackie O Radio Show in Australia
06:48that there is a rule staff cannot speak to the monarch unless spoken to first.
06:52While Buckingham Palace has many things, one thing it does not have is a staff bar. That
06:56is, the palace doesn't have one anymore. It used to have a bar, and it was very popular
07:00with the staff. Too popular. So popular it was shut down on the order of the late Queen
07:04Elizabeth because her staff was getting too tipsy.
07:07Silver Swan Recruitment had an inside source who told them the reason was some staff started
07:10drinking in the morning. Not a great idea, especially since one former employee says
07:15serving the monarch was, quote, run on a military system.
07:18In a documentary on the royal palaces for Channel 5, the late queen's former press secretary
07:22Dickie Arbiter said they got rid of the bar because servants were showing up to work,
07:25quote, worse for wear.
07:27Fortunately, there are plenty of pubs and bars within minutes of Buckingham Palace,
07:30so the live-in staff don't have to miss out completely, just as long as they show up to
07:34work sober, which, to be fair, is not exactly an extreme request.
07:38The favorite staff meal at Buckingham Palace, according to former royal chef Darren McGrady,
07:43was the weekly Friday Fish and Chips. He told The Independent,
07:45All the staff, 300 staff at Buckingham Palace, all of the chefs, would have fish and chips
07:50for lunch.
07:51While live-in staff have access to good food at Buckingham Palace through the free staff
07:56cafeteria, the meals the royals eat when they stay there are on another level.
08:01McGrady told Hello! Magazine that each day the monarch is given a red-leather-bound book
08:03full of recipes and menu options, all written in French. Speaking about the late queen Elizabeth,
08:08McGrady says,
08:09We prepared the menus three days ahead so we could get the food in. The chefs would
08:12pick the menus, and she would put a line through the ones she didn't want. And if she ended
08:16up eating something she didn't like? McGrady said,
08:18She had a little book on her desk, and she would just put a note in there saying,
08:21I don't want this again, or something like that.
08:23And while the late queen also liked having bowls of nuts left around Buckingham Palace
08:27to snack on, it was learned during a major phone-hacking trial that she did not want
08:30staff helping themselves. Or, at least, not the police. A journalist acquired an internal
08:35palace memo where the police working as royal security were told to, quote,
08:39"...keep their sticky fingers out of the monarch's bowl of nuts."
08:42Buckingham Palace, like the monarchy, is more about what it represents than what it is.
08:46The building is the physical embodiment of the country's past, present, future, the existence
08:50of the United Kingdom, or at least England, forever unchanging. That means no one, not
08:54even the monarch, can come in and make huge cosmetic changes to the building.
08:58Imagine if King Charles III decided he wanted to paint the palace bright pink. According
09:02to the BBC, those grand rooms you see in pictures when the king hosts a royal event haven't
09:06been redecorated since 1949. That's when the king's grandfather was still on the throne.
09:11And the only reason it needed work then was because the palace was bombed during World
09:14War II.
09:15As historian Ellen Leslie told the broadcaster,
09:17Most people decorate their houses every 10 years or so. But this isn't what the royal
09:21family are into when it comes to Buckingham Palace. They want it to keep looking the same.
09:26Occasionally, there will be big changes, but ones that leave the design mostly the same.
09:29Queen Victoria died after spending 40 years mourning her husband, Prince Albert, and making
09:33sure nothing connected with his memory was altered in any way. It's said that her son,
09:37the fashionable Edward VII, walked into Buckingham Palace and demanded his sisters, quote,
09:42"...get this morgue cleaned up."
09:43What he definitely did was start modernizing the place, adding better plumbing, telephones,
09:48and garages for his new cars.
09:51For more UN videos visit www.un.org