page_title: Kew Palace
section_title: Disuse and decline
hierarchical_section_title: Kew Palace / History / Disuse and decline
context_page_description: Kew Palace is a British royal palace in Kew Gardens on the banks of the River Thames up river from London. Originally a large complex, few elements of it survive. Dating to 1631 but built atop the undercroft of an earlier building, the main survivor is known as the Dutch House. Its royal occupation lasted from around 1728 until 1818, with a final short-lived occupation in 1844. The Dutch House is Grade I listed, and open to visitors. It is cared for by an independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, which receives no funding from the government or the Crown. Alongside the Dutch House is a part of its 18th-century service wing, whilst nearby are a former housekeeper's cottage, brewhouse and kitchen block – most of these buildings are private, though the kitchens are open to the public. These kitchens and Queen Charlotte's Cottage are also run by Historic Royal Palaces.
context_section_description: Another reason for the demolition of the White House and the increasing disuse of the Dutch House was the Castellated Palace, whose planning and design began around 1800. George's chosen architect was James Wyatt, who he had taken on for works at Windsor Castle at around the same time. The building also became known as the New Palace or New Kew Palace and so the Dutch House was often known as the Old Palace or the Old Red House between 1800 and 1828.
  George created a site for the Castellated Palace by demolishing the old Queen's House and construction began around 1802. Known by some historians as "a late Georgian Nonsuch", it was in the neo-Gothic style. George was a late convert to this style – he wrote to his daughter Charlotte in 1803 stating:
  I never thought I should have adopted Gothic instead of Grecian architecture, but the bad taste of the last forty years has so entirely corrupted the professors of the latter I have taken to the former from thinking Wyatt perfect in that style, of which my house will I trust be a good example.
  He had possibly been influenced by nearby Strawberry Hill House, by his earlier work on Windsor Castle and by his visits to Hartlebury Castle and Worcester Cathedral in 1788 and to Lulworth Castle and Sherborne Castle in 1789. Though Wyatt led the design, contributions were probably made by the king himself, who had been trained in architectural drawing as a boy at Kew by William Chambers. This royal involvement and interference may have contributed to repeated delays and overspend in construction thanks to his 1801 and 1804 illnesses. The new palace was widely criticised – in his 1817 "A Morning's Walk from London to Kew", Sir Richard Phillips nicknamed it "the Bastile palace, from its resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen." He continued:
  On a former occasion I have viewed its interior, and I am at a loss to conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs, and rooms like oratories.
  John Bew also included the Castellated Palace in his tourists' guide of 1820:
  this Anglo-Teutonic, castellated, gothized structure, (which has never been completed, and probably never will be) must be considered as an abortive production, at once illustrative of bad taste and defective judgment. From the small size of the windows and the diminutive proportion of its turrets, it would seem to possess "Windows that exclude the light,/ And passages that lead to nothing." The northern front was intended to be appropriated to the use of domestics; the whole building is rendered nearly indestructible by fire, by means of cast-iron joists and rafters, &c. The principal part is brick, stuccoed to resemble stone.
  The king stopped off at the Dutch House in August 1805 to meet with his daughter-in-law Caroline and his granddaughter Charlotte. His family moved back into the Dutch House in October that year until renovation work at the princesses' rooms in Windsor was complete. George made a final visit to Kew in 1806 to view works on the Castellated Palace and never returned, though the Dutch House was refitted in 1809 for his youngest daughter Princess Amelia, who had expressed a wish to move into it to convalesce from her tuberculosis. However, her parents vetoed this and she remained at Windsor, where her death in 1810 probably triggered the king's final bout of 'madness'.
  This fourth and final bout of 'madness' also meant that work on the Castellated Palace ceased for good, leaving only a mostly roofed shell. This bout lasted ten years, all of which time he was confined at Windsor rather than Kew. In 1818, Queen Charlotte set out from London to Windsor to see the king and to attend the double wedding of her sons William and Edward. En route she decided to spend a few days at the Dutch House, but since she was ill with dropsy she was unable to continue her journey and the wedding occurred in the drawing room of the Dutch House. Later that year, on 17 November, Charlotte died in her bedro
caption: A drawing of New Kew Palace, by William Westall, 1823
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