The dimensions of these alcoves are: east one, diameter, 24 feet, west one, 24 feet 4½ inches; height to the centre of the dome, 24 feet 2 inches, to the top of the cornice 20 feet.
Restoration of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
THE whole of this beautiful interior, however, now presents a very different appearance from what it did when taken in hand about a year ago.
This is how it was described in an interesting article in “The Times” on the 28th of January, 1898: “The exquisite interior has been the victim not merely of neglect, but of chronic outrage. For, as the little garden between this and the Palace has been found a convenient place on which to put up the glasshouses, frames and potting-sheds necessary for the park gardeners, what more natural, to the official eye, than that the Orangery close by should be pressed into the same service? Accordingly, at some time or other, which cannot have been very many years ago, more than half the beautiful high panelling of this building was torn down and has disappeared, the gardeners’ stands have been let into the walls, and there the daily work has proceeded with no thought that it was daily desecration.”
The work of restoring all these beautiful carvings, which has been in progress during the last fifteen months, has now put an entirely different aspect on this interior, and not in vain has every piece of old carving been treasured up, cleaned, repaired, and patched in, with scrupulous care.
When this work was completed, the question arose, whether the woodwork was to be all painted over white, as it doubtless originally was, or merely lightly stained. White painting would, perhaps, have been artistically, as well as archæologically, the preferable course. But it was thought that white paint, in the smoky, foggy atmosphere of modern Kensington, and with the clouds of dust particles from the tread of numberless visitors, would soon take on the dirty tinge of London mud; and thus have required such frequent renewal as eventually to choke up again all the sharpness of the delicate chiselling of the foliated capitals, architraves and cornices.
The decision eventually come to, therefore, was to stain it, with a tone of colour like oak, which gives full prominence and clearness to the carved surfaces. This staining alone, apart from the previous cleaning, has involved no less than eight distinct processes: (1) washing down; (2) vinegaring over to take out lime stains; (3) the same repeated; (4) sizing to keep the stain from penetrating the wood; (5) the same repeated; (6) staining; (7) varnishing; (8) flat-varnishing.
