Untold Lives

A Palace at Work

An exhibition at Kensington Palace highlighting the overlooked people who ran royal palaces over 300 years ago.

Untold Lives: A Palace at Work highlights the servants and courtiers who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain, protect and promote the monarch and the palaces.

From pages to cooks, from wetnurses to seamstresses, a host of workers from all walks of life used their skills and expertise to look after the royal family and their homes.

Using a unique collection of objects — some of which have never been on public display before — Untold Lives: A Palace at Work explores the lives and contributions of these forgotten figures for the first time.

Header image: © Historic Royal Palaces

When

Closed

Ticket information

This exhibition has now closed.

Included in palace admission (Members go free)

“A brilliant display of social history shining fresh light on those who have kept such residences running.”

The Telegraph

Exhibition sponsor

Untold Lives has been generously supported by Findmypast

Staff members posing as visitors looking at the exhibition- 'Untold Lives' at Kensington Palace.

Image: A dress worn by Queen Charlotte on display. © Historic Royal Palaces / Fashion Museum Bath

The Untold Lives exhibition - Origins and Identities room.

Image: Displays exploring the origins and identities of those who worked in the royal household over 300 years ago. © Historic Royal Palaces

Wide angled photograph of the Care & Intimacy Room.

Image: Displays exploring care and intimacy in the royal household. © Historic Royal Palaces

Peter Brathwaite commission (courtesy of Autograph, London)

Image: The exhibition team have worked with contemporary artists Peter Brathwaite, Matt Smith and Robert Taylor to bring some forgotten stories into the spotlight and ensure that their legacy at the palaces lives on. © Historic Royal Palaces, Peter Brathwaite, courtesy of Autograph, London

Two black and white portraits on a wall in an exhibition

Image: Photographs of modern-day Kensington Palace staff by Robert Taylor. © Robert Taylor/ Historic Royal Palaces

A set of ceramic tiles ( blue and white porcelain) giving a narrative of Gustavus Guydickens life.

Image: A set of ceramic tiles giving a narrative of Gustavus Guydickens life. © Historic Royal Palaces, Matt Smith

Highlighting forgotten stories

The servants and palace staff who worked at Court came from a range of backgrounds and brought a huge variety of experience to the palaces. Some, like the Waterman William Timms, who served four monarchs over 46 years, chose to dedicate their lives to royal service.

However, the exhibition exposes the hierarchies and inequalities within the palaces of the time. For example, a young boy called Peter, found living alone in German woods was brought to Kensington Palace, and became famous as the subject of intense scientific and public interest, before being sent away.

Peter’s image survives, in a mural on the King's Staircase, but many other people were forgotten and overlooked, with only brief details of their lives preserved in the royal accounts.

By necessity, the exhibition team have had to find other ways to explore their contributions, working with contemporary artists such as Peter Brathwaite and Matt Smith to bring some of these forgotten stories into the spotlight and ensure that their legacy at the palaces lives on. The exhibition also included specially commissioned music by composer Segun Akinola.

Painting detail showing a young boy — *Image: A young boy called Peter, depicted on the King's Staircase at Kensington Palace. © Historic Royal Palaces*

Watch: Untold Lives with Dan Snow

In this short film, historian Dan Snow goes behind the scenes at Kensington Palace to explore some of the many stories highlighted in Untold Lives: A Palace at Work.

Video transcript of Untold Lives: Forgotten Stories at Kensington Palace

Follow along with an interactive transcript of Untold Lives: Dan Snow Investigates Forgotten Stories at Kensington Palace on YouTube. A link to open the transcript can be found in the description.

Origins and identities

The exhibition also focuses on the unexpected origins and identities of some of the people who worked at the royal palaces. In an age of great change in the form of colonial expansion, religious wars and a fledgling constitutional monarchy, new figures arrived at Court from all over the world.

A range of portraits and objects explore the presence of Black and Asian royal servants and attendants at court. Among these figures was Abdullah, a wild cat keeper from India, and Mehmet von Könsigstreu, Keeper of the Privy Purse for King George I.

Mehmet and his wife Marie Hedwig are believed to be one of the first interracial married couples at the Hanoverian Court. As a trusted servant of King George I, with intimate access to the monarch, Mehmet was an influential, and sometimes, controversial figure.

Mehmet's portrait is also featured on the King’s Staircase, but now, for the first time, his fascinating story is brought to the fore, alongside his fellow Turkish valet, Ernst August Mustapha von Misitri, (more commonly known as Mustapha) in a portrait by Godfrey Kneller – on loan from the Ömer Koç Collection - never exhibited before in the UK.