The fire at Windsor Castle (2024)

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The fire at Windsor Castle©

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On 20 November 1992 a fire broke out in Windsor Castle. Itdestroyed 115 rooms, includingnine State Rooms.

How the fire started

The fire started in Queen Victoria's Private Chapel, where afaulty spotlight ignited a curtain next to the altar. Within minutes the blazewas unstoppable and had spread to St George's Hall next door. The fire was first spotted around 11:30 in the morning and within three hours225 firefighters from seven counties were battling the flames. At the peak of the operation theywere using 36 pumps, discharging1½ million gallons of water.

St George's Hall immediately after the fire©

Evacuating the works of art

Fortunately the fire break at the other end of St George's Hall remained unbreached, so the Royal Library was undamaged. Meanwhile staff were removingworks of art from the Royal Collection from the path of the fire. The Castle's Quadrangle was full of some of thefinest examples of French 18th-century furniture, paintings by Van Dyck, Rubens and Gainsborough, Sèvres porcelainand other treasures of the Collection.

Amazingly, only twoworks of art were lost inthe fire - arosewood sideboard and a very large painting by Sir William Beechey that couldn't be taken down from the wall in time. Luckily works of art had already been removed from many rooms in advance ofrewiring work.

St George's Hall after restoration©

Restoration

The fire was finally extinguished at 2:30am on Saturday, 21 November, but it had burned for 15 hours. The next step wasthe huge restoration task to restore the Castle back to its former glory. There were several different options for the Restoration Committee, chaired by The Duke of Edinburgh, to consider. Should the Castle be restored to its appearance on 19 November 1992, the day before the terrible fire orshould a new approach be taken?

A combination approach was taken with a new room calledThe Lantern Lobbycreated in the space where the private chapelhadpreviously stood and where the fire had started. This created a formal passageway between the private and State Apartments.St George's Hallwas restored to a design close to the room's original 14th-century appearance, but with a 20th-century reinterpretation. A new hammer-beam roofwasconstructed from sustainable English oak using traditional methods and tools.

Finishing the restoration

The official completion date for the restoration projectwas 20 November 1997,5 years to the day after the outbreak of the fire and the 50th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth IIand Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

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