A Day at the Seaside: Part two

Once we had finished wandering through the Museum and Art Gallery, we headed for the Royal Pavilion. This was the highlight of my trip to Brighton and to be honest, probably one of my highlights of England so far.

A little background:
The Royal Pavilion was created by a young King George IV (while he was Prince of Wales). The impression that I got was that his Dad was taking an awful long time to pass on the throne to George and so he had a bit too much time on his hands... he enjoyed the finer things in life, and so decided to create a bit of a Royal Disneyland for himself in Brighton... which at the time was known as a health resort - the restorative power of salt water!

Once the Pavilion was built (in the early 19th century), some of George's contemporaries were not too impressed - one said it looked like a bunch of turnips stuck on top of boxes! I, on the other hand, was in awe. Today we are in a situation in which movies and technology mean that whatever the imagination can dream up, it can then be turned into some form of reality... so you can imagine if I was walking around the building with my mouth wide open, what indeed George's peers thought! Each room was so intricately detailed. I think that you could sit in the middle of any one room for a day and still not see everything there is to see.

My two favourite rooms were the banqueting hall and the kitchen (my travel glutton theme continues!). The banqueting hall was beyond amazing. I am not exaggerating when I say that my mouth literally dropped open as I entered. The ceiling was domed and in the centre was a huge silver dragon which was clutching a chandelier that weighed one tonne! The four to five metre long table in the middle of the room was set for dinner for 30 guests and the host’s chair was in the very centre (as opposed to the head) as he liked to sit amongst his guests!

The kitchen was a marvel, simple yet beautiful and technologically advanced for the time… George himself was so impressed with it, that he was fond of taking his guests on tours of the area. The audio guide we made our tour with said it was not unusual for the kitchen to prepare 118 (not a misprint - one hundred and eighteen!) separate dishes for an evening meal! There was one huge wall with ovens all along and on the other side there was a fire place and an automatic rotisserie so big that several dozen chickens could be roasted at once! Although it was a room primarily for the hired help, there were elements to the room that made you think that George did not do things by halves!– for example, a palm tree theme on supporting poles that seemed to recur throughout the pavilion found its way to the kitchen also.

I was incensed to hear towards the end of the tour that when Victoria inherited the Pavilion in the mid 1800s she found it not to her taste and was set to have it demolished before the Brighton and Hove city councils stepped in and purchased it in 1850. Since then, the ‘Palace’ has been public property. Thank God! The very idea that someone would not think this building worth keeping is ridiculous… I may not yet have seen much of England, but I’m telling you, the Pavilion will easily remain on my Top Ten England, no matter where or what else I visit.