Buckingham Palace building works reveal Royal time capsule

If walls could talk, those at Buckingham Palace would surely have some of the most intruiging stories in the world.

Electricians working on a major revamp of the palace have stumbled across the next best thing, after pulling up floorboards to uncover tantalising snippets of the secret lives of its inhabitants.

Workmen tasked with replacing potentially dangerous 1940s wiring in the palace have found vintage cigarette papers and newspaper clippings under the floor, in a unique insight into palace life.

Three cigarette packets, Piccadilly Number One, Player’s Navy Cut and “Wild Woodbines”, were found discarded under the floor, either dropped or hidden by the previous generation.

The cigarettes were produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The unintended time capsule also included a newspaper cutting dating back to Queen Victoria’s reign, from someone who had carefully kept the theatre listings on one side, and news of an edited book of letters from the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield to his successor on the other.

A spokesman for Royal Family told the public via social media: “The building work uncovered pieces of history hidden beneath the floorboards at Buckingham Palace including this clipping from the Evening Standard newspaper, published in 1889.

“It also unearthed was a trio of vintage cigarettes packets.”

It is the first unexpected detail emerging from the ongoing works at Buckingham Palace, to remove ageing and potentially dangerous electrical cabling dating back to the 1940s.

A spokesman said that so far, 2km of Vulcanised Indian Rubber (VIR) cabling has been replaced: equivalent to the length of 40 Olympic sized swimming pools.

The ten-year project, expected to cost £370 million, will eventually see the Palace’s wiring, plumbing and heating which have not been updated since just after the Second World War made safe, wing by wing.

In a video released by the palace, an electrician describes how experts have had to access wires in the Queen’s private apartments through the ceiling, pulling them through from the floor above to replace while the Queen was away at Balmoral.

Work is currently underway to remove a further 1.5km of VIR cabling from State Rooms including the Picture Gallery, Blue Drawing Room, Music Room, White Drawing Room, and Throne Room.

The work, which will be done wing by wing, is due to be completed in 2027.