Osborne House: A Royal Retreat

-Nestled on the north coast of the Isle of Wight, Osborne House is unique.

-It's almost a time capsule.

-No other royal residence can offer us such an up-close and personal glimpse into the private world of one of our greatest monarchs.

-It's like time stood still and they're still there.

-This is where Queen Victoria and her husband came to escape the pressures of royal life.

-They get to let go of their royalness and just almost act like a normal family.

-Its creation was a labor of love.

-I think the house was almost completely Albert's vision.

It was the only place I could really call home.

-This was a place where they could indulge their passions... -Victoria and Albert loved a bit of nudity.

-...and raise their family.

-Osborne was a holiday place, and it was a place where they could be with their children.

-But Osborne House was so much more than just a holiday home.

It was a test bed of innovation... -Queen Victoria's walk-in shower.

-Heavens above.

A shower?

I mean, hot running water was revolutionary enough.

-...and a seat of power.

From here, Victoria and Albert presided over the biggest empire in human history.

-Osborne is all about recasting the monarchy in a new light.

-Now, English Heritage have granted unprecedented access to this most special of royal palaces.

This is a glimpse into Queen Victoria's most cherished home.

-I don't think there's anywhere else that you can get a true feel for Queen Victoria other than Osborne House.

-Osborne House, Queen Victoria's magnificent palace by the sea, draws visitors from all over the world.

-How are you?

You've got the map.

You're in charge.

That's a lot of pressure.

[ Laughs ] -It contains hundreds of rooms, opulent interiors, and around 12,000 items -- the treasures and trappings of Victoria's long life.

It's also a shining example of Victorian engineering and innovation.

-All mod cons.

It really was quite sophisticated.

-It's fireproof.

There was running water.

Very modern plumbing.

And central heating.

-It's a stunning symbol of the power and might of one of the most popular monarchs in British history.

But even a queen needed somewhere to escape.

So when Osborne House, complete with private beach on the Isle of Wight, became available, she and Albert snapped it up for �28,000.

-The fact that it was an island made it very, very attractive to Victoria and Albert because it meant that they could have some privacy.

-At this point, they had only been married four years and had four young children.

Royal properties like St. James's Palace, Buckingham Palace, and Windsor Castle belonged to the state, but Osborne House would be their very own.

-Queen Victoria and Albert were able to pay for it out of their sort of private money, and this meant that they could control how they spent their money.

They didn't have people saying they had to sort of follow certain rules.

-As a German prince married to a British monarch, Albert had been viewed with suspicion and deprived of any real power.

-I don't think we should underestimate how hard it was to marry into the British Royal Family, which, at that time, still had the vestiges of royal prerogative and political power.

In comes Albert, and he has to somehow carve out a role.

-He had to prove himself in some ways because he was judged with some suspicion.

And one of the best ways to do that is to be a creator, to produce things that people find useful and beautiful.

-Albert wanted Osborne House to be a defining moment.

This was his opportunity to show off exactly what he was capable of.

-Albert wanted to build a place where, as it were, he could be in charge and decided to knock down the original house and build his own design.

-He didn't bother with an architect and went straight to the master builder who was reshaping the fashionable West End of London.

-The builder was Thomas Cubitt, who'd built large amount of London's Belgravia, and so, together, they formed a very successful partnership.

-Thomas Cubitt came from a family of engineers and designers, and he'd been working since 1825 in London, redeveloping completely the smart West End.

He knows how to set foundations.

He knows the practicalities of joists and the rest of it.

And this is the kind of thing that Albert was not trained in, actually, because he went to the University of Bonn, but he was skilled in things like philosophy and politics, and he studied history of art.

-He's a Continental prince.

He's a Renaissance prince.

He's born in Germany.

He speaks several languages.

He wants to bring a little bit of that idea of Europe into, dare I say it, parochial, narrow-minded England.

-I guess the Isle of Wight is as close to the Bay of Naples as you'll get, so it seems perfectly apt.

-The initial vision was a fraction of the size of today's house -- a three-story Italianate villa.

Albert was aware that people would be watching his every move, so was conscious not to spend too much money.

-Although it looks very splendid, it was actually kind of built on the cheap, you know.

-The most expensive way to do it would be to quarry new stone and have a solid stone build.

What Osborne came from is an economic way of building with stucco, that is an external plaster finish on cheaper material, in this case brick.

And they not only imitated stone on the outside, but on the inside used painted marble instead of genuine marble.

-But Albert didn't hold back when it came to the latest contraptions.

He wanted to use Osborne to showcase fresh technological innovations.

-This is Queen Victoria's dressing room.

However, these are not normal wardrobes.

Far from it.

Queen Victoria's walk-in shower.

And Queen Victoria's bath.

When Osborne was built, it had hot and cold running water, and it was even piped with salt water from the sea.

But if it was too cold to go outside, the water would come to you, which I think is quite innovative.

-Albert had set out to create a safe haven where he and Victoria could relax and escape the stresses of royal life.

Osborne House, the family home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on the Isle of Wight, offers us a window into their private life like no other.

In September 1846, after two years of building work, the original square wing of Osborne House, known as The Pavilion, was complete.

Ahead of his time, Prince Albert's innovative ideas were set to create the perfect family home.

-It's all very clever and open plan.

You might think that that was the wonder child of Silicon Valley in the 1990s.

No, no, no, Albert was there first, well over 100 years earlier.

-Albert might have been the brains behind the build, but when it came to the lavishly appointed decor, it was very much a team effort.

-People often attribute Osborne House to Albert, and it is true that he designed it.

He was very involved in the architecture, all of that.

But they worked together as a couple on the furnishings.

-Their pride and joy was the room they used to receive foreign royalty, as well as sing and play the piano after dinner.

-This is the drawing room, which is in the Pavilion wing.

It's redolent of their taste and their style.

Everything was bought, created, commissioned for Osborne.

So all of the furniture in this room came from a London company called Holland & Sons.

It's sumptuous, it's upholstered, and there's lots and lots of yellow silk.

And that's sort of fashionable in the mid-19th century.

It's quite zingy.

-It's very much Victoria and Albert's.

-For their time, they're very modern.

They wanted it to be a sort of domestic palace.

Osborne was a holiday place, and it was a place where they could be with their children.

-It's not a great, big place.

It's quite a cozy place.

It's a place where they could, I guess, nest.

-Victoria couldn't have been more delighted.

The beautiful gardens offered plenty to keep visitors entertained.

Albert helped design them.

-So should be about 10 along this edge.

-These days, Jordan Aspinall is one of a team of gardeners tasked with making sure the terraces live up to their past glory.

-If we do a ring round, and then interfill, just randomly, just kind of breaks it up, makes it a little bit more natural.

I've worked here for about seven years now.

I think the best thing about kind of the job is that you get to show off the history of the garden.

Being able to design your own little area is really special.

This kind of what we call a palm terrace is my one.

And I've kind of gone with a design from 1888.

So it's historical.

We're trying to stick to what Victoria and Albert would have kind of designed and seen here.

I've got a palm tree to work with in the center.

The one behind me was actually planted by Queen Elizabeth II, and that replaced one that was planted by Queen Victoria.

The terraces are planted up with about 15,000 plants.

So important to make it colorful.

It's really kind of that Victorian extravagance that I think really kind of pops, especially here.

We just need to kind of cram it in with loads of color and give that kind of Victorian experience on the terraces.

-For Victoria, the vast, secluded gardens allowed her the freedom to play.

-Victoria's personal time, or private time, was going out on a carriage drive, so she'd be pulled by horses along the carriageways of Osborne, you know, bouncing along on unmetalled roads.

She felt self-conscious, as if, if she were spotted, she'd be seen skiving or taking time out.

And, so, no one admitted to seeing her.

And there are several diary accounts where senior ministers, you know, men of six feet tall, hear this rumble, and here comes the Queen on a carriage drive.

And, so, they would dive into the bushes, literally, so that she wouldn't know that she'd been seen.

So there are these games around what was appropriate time for the ruler to spend in affairs of state.

-From conception, queen and prince were determined to break convention and make their own mark on their private palace.

Just off the drawing room, through a set of double doors, was where Victoria, Albert, and their guests would dine.

-The Victorian standard meal, at least in the early part of Victoria's reign, was served in a style called la franaise, so you had lots of dishes on the table at once, served simultaneously, normally in two to four courses.

Kitchens were capable of turning out a lot of food at once to be served piping hot to the people that needed it.

I mean, this is quite a feat.

There would always be soups.

There would always be fish.

There would always be a choice of entres.

There would always be roast meat.

There would always be something that was a bit more fancy, with lots of bits and pieces sticking out of it and sauces.

Then there would always be vegetable dishes, and a lot of these dishes were moulded.

They had lots of garnishes.

And especially as the children got older, then the children would dine with them.

-Traditionally, in a dining room, people would have displayed their portraits of their ancestors.

But here, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert have hung portraits of their own children.

-They wanted their quarters to feel their quarters, not reflecting their ancestors.

-To mark this fresh start, they commissioned a family portrait from their favorite artist, Winterhalter.

-Queen Victoria is wearing a crown, but at the same time, the children are playing on the floor.

So there's these elements of regular family life.

This painting was really quite powerful.

-Traditionally, pictures of monarchs focused on wealth and power.

Instead, this was a picture of domestic bliss.

-Victoria and Albert wanted to be royal, but they would also be incredibly close and devoted parents.

It is a painting which shows the kind of, in a way, the sort of inspiration for what a house like Osborne was about.

-It's a brand-new house, and it's about their brand-new family.

And, you know, it's the start of a new era.

-They're trying to undo the damage, reputational damage that had been done to the monarchy by the kind of philandering Georgian monarchs that they'd had.

And to have that on display in the dining room at Osborne was really key.

You know, it was saying to all their guests that this is who we are and this is what we now represent.

-After dinner, the royal couple, guests, and members of the royal household would often retire to the billiards room.

-Women, including Victoria, played billiards.

I love that.

-But to spare any blushes, the table was specially adapted for them.

-The table is designed to accommodate women so that women aren't compromised bending over.

I think it's higher than most billiard tables are, believe it or not.

We can't possibly have Victorian women compromised.

Good heavens, no, especially when they might bump into men in that open-plan design.

-The people who accompanied the royal family to Osborne were essentially the household that they would usually have at Windsor or in London, perhaps rather fewer of them, but they would have their ladies-in-waiting.

There would be Albert's equerries.

-And even though they were all aristocrats in their own right, whenever they were in Victoria's company, they had to observe a strict code of behavior.

Everybody would have to stand up the whole evening unless Victoria said, "Do you want to sit down?"

And quite often, she would forget.

-The fact that they were round the corner behind a curtain allowed them to sit down without upsetting the Queen.

They could sit down between shots, but they were still in the Queen's presence.

-Of all the royal residences, Osborne House is unique because it offers us an up-close and personal glimpse into the private world of Queen Victoria and her family.

By royal standards, it was modest and cozy, designed to raise their growing family and primed for their private functions.

Set over 350 acres with woodlands, meadows, and gardens, it demonstrated their command of the landscape and the country they governed beyond it.

-I think the gardens were pretty important to Prince Albert.

They really allowed him to exercise his passions for horticulture, forestry, farming, that sort of thing.

He always wanted to do stuff.

Victoria and Albert really popularized tree planting here at Osborne.

The trees that were planted that you can see in the garden today were planted and looked at by the Royal Family.

They planted about 260 memorial trees.

A lot of them were planted for all sorts of occasions, so things like the Queen's birthday and even just, "It's a nice day.

Let's get the family out and plant."

Trees really do give that continuity of history.

They're also one of those things that people think last forever.

-But nature has its own power, and sometimes it's beyond the control of Osborne's gardening team.

-Well, this is a cedar of Lebanon.

It actually predates Victoria and Albert's time.

It was planted in the 1770s, we think.

That would make it around about 250 years old.

And Albert kept four of these very large cedars when he was planning his garden.

When they fall down, when they die, whatever reason, it's quite a loss.

So, really, we're trying to keep that history going by replanting the same plant in the same sort of place.

We've taken lots of cuttings off it.

You can't propagate it by cuttings, but you can propagate it by grafting.

So we sent these small cuttings off to a specialist nursery.

And they've actually produced some young plants for us.

So they'll be growing those on for us for the next five years, potentially, until we've got a tree that's large enough to plant in more or less the same place.

But the actual tree itself, it's going to live on in other wooden products and so on, really.

-Something else that lives on are the displays of a passionate relationship the royal couple enjoyed here.

And it's on the first floor of The Pavilion, home to their private apartments, that you truly get a sense of the strength of their relationship.

Their bedroom was their sanctuary.

Today it's out of bounds for filming, but what happened inside is no longer a secret.

-Well, we know that Victoria and Albert have a lot of sex.

They have a lot of children.

It's not rocket science.

-The Prince's keen eye for detail ensured that here they could have complete freedom to indulge their passions.

-He was so determined to be able to enjoy his wife's company, shall we put it, in peace that he had a special button installed so that, if they, you know, were to get into bed, he could press the button and that would lock the door... [ Lock clicks ] ...so no children could disturb them.

-There were big locks on their bedroom door, for obvious reasons.

Victoria loved sex, couldn't get enough of it.

Hated the results, the children that came with it, but actual sex -- brilliant.

-The Queen's diary entry from the night of their wedding describes the chemistry they discovered.

-We know, on the first night, her wedding night, I mean, she talks about the way she's been kissed and touched and de-robed.

And this is somebody who is sharing with us her deflowering.

She loved every minute of it.

-She's what, 20?

This is a young woman who has been unbelievably sheltered her whole life but is very aware of men, who has suddenly discovered the power of the orgasm.

[ Lock clicks ] -They loved each other.

And I think that... that is somehow still possible to pick up on when you go as a visitor.

In many ways, Osborne House, its light coloring, its classical lines, its love story -- it's about life.

-Over the course of their marriage, Victoria and Albert filled the house and gardens with tokens of their love for one another.

Sensual pieces are everywhere to feast the eyes and perhaps keep up the spice in their relationship.

-Well, I think the art at Osborne is a very good indicator of what their relationship was about.

And it's quite clear that they certainly were not what we usually think Victorians were, which is sort of rather priggish and frightened of things like nudity.

-Victoria and Albert loved a bit of nudity.

Let's not forget this was their private palace.

-Today, it's conservator Dr. Sophie Downes' job to preserve the 12,000 items on display.

-Victoria and Albert collected an enormous quantity of things.

And for a palace, one of the major problems is the sheer quantity of objects fitted into the very small space.

But we like the challenge.

Today I've just been taking some condition images of the Andromeda statue to make sure that we haven't got any adverse changes.

Victoria and Albert were very into modern techniques and materials.

So these statues, although they look like solid bronze, actually, quite a lot of them are hollow, made from either zinc or electroplated copper.

So they're a lot more vulnerable than you think they might be.

-Queen Victoria acquired the Andromeda statue after seeing it in the Great Exhibition of 1851.

It reflects not only the Greek legend of Perseus saving and falling in love with an African princess, but the love of queen and prince at Osborne House.

-So we have an annual maintenance program with the statues.

It's part of a team effort to make sure that the objects are kept in the best conditions, and making sure that everything's nice and stable so they can last for a lot longer to be enjoyed by the public.

-Greek mythology is also a big feature in Albert's most private place on the first floor of the house.

The most interesting thing about Osborne House is Albert's bathroom because it is -- it's such -- I mean, people think that Albert doesn't have a sense of humor, but when I look at Albert's bathroom, I just think, this man really had hidden depths.

There's his bath.

And looking down over his bath is a picture of Hercules, the great Greek and Roman hero, holding a distaff, which is sort of feminine symbol.

He's being held in bondage by an Amazon queen called Queen Omphale.

-And Hercules was, of course, notoriously strong.

But he was also, apparently, in classical legend, Hercules was made to do all sorts of women's work and women's tasks, and some people have suggested that Albert's choice of Hercules is basically a coded reference to the fact that Albert is fed up by not getting enough responsibility to do the real man's work.

-That has to be a reflection on the relationship between Victoria and Albert, because, you know, Victoria's the Queen and Albert's this brilliant man who can't be king because he's only married to the Queen.

And, you know, as he said, "I am the husband, but not the master in this house."

I don't think it actually was true in Osborne because I think he was very much master of the house.

-Here he is putting all his huge powers of decoration and invention into designing the inside of a house, when he perhaps is sort of slightly hinting with it, actually, it would have been better if he'd been allowed to play at politics a bit more.

-It's a funny reflection on Albert's situation.

-The painting in Albert's bathroom is rather tongue-in-cheek, but the Queen also had her own playful side, on show in their home office.

-Well, this is the Queen's sitting room, and what's really nice is that it's a small, intimate space, very domestic.

One of the noticeable things is this very large painting.

It was bought by Queen Victoria as a birthday present for Prince Albert.

-The Queen purchased the painting in April 1852.

-They would have sat there writing their papers together, but in front of them, there's this quite large painting.

It's just a sort of riot of naked flesh.

-So, and this Victoria gave to Albert, thinking he would love it, and he did.

He thought it was great.

-It's not exactly a dirty picture, but, you know, the idea that somehow Victoria and Albert were in any way prudish is completely contradicted by this painting because, I mean, you wouldn't want to sit there looking at all of this creamy abundance if you weren't reasonably interested in the pleasures of the flesh.

-Even though this picture would remind them of their passion for each other, it wouldn't stop them from performing their daily duties.

-We've got two quite discrete desks, one for the Queen, and next to her, one for Prince Albert.

So while they were here, she was still running an empire from this small desk, and next to her, Prince Albert.

So he was as busy as she was when they came here.

-The desks are aligned side by side.

And there's a letter at this time from Albert saying how marvelous it is that Victoria has allowed him to sit next to her when she does her paperwork.

So you get a very human sense of the couple's existence.

-The underside of the desk is slightly different heights because Albert had kind of good chunky legs, [laughs] and longer legs, as well.

And so his desk is slightly taller than hers.

And they're shaped around their bodies.

And once you spot that, then, you know, they're still there in that house.

-Osborne began as a holiday home, a retreat where Victoria and Albert could be alone with their family.

But soon, events around them meant it started to take on a more official role.

-At the time they went to Osborne, it was 1848, and 1848 is a very significant time in European history because there are all these revolutions all over Europe, you know, in Austria, in Germany, in France.

And Albert and Victoria were quite concerned that it might spread to England.

You know, there was a Chartist rally.

You know, there was a certain amount of unease.

And so Osborne House was a kind of refuge.

You know, it was a place that they could go and be safe.

-The Chartists are starting to make similar radical demands.

There's a real fear that the volatile atmosphere could arrive in London and could turn against the British monarchy.

Victoria and Albert decide to very quickly flee to their new home in Osborne to escape, in case there's any chance of danger.

-And the more time she spent at Osborne, the more reluctant she was to leave.

-Doesn't like leaving it.

Doesn't want to come back to Buckingham Palace.

What does that mean?

Well, if your head of state is offshore, then your politicians have to go offshore, as well.

-Monarchies are being overthrown.

She has to play a careful game.

And so she invites people into her house.

That's how Osborne changes.

-It quickly became clear that their three-story holiday hideaway was no longer appropriate, so they decided to add an extension.

And what an extension -- a whole new wing.

In 1851, Osborne almost doubled in size.

-There's a moment where Osborne is actually recast from a royal house into a palace.

The new building is effectively a suite of state rooms.

-This new wing is created with rooms with titles such as the Council Room and the Audience Room, and this shows us, I think, really, that what's happening here is that when the prime minister or, you know, some important foreign politician comes to Osborne, they will be met in these rooms.

So I think this is a sign that there's a sort of growing aspiration to intervene in politics.

But it could also be read as a recognition that, really, if you're queen, you can never really escape the red box.

-It's actually a play for political power on the part of the Prince Consort and his wife, the Queen.

It's them staking out their turf.

-Two irregular towers, one serving very much as the clock tower -- you can't help but think it's a little microcosm of the Palace of Westminster, with Big Ben at one end and Victoria Tower at the other, and they're being built and developed at the same time.

It's a very subtle way of, if not sticking two fingers, you know, to London, it is doing things on her own terms, and it's done in the most subtle way.

But once you see it, I think you don't forget that that's what it stands for.

-Osborne House was rapidly becoming an important seat of power.

But family life still revolved around the original Pavilion.

And here, Prince Albert had very deliberately broken with tradition.

-The usual arrangement for royal or upper-class houses would have been to have had a children's wing, where they would be out of sight for the grown-ups.

-At Osborne, the children were directly above Victoria and Albert.

-The royal children were upstairs sort of immediately above them in the nursery, you know, cheek by jowl with the parents.

Victoria and Albert were a sort of modern family, not -- you know, they had more in common with sort of middle-class families than perhaps with the traditional aristocracy.

-By the 1850s, Victoria and Albert had nine children, all in close succession to one another, and they were determined to bring them up in a stable, loving home.

-Prince Albert grew up in quite a cold, unhappy environment with his parents' relationship, and saw breakdowns there, whereas Queen Victoria, although her parents were in a happy marriage for the most part, so there was this real pressure and expectation on the young Queen Victoria to be this wholesome, bright future for Britain.

And both of them are quite morally focused on this.

-They didn't have a normal upbringing and felt that they missed out on parental care.

They were going to give it to their children and it was an important principle.

-With an estate as big as a theme park, offering woodlands, gardens, and a secluded beach, Osborne House offered the perfect environment to spend quality time with their children.

-The kids loved to be on the beach, playing.

She's done some very pretty drawings of her children on the beach.

-Sketching the children wearing their summer clothes and their sun hats and their sailor suits in the bright sun, I think, must have been very special for them.

-And then you've got, essentially, a kind of theme park in the gardens.

-That's how powerful some of the garden design was, that, actually, it enraptured those under 15.

It's really this playground.

There was a considerable amount of frolicking.

-Hidden deep within the woods, well away from the house, Prince Albert installed another surprise for the children.

-Suddenly, you come across this perfect Swiss chalet.

It's every child's dream, really, to have this place they can absolutely run wild.

And they were encouraged to run wild.

-Cottages like this were quite trendy in the early 19th century, and there were thoughts that this one was actually something that was shipped over from the Continent.

But it seems like this was actually constructed in England, prefabricated on the mainland and then constructed here by local craftsmen.

But the children were all involved in helping to lay the foundations.

-Albert wanted the children to have a place of their very own, where they could be together.

-I think the words "Swiss cottage," when you describe it as a kind of playhouse for the children, you conjure up something quite small.

Swiss Cottage is quite a lot bigger than most people's houses, I would say.

-You could say it's the coolest Wendy house for little kids that was ever invented.

-It even came complete with a fully equipped three-quarter-sized dining room and kitchen.

-The children learnt to cook in the kitchens.

They were being taught by Louisa Warne, who was the wife of one of the undergardeners.

And it seems that all of the children took part in the cooking, and there wasn't much gender segregation, in terms of how the children played.

There's a lot of culinary molds for things like jellies and cakes, that kind of thing.

And we know a few dishes that they did cook, so we know they cooked pancakes.

We know they cooked a thing called schneemilch, which was an Austrian dish, which is a kind of very light blancmange-y, frothy, kind of syllabub-y dish, very, very nice.

And we can surmise that they cooked things like cakes and possibly bread, as well.

-Besides being schooled in the art of cookery, the children were also encouraged to garden.

-They were each given a plot of ground with about 14 beds in it for them each to grow vegetables, fruits, flowers.

They also had their own spades, shovels, forks, all of a child's size, and even small wheelbarrows.

-For Prince Albert, the Swiss Cottage was central to his plan to bring his children up to be well-rounded human beings.

-He really wants to ground his children and make them self-sufficient in many ways, but also kind of humble and capable of doing ordinary things.

-He wanted the children to know the value of money.

They all grew the same things, and then they would sell it to Albert at market value.

So that way they knew what things cost.

-Also, they'd understand the benefits of their hard work.

This was hard work, and they would get to understand what their servants, what staff around them, what people in their everyday life would have to do to earn a living, as well.

He wanted his children to understand the world, not just the privileged background that they were born into, really.

-The biggest amount of pressure is on Bertie, the Prince of Wales, the future heir -- for him to be the next model king, really.

And to help continue the path that Victoria and Albert have set to correct the wrongs of previous kings, but also for, you know, in Victoria's mind, she wants her son to grow up to be very much like his father.

-But young Bertie appeared to have other ideas.

-Bertie used the Swiss Cottage as a place where he could, in secret, smoke cigarettes.

-Victoria struggled with her son and heir's rebellious side.

-There were challenges, I think, of having Albert as a father -- industrious, intellectual -- if you're a son like Bertie, neither industrious nor intellectual.

-Bertie, from a really young age, there's all sorts of records about how he's kicking off at his tutors, how he's really naughty.

He doesn't want to study, he throws tantrums.

And, yes, you could see that as potentially an arrogant, spoiled little prince.

But there's a lot of evidence to document that it was also a cry for help.

He felt alienated from his parents, and he didn't feel heard.

-Despite their sometimes fractious relationship, Osborne House's Swiss Cottage was far more than an educational tool.

It provided a space where Victoria and Albert could spend time alone with their children.

-They have little birthday teas or other parties down there.

They went often without servants.

It would be their children that were serving them a cup of tea.

And just have a bit of fun, you know, with the whole brood.

[ Laughs ] It's like a mini holiday home within the wider holiday home of Osborne House.

A bit of escapism for Victoria and Albert because they get to let go of their royalness for a little while and just almost act like a normal family.

-And the happy times they spent at Swiss Cottage left a lasting impression on the whole family.

-As the children grew up, married, had children of their own, they came back to Swiss Cottage, and they often brought their own children with them.

And they cooked with their own children, as well.

And in some ways, it is quite extraordinary, this idea of rulers of Europe coming back to their home, their holiday home, with their own children and cooking things in the kitchen.

-But we all owe a debt to the Swiss Cottage because without it, one of our most beloved traditions may never have taken off -- the afternoon tea.

-One of the things the children did cook a lot at Swiss was cake, and part of that was because Victoria did have quite a sweet tooth.

Victoria loved taking what became known as afternoon tea.

She loved it.

She loved it.

I mean, what could be more brilliant than yet another chance to have a meal and also loads of cake?

-And it's Osborne's catering manager Victoria Stone's job to ensure visitors can still get a little slice of the past.

-Victoria had her breakfast and she had her lunch and she had her dinner.

But in between lunch and dinner, she was hungry, and she wanted something more.

So they allowed her to have a scone and some jam and some clotted cream, and that's what she used to enjoy here, and we've kept that tradition going.

Victoria sponge is made here on site, and we are now collaborating with the gardeners.

You would have seen the fruit in the walled garden.

That is being used as jam in our kitchens, and we want to tell that story through our cakes, as well.

You can sit down in these beautiful gardens with a nice cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge.

It's still keeping that story alive.

They're actually buying a piece of history.

-Victoria and Albert transformed the public perception of monarchy.

It was no longer about one individual.

It was a whole family unit, a royal family.

-I think that must have made such a difference to the way that the royal family was viewed by the people, made it easier for them to connect with them.

And if you think about it, you know, maybe one of the reasons that our royal family has survived and others haven't.

-What had started out as a fairly modest three-story seaside retreat for the Royal Family had, over the years, transformed into an impressive seat of power.

But in December 1861, some 15 years after they created this space of love, the visionary behind it, Victoria's beloved Albert, died unexpectedly of typhoid fever.

His passing happened at Windsor Castle.

He was only 42 years old.

-Victoria was thrown into incredibly deep mourning.

She lost the use of her legs.

She could barely speak.

She was absolutely distraught.

-We think of her as kind of this old widow, but at that time, she was only 42.

And, suddenly, Albert's died and she really wasn't expecting it.

She'd had something of a nervous breakdown.

-Where did she go?

She went to Osborne.

She could hide in Osborne.

-Osborne also became, for her, a site where she could memorialize Albert, so she could put around Osborne things that reminded her of him.

-She always slept with his portrait over her bed.

You know, she felt safe there.

-The circumstances of his passing cast an even greater shadow over the already troubled relationship between Victoria and her eldest son, Bertie.

She held him responsible.

-The news, or the gossip, that he was having an affair with a prostitute named Nellie when he was 19 years old, when that reached Albert's ears, he was very upset, and he spent a significant amount of time out with Bertie, walking in really terrible weather, and telling him off, essentially, because of course this was exactly the opposite of what they had wanted him to do or expected him to do.

-She believed it was this episode that had led to Albert's death.

-Victoria felt that it was Bertie who broke his father's heart and destroyed his spirit, and for that reason Victoria never forgave her son.

-Prince Albert had always been Victoria's strength and stay.

Utterly alone, she looked for other ways to fill that void.

-After his death, she fell back very much on her first love, which was food.

She did put on quite a lot of weight.

Who else could she turn to?

She was queen.

She couldn't really have a relationship with other people.

So her best friend, really, at that point, was beef, plum pudding, cake, scones, tea, wine, whiskey.

-Victoria had completely retreated from public life, holed up at Osborne.

But in 1878, she ventured out of hiding, tempted by a new innovation.

[ Bell jingles ] -Sir Graham Bell comes down from Scotland.

He's just got a patent for his telephone, and he's going to do a demonstration in front of his queen.

And she's totally fascinated by this.

Yes, Albert's long dead, but she very much carries forward that scientific mantle in his honor.

She leans into tech.

She's enraptured.

-It must have been a very faint and crackly line, but a miracle nonetheless.

Like the first glimmering pictures on a television completely change your worldview.

It's fascinating, I think, that Osborne, as a technologically innovative royal house, is the place where that happened.

I don't think it's a coincidence.

-For nearly two decades, Osborne had become a shrine to its innovative creator, Albert, a place where Victoria could hide away.

But she was beginning to reconnect with the world.

And in 1876, 15 years after his death, she received a much-needed boost when she was made Empress of India by the then Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

-Victoria was incredibly flattered.

Victoria felt that, actually, queen wasn't quite good enough, and so she liked the promotion.

-In 1891, Victoria added another extension.

Her daughter Beatrice was only allowed to marry if she and her husband set up home at Osborne.

Their quarters were on the upper floor of the new wing.

But on the ground floor, the building had a new reception hall to wow their guests.

It was a world away from Albert's initial Italianate vision.

-This room is amazing.

You come in here, and I love watching people go, "Wow."

It's really unexpected.

It's nothing like the rest of Osborne House.

-The Durbar Wing was a love letter from Victoria to the people of the Indian subcontinent.

-"Durbar" means a royal court, and Victoria wants to bring India and India's people close to herself.

She writes her own proclamation to say to them, "I am your queen.

I'm here to serve you, and I want you to feel as equal as British subjects of my throne."

So she creates this image of herself as this noble, benevolent queen.

-She creates the Durbar Room in Osborne as a statement of being an empress, not purely Indian because it's got a minstrels gallery at one end.

-It is overwhelming in its level of decoration.

It's like being inside a wedding cake.

-But not everyone around Victoria was impressed by her obsession for the subcontinent, suspecting it was inspired by her love for one Indian subject in particular.

-One minute, you have Albert, this German consort, with his Continental ideas and artwork.

We see that in Osborne House.

And then a Durbar Wing, a whole extension of the house given over to an Indian idea because guess what -- the Queen's got at least an emotional crush on one of her Indian servants.

-Abdul Karim was one of two Indians selected to become servants to the Queen, but he didn't stay in that role for long.

-He was promoted to be her teacher, to teach her Hindustani.

He was later promoted to be her Private Secretary for Indian Affairs.

There was a very strong bond between the Queen and Abdul Karim.

-This really rubs up the royal household.

I think it's important to remember that there is almost nowhere quite as hierarchical as the royal household.

And in comes -- oh, shock, horror -- an Indian.

So the Queen totally has her head turned, and he is a permanent fixture.

-Abdul Karim was Victoria's closest confidant, who taught her all about Indian culture.

-In her last years, it's quite funny to think that she was starting to eat curry, learning to read and speak Urdu and Hindustani.

Many members of the household, including her son and heir, Bertie, really hated Abdul Karim, and they just could not understand why she was so attached to him.

It becomes a relationship of mutual support, and others looking in really don't understand it, but they definitely view it through racialized, mistrusting eyes, and that creates a real problem.

-They didn't like it, and Victoria didn't care, and he was clearly her favorite person.

I think he did a very good job of making Victoria happy.

-In the last decade or so of her life, Victoria celebrated two big milestones -- her Golden and Diamond Jubilees.

She had won the public's affection and was even captured smiling on the camera.

But it wasn't going to last.

Throughout her life, Victoria always returned to Osborne, the home her husband had created for the family.

It was where their children played and she'd found comfort after his death 30 years earlier.

But as she reached her 70s, it became harder to manage.

-Her eyesight started to fail.

I don't think she ever lost control of her wits, certainly.

She was always completely compos mentis, but she couldn't do all the things that she'd done before.

-So she needed to be moved in her bath chair toward the end of her life, and into the 1890s, she found it impossible to go from story to story.

She insisted on going back to Osborne, but the stairs were too much of a challenge for her.

-So, in 1893, the Queen followed in her late husband's footsteps and introduced yet another technological innovation to Osborne.

-As Queen Victoria aged and became more infirm, like most people, she had her home adapted.

That meant a lift being installed.

The original quote from the lift company, Otis, was �30 more for a mechanized version, but Queen Victoria went for the cheaper option.

That �30 could pay for three members of staff for their annual salary, and they could actually manually operate the lift.

-It has a red carpet, a mahogany seat, you know, nicely carved details and so on.

It's all very regal.

-So here we are, down in the bowels of the basement, underneath the lift.

The bell would ring, and the servant would start pulling on this rope.

Now, we have to remember that the lift itself was wooden.

The queen was sitting in a wheelchair.

She's wearing layers and layers of taffeta.

Quite a weight, I would think, so the servant down here pulling would have to be quite a strong person.

-The same year the lift was fitted, Osborne also became the second house in England to be wired for electricity.

-It's very comfortable, and I think Osborne was a nice place to be in.

-Victoria had been able to enjoy Osborne all through the later years of her life, but at the turn of the century, in 1901, her health suffered a steep decline.

-She lost her appetite, and she became very, very worried.

-Shortly before she died, the Queen asks for the Prince of Wales, Bertie.

-The Queen and her son and heir had always had a difficult relationship, but he rushed to Osborne to be with her.

-When he came into her bedroom, she put out her arms and embraced him.

And Bertie, who was a rather emotional fellow, was in absolute floods of tears because he sort of knew that this meant that they were reconciled rather too late, but they were reconciled.

-You get this impression of this woman who does not want to go.

She's dying, but she's desperate not to die.

And it goes on and on and on, and then she doesn't, she kind of comes back from the edge.

And then again, she starts to die!

And this time, it's for real.

-Queen Victoria died at 6:30 p.m. on the 22nd of January, 1901, aged 81.

She had been the longest reigning monarch in British history.

She was surrounded by her children, but one of her closest friends, Abdul Karim, was not allowed in the room.

-The venom against Abdul Karim really comes out when Queen Victoria dies.

This was a man who she had had by her side pretty much every minute of the day when she was well in the last few years of her life.

And then, all of a sudden, you know, he's quickly sidelined.

-After her death, Queen Victoria was laid to rest in state in the dining room at her beloved Osborne.

-The final irony for a woman who loved food.

The table was covered with a cloth, the family portraits were all covered up, and her coffin sat there for days, guarded by soldiers in the one place where I think she really was very happy, which was eating at Osborne House.

-But there's politics over who is the last person to see her in her coffin before the lid goes on.

Bertie deliberately makes sure that Abdul Karim is the last person to do that -- right?

-- and he intends it to be a snub, to say, "You're the least important."

But, actually, what it has the effect of doing is that Abdul Karim is the last one to see her before her coffin is closed, and that, in its own way, was very poignant that he is the last person to say farewell.

-Victoria left Osborne House to all her children, but as the new king, it would have fallen to Bertie to maintain it.

-Bertie decides that he can't afford it.

I think it shows us that Bertie had never been entirely happy at Osborne.

-He didn't want anything to do with it.

His home of choice was Sandringham, which he had done up, which was suited to him, which was a vast shooting estate, and he really liked killing things.

Osborne -- not much to kill.

So what was the point?

-The house was gifted to the nation, and in the years that followed, it would be used as a college for the Navy and a convalescent home.

But the heart of Osborne House was preserved.

-When that happened, the intimate part of Osborne, which is the sort of suite of rooms of Albert and Victoria, their bathrooms, their bedrooms, all of these very private rooms were locked.

-The ground floor was open to the public, but this floor remained closed out of a mark of respect, and to ensure that visitors couldn't come in here, Edward VII installed these rather magnificent gates.

They remained closed until 1953, and then, during the coronation of Elizabeth II, she gave permission for visitors to come in and see this space.

However, out of respect, filming is still banned in this space.

-For over 50 years, Osborne House had been at the centre of Victoria's life.

In death, it was dedicated to her memory.

As a result of King Edward's actions, visitors can enjoy an undiluted glimpse into Victoria and Albert's private world.

No other place can offer us such an intimate view into the lives of a husband and wife who shaped our world.

-When you go to Windsor Castle, you can go right back with Windsor Castle nearly a millennium.

But, no, this is, like, preserved for eternity.

And it remains, if you like, in some ways, not just a mausoleum to Victoria, but this celebration of their lives and their vision as a couple.

I find it rather reassuring.

They loved each other.

-It's a place that's just soaked in atmosphere.

And when you're in that space and you know that, next door, Victoria sat putting her stockings on while Albert looked at her and they whispered sweet nothings to each other or discussed the business of life or whatever else, it's a really lovely place to be.

-They were innovators, and they did things on their own terms.

-From the conception of it as the private holiday home at the beginning to this real location of drama at the end of her life, this was her doing, with Albert, they shaped this space.

So just as much as you have documents and paintings and diaries, the building itself is a really important historical record of their reign and of their own ideas about their power and the world they lived in.