The original builders and designers of the White Tower included Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, who supervised ‘the king’s works on the great Tower of London […] for William the Great’.   In March 1240, Henry III ordered Richard de Freslingfield, Keeper of the Works at the Tower, ‘to have the Great Tower whitened both inside and out’.  In December the lead gutters were lengthened to stop water from staining the ‘newly whitened’ wall.   Such repairs today may be undertaken by the maintenance teams of the Surveyor of the Fabric’s department.

The surveyors’ indoor equivalents, the conservators, follow on in a long tradition of palace housekeeping and maintenance.  William Kent and Louis Laguerre are among the great names who have undertaken conservation work to the palaces’ wall paintings, while the textile conservators at Hampton Court Palace repair the tapestries once the responsibility of the Royal Wardrobe, and then latterly the tapestry company of William Morris. 

These experts are also represented on the present-day salvage teams who practise what to do in the event of a catastrophe.  In April 1692, a fire broke out at Kensington Palace ‘thro’ the carelessness of a candle’ but there were none of the new ‘water-engines’ to hand.  Soldiers from the barracks nearby used broken-open bottles from the beer cellar to carry water to put it out.   Yet when the state apartments at Hampton Court Palace caught fire in 1986, a smooth operation to salvage the furniture and as much archaeological evidence as possible swung into action, with so much success that the apartments were restored to a pristine condition afterwards.