News

Historic Royal Palaces has been named Apprentice Employer of the Year 2026 at the Westminster Adult Education Service annual Celebration of Apprenticeships and Awards. Coming just 18 months after the launch of our scheme, and with fierce competition from some prestigious, long-established apprenticeship programmes, this is a huge achievement. It reflects the passion of our apprentices, the dedication of our mentors, and the belief across our organisation that apprenticeships are a powerful way to open doors into the heritage sector. 

From conservation and cultural learning to legal, retail, gardens, marketing and across most departments, our apprentices bring fresh perspectives, passion and dedication to everything they do. We are incredibly proud of every one of them, as well as the mentors and teams who support their development every step of the way.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new kids’ video series ‘Wren and Raven Investigate’, which features the legendary (and slightly ghostly) Sir Christopher Wren and his sharp-witted friend Raven as they explore historical sites. The series has been created to encourage primary-aged pupils to look more closely at the buildings around them and help them understand that buildings can be used as evidence to learn about the past.

Many children across the UK won’t have the opportunity to visit our sites, so the series has been designed to be relevant to children everywhere. Each episode will feature other historic buildings across the country, alongside our palaces, and focuses on architectural features that can be seen almost anywhere. ‘Building Spotter’ sheets are available for children to download and take along with them when they explore buildings in the real world. The four episodes in the series look at Norman, Tudor, Stuart and Georgian buildings and you can find them in our Schools Learning Resources.

Earlier this year, we launched a new initiative to help those who find written text challenging to engage with British history. ‘Wordless Stories’ are told entirely through images, with no written text or numbers, and are designed to support reluctant readers, students with learning disabilities and anyone for whom traditional text-based history presents a barrier to understanding.

Made possible through support from The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation, the project marks the UK’ s first ever series of fully illustrated wordless stories about iconic characters from Britain’ s past. Inspired by the brilliant work of the charity Books Beyond Words, each story features the childhood or early life of its subject, offering young people the opportunity to reflect on universal themes such as fear, resilience, intolerance, connection, belonging and standing up for one’s beliefs.

The first story, illustrated by  Charlotte Firmin, focuses on the early life of Elizabeth Tudor and will be followed by Princess Victoria (illustrated by Danica da Silva Pereira). Each story has been co-created with teachers and students, from initial concept to final illustrations.

In order to better understand and protect biodiversity across our sites we conduct regular surveys to track the health of the species on our estates. This summer we will be counting butterflies using the method set out by the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), one of the longest running insect monitoring schemes in the world.  

Butterflies are highly sensitive to climate change and habitat disruption, so they are uniquely placed among British terrestrial insect and other invertebrate groups to act as  indicators of the overall state of an environment. Once a week for 26 weeks, a group of volunteers and staff members will survey the estate at Hampton Court  Palace on a set walking path, recording any butterflies seen. This data will be compared to last year’s survey to see  if the improvements we are making to our estate are benefitting  wildlife. The data is also shared with the UKBMS and used to inform national trends in butterfly numbers. Last year’s survey at Hampton Court recorded 2,813 butterflies of 21 different species. Hopefully, we will see these numbers continue to grow.