On this day

Princess Mary was the eldest daughter of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, and sister to the future kings Charles II and James II. At the age of 9, she was married to the 14-year-old William II of Orange in a ceremony that took place at the Chapel Royal in Whitehall Palace. Shortly before leaving for the Netherlands, Mary was given the title ‘Princess Royal’ by her father, establishing a lasting British tradition that the eldest daughter of the sovereign may use this title.

Following the death of his father in 1647, William succeeded as Stadtholder and Mary became the Princess of Orange, but she was widowed a few years later at the age of 19. Eight days after her husband’s death in 1650, Mary gave birth to a son, William III of Orange, who would later rule England alongside her niece, Queen Mary II. When her brother Charles II regained the British throne during the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Mary travelled to London to celebrate his return and to secure the future of her young son, whom she had left behind in the Netherlands. However, her homecoming was tragically short-lived. Mary contracted smallpox and died at Whitehall Palace on 24 December 1660 at the age of 29. She was buried in Westminster Abbey next to her brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who had also succumbed to the disease just a few months earlier.

In 1940, the Blitz raged over the skies of London as the Luftwaffe attempted to carry out Hitler’s threat to destroy the capital. Numerous incendiary bombs fell on the roofs of Kensington Palace, but most were quickly extinguished by the palace foreman and the local fire squad. However, on the night of 14 October the fires could not be brought under control and burned for several hours. Fortunately, no lives were lost but the damage was extensive. Several of the private apartments were badly affected, including the residence of Princess Alice of Athlone (the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria) and her husband, the Earl. Their daughter recalled the devastation: ‘Kensington Palace was quite uninhabitable … Our apartments there were in complete chaos. The disastrous fire had destroyed part of our roof and attic rooms … No window frames were left, and all our furniture, books and pictures were heaped higgledy-piggledy in the drawing room and dining rooms … Aunt May [Queen Mary] even came to help wash china …’. In the State Apartments, the roofs of the Queen’s Drawing Room and two small rooms behind were also totally gutted.

Over the following five years there was another seven hits on or near the palace that caused further damage but in the midst of the war, little could be done apart from making the building stable. However, these temporary fixes would be all that protected the palace for decades to come, as King George V ordered that no money be spent on repairing Kensington while many Londoners remained homeless. It was not until June 1949 that the State Apartments were opened to the public again, and only in the 1980s was the last of the damage finally made good.