Under the floorboards

A decade of restoration work at Buckingham Palace has turned up lost and discarded items going back to the 1800s, hidden beneath floors and set into the building's own fabric.

Everyday things, not treasure

Blank Littlewoods pools slips from 1957, battered black hobnail boots, an empty Silk Cut packet, and a scrap of 1889 West End theatre listings from the Standard.

A £370m rewire

The finds came out of a ten-year, £370m reservicing job: new electrics, plumbing and heating, and an infrastructure overhaul meant to stop long-term damage. It finishes next year.

Two kilometres of fire risk

Vulcanised Indian Rubber cabling, which turns brittle with age and could have set the palace alight, was pulled out first when work began in 2017. About 1.2 miles is gone so far.

Sixpence for a card game

A ticket to a Royal Household Social Club whist drive, priced 6d and stamped 14 April 1949, was found embedded in a lump of building rock. Elizabeth was still a princess, Charles five months old.

“Royal Household Social Club, Buckingham Palace: A Whist Drive to be held on”

Reading about the robbers

Pages of the Daily Express from 1966 showed inside Durham prison, where the Great Train Robbers were held, stitching mailbags for nine shillings a week.

“the men who were found guilty of stealing a fortune in mailbags spend their week stitching them for nine shillings”

Clockwise, and no smoking

Typed orders for the 1977 Silver Jubilee Diplomatic Corps reception told staff the royals would circle the ballroom clockwise, and to get 350 British guests mingling with the diplomats.

“clockwise direction”