Osborne during the winter may seem quieter but actually under the surface
there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes.
We have a wonderful window into the kind of life Victoria and Albert enjoyed here
and the kind of art that they collected together.
In winter when house is shut, it's a great opportunity to undertake our winter deep clean.
This involves cleaning from top to bottom. very high up at the pelmet boxes, curtains or the
decorative choruses, right down to the floor and carpets.
Today we're going to be cleaning the chandelier in the drawing room.
Each crystal is wiped individually until they shine beautifully. It has about two and
a half thousand crystals per chandelier, so it takes about four hours.
The really unique thing about Osborn is that here, unlike any other royal
residence, one can really get a sense of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Everything here to this day is largely as they left it. Here you can
stand before a painting that Queen Victoria would have looked at herself.
I think that gives one a very close connection with them which is
particularly exciting.
Quite a nice part of the winter clean is being able to work by ourselves in the
rooms working through methodically and once you've got to the end you know
you've cleaned the whole house. People may not notice but you know you've done
it and it's ready to go for the new season.
The winter is really one of our busiest times of year. It's the time when we can
start improving the garden, doing some of the big jobs that we wouldn't necessarily
be able to do with lots of people around.
In winter you can see the structure of the plants. During the springtime the
apple blossoms are amazing. At the moment it looks bare, but during
the spring it is full of flowers and full of scent.
The size of the estate we manage here is around about 350 acres. We have a team of
11 gardeners and we also have help from plenty of volunteers. This time of year
we're pruning the climbing plants just on the outside of the walled garden so
they look their best through the summer.
Over in the walled garden we've been doing plenty of weeding, lots of hoeing. We've also been doing some
potting to bring some plants on in the greenhouses and we've also been putting
some early flowering bulbs on display. It's all about improving the garden.
After all the work that we've done during the winter months,
we're able to fling open the shutters, pull up the blinds, and open the
doors to our visitors at the start of the season and everything is looking
wonderful again.