In October of 2018, authorities had ordered the renovation of the Vanburgh Bridge or famously known as the Grand Bridge, which is a major part of the Blenheim Palace Estate in Oxfordshire, England.
The Blenheim Palace is considered to be the finest view in England. But when the renovation started, workers discovered something that was never known about the palace for hundreds of years.
After investing £12 million to improve the condition of the bridge, what the experts discovered left them speechless and they were taken aback that such a huge secret was hidden from the public for so long.
Blenheim Palace has been the birthplace of Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. The palace holds a lot of significance in terms of the history of England.
The Palace was built in the early 18th century when the French emerged victorious in the war of the Spanish Succession that continued from 1701 to 1714 for the question as to who would succeed Charles II as the king of the country.
The palace was a gift to John Churchill who was the first Duke of Marlborough. Queen Anne had granted John Churchill's family the royal manor to commemorate Churchill's achievements as he was the commander to have led the Allied Forces in the battle of Blenheim in 1704.
The Blenheim Palace is the only palace in England which belongs to a non-royal family and still holds the title of being a Palace. But what it holds as a hidden treasure is something not even the family living there knew about.
The Grand Bridge, also known as the Vanbrugh Bridge was not just built as any other normal bridge. It was planned and intended to be built as something much more than just a bridge in the estate of Blenheim.
The bridge was thought of, planned and designed all by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1708 and the work finished in 1710. But little did Sir John Vanbrugh know what was to happen to him next after he had planned the bridge.
Sarah Churchill, the first duchess of Marlborough was not impressed with Vanbrugh's plan. She thought that the plan and the architecture were unnecessarily expensive and cost a lot of money.
Vanbrugh was banned from Blenheim altogether by the Duchess. He had planned and designed the bridge for nothing. And after he was banned, his secret of what was beneath the bridge went with him.
In 1768, the gardener and architect of the Palace, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown planned a project wherein he got workers to bring 160-acre sets of lakes to the grounds of the palace, which hid inside it something vast and huge which has never been exposed..until recently.
The Great Bridge covers two lakes of Blenheim Palace, which are at the risk of being dried out for the first time, and might even make the bridge unstable because of the dryness of the lakes. To save it, the lakes will be drained for the first time in 250 years.
To save the bridge, workers decided to dredge 400,000 tonnes of sediments in the hope to return the water of the river to its original height. But before that could happen, there was going to be a revelation too big.
The involvement of the estate to plan the renovation of the river was essential because otherwise, the river would have vanished in the coming ten years period of time and England would lose its finest view. But it was all going to change very soon.
To see what the bridge would be like if there was no water at all in the lakes, experts planned to lower the water level by six and a half feet and groundwater wells and siphons were installed to operate. But this operation would also reveal the hidden secret.
The Palace has been much more than a place to live for Churchill and his family and much more than a tourist attraction. During the first World War, Blenheim Palace was used as a convalescence hospital for all the brave soldiers who were wounded in the war.
During the second World War, between 1939 and 1940, Malvern College was to be evacuated due to security purposes for the safety of the students and more than 400 boys were evacuated to the Palace where even their classes took place for one year.
The beautiful and eye-catching Palace was not opened for public entrance into the premises until 1950. But nobody has ever known about what is hidden under the bridge on which thousands and millions of tourists have been.
Lancelot 'Capability' Brown was so named because of his clients. He would convince clients of the great so-called 'capability' that their estates had for improvements in their landscapes. He is considered one of the greatest gardeners England ever had.
Brown would altogether change the 18th-century look of the house gardens and convert them to something else. That is what he did to Blenheim Palace as well. He would remove all "formal planting" and would replace it with a so-called idealized "natural landscape".
The garden at Blenheim is the most significant landscape among the works of Capability's career, which is also considered the pinnacle of his career history. And since then there has been a secret hiding under the deep water of the lakes.
The Palace is the home to the 11th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough in the present. When the work came into progress to save the bridge, it revealed something so huge that every archeologist was stunned.
When the archeologists lowered the level of water to examine the rigidity of the bridge, they made the discovery of a lifetime, which everyone was unaware of. Under the bridge, hidden inside the lakes' water were thirty secretive rooms!
Brown had flooded these thirty rooms and nobody ever knew about them. The walls of all the rooms were plastered which meant that humans used to live in them. A lot of owned stuff was also found in the rooms, which was years old.
When Vanbrugh said he wanted to make the "viaduct habitable", he meant to do so with the thirty rooms that he built under the bridge, which still have eerie remains that belonged to the people who had their homes in those rooms.
It was unbelievable to see belongings like chimneys, fireplaces, and cooking assortments hidden underwater for more than a quarter of a millennium. The team has also found secret tunnels in the rooms.
Archeologists also found sunken boats under the water and the walls had graffiti on them, probably dated back to 1756, where on one of the wells is the name W Baker imbibed, who must have been a worker.
A very distinct thing found by the experts was the remains of a motorized punt which was from the 1930s. The experts say that it must have been accessible to boats in the early 20th century.
A spokesperson for Blenheim Palace commented, "Many of the rooms, especially the lower rooms, haven't been accessed since they were flooded. That is until now. It is cavernous inside. When you see things like sunken boats inside it is like time has stood still."
The spokesperson also told, "We don't know what the two tunnels we have found were built for and where they lead to as they are blocked off after about 30 meters. They are 1.5-meters high which would suggest they were not designed for people. We haven't yet been able to identify the names graffitied on the walls but the assumption is that they were workmen here."
The work for the bridge has been costing a huge amount of money since it was planned and put into action. The dredging of the lake alone had cost £6 million. The repair work of the bridge would cost £3.5 million.
The slits in the man-made lakes used to build by just 1cm or 2cm every year, which was never a matter of concern. But in 2007, due to extreme weather conditions, the slits rose by 20cm in one year and had been increasing since, causing all the problems.
The flooded rooms are now open and accessible for all tourists to have a view of. The archeological features and the whole sandstone structure would now be visible to everyone, as Lancelot Capability Brown would have thought of originally.
Roy Cox, Blenheim's head of estates commented, "The dredging of Queen's Pool and the repairs to the Grand Bridge are not only our greatest challenge to date but also marks some of the most ambitious stonework and dredging projects ever attempted in the UK."
Cox further said, "After four years of planning it is great to see the first phase of the project begin. If all goes according to schedule this initial investigation will enable us to draw up detailed plans for the main work which is likely to begin towards the end of next year."
The work could not have been ignored or delayed. Roy said, "There is an absolute certainty that, if this work was not done, the view will be lost forever. We have to act to safeguard this iconic landscape for future generations to discover and enjoy."
Nick Baimbridge, the head forester has a picture in the Queen's Pool, clicked in 2017 when the lakes were last seen covered in water before the water levels dropped even further and the lakes were drained for the project.
The Palace was the utmost important place for Churchill who even gave this statement during a public speech once, "At Blenheim, I took two very important decisions; to be born and to marry. I am content with the decision I took on both occasions."
The spokesperson of the Palace also said, "The visionary master landscaper constructed the Great Lake and planted thousands of trees in his ten-year tenure here, engineering a landscape that appears natural but is actually ‘contrived to pleasing effect."
The Blenheim Palace has been a part of UNESCO World Heritage since 1987. Therefore it becomes even more obligatory to preserve the beauty of the Palace and to keep it in the best of conditions at all times.
The secret rooms have really connected us to history. It shows that humans really never change, for example, the graffiti was there even so many years back, and it still prevails. The habits have hardly changed ever since.
The task to recover the bridge and the lakes is no small task. It will be long before the work reaches its final stage. The dredging in itself will take at least two years, and the overall management plan of the Palace is thought to continue for almost a decade to come.