The Royal Mausoleum, the burial place of Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert.
Queen Victoria and her husband had long intended to construct a special resting place for them both, instead of the two of them being buried in one of the traditional resting places of British Royalty, such as Westminster Abbey or St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The mausoleum for the Queen's mother was being constructed at Frogmore in 1861 when Prince Albert died in December of the same year. Within a few days of his death, proposals for the mausoleum were being drawn up by the same designers involved in the Duchess of Kent's Mausoleum: Professor Gruner and A J Humbert.
Work commenced in March 1862. The dome was made by October and the building was consecrated in December 1862, although the decoration was not finished until August 1871. The building is in the form of a Greek cross. The exterior was inspired by Italian Romanesque buildings, the walls are of granite and Portland stone and the roof is covered with Australian copper. The interior decoration is in the style of Albert's favourite painter, Raphael, an example of Victoriana at its most opulent. The interior walls are predominantly in Portuguese red marble, a gift from King Luis I of Portugal, a cousin of both Victoria and Albert, and are inlaid with other marbles from around the World.
The monumental tomb itself was designed by Baron Carlo Marochetti. It features recumbent marble effigies of the Queen and Prince Albert. The sarcophagus was made from a single piece of flawless grey Aberdeen granite. The Queen's effigy was made at the same time, but was not put in the mausoleum until after her funeral.
Only Victoria and Albert are interred there, but the mausoleum contains other memorials. Among those is a monument to Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt (1843–1878), Victoria's second daughter, who died of diphtheria shortly after her youngest daughter May (1874–1878). In the centre of the chapel is a monument to Edward, Duke of Kent, Victoria's father. He died in 1820 and is buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor.
One of the sculptures is of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Saxon Dress, commissioned after Prince Albert's death and executed by William Theed (1804–91). It was unveiled on 20 May 1867 in Windsor Castle, and was moved to the Royal Mausoleum in 1938. The plaster model, which was exhibited in 1868 at the Royal Academy of Arts, is on loan from the Royal Collection to the National Portrait Gallery, London. The official guidebook includes an image of the sculpture (but not of the pedestal), and mentions that the Queen recorded in her diary that the idea for it came from Victoria, Princess Royal (her eldest child) and that the inscription on the plinth is a quotation from The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith. The inscription on the plinth alludes to the poet's lament for the passing of the imagined village of 'Sweet Auburn'.
The building is structurally unsound with the foundations having become waterlogged and the lower elements of the building beginning to disintegrate with paint and plaster peeling off the walls. It has been closed to the public since 2007. As of 2011, it was unknown how long the repairs would take. In February 2018, the Royal Household finally announced it was undertaking work on the mausoleum - drying it out - in order to be able reopen it to the public; it is expected the work will be complete by 2023. Work finally commenced in June 2018, with a deep trench being dug out around the building to create a dry moat to allow the stonework to begin drying out. With the long dry Summer that occurred in 2018, this will have benefitted that process. The leaking roof, drainpipes and windows will also be repaired/replaced before the internal restoration can commence.
