A New Kensington Palace exhibition uncovers the forgotten stories of those who worked at the royal palaces over three hundred years ago. Untold Lives: A Palace at Work, has opened at Kensington Palace, telling the stories of the servants and courtiers who looked after the royal family and their homes.

From pages to cooks, from wetnurses to seamstresses, the lives and contribution of these forgotten figures will be explored in a new exhibition, created by the Historic Royal Palaces.

The exhibition will reveal the breadth and diversity of the roles required to keep the palaces running. From the rat-killer, complete with their own rat-embroidered uniform, to the ‘Groom of the Stool’, who was responsible for looking after the monarch on the toilet.

The exhibition will also focus on the unexpected origins and identities of some of these people, which have been uncovered by its curators during their research. In an age of great change in the form of colonial expansion, religious wars and a fledgling constitutional monarchy, new figures arrived at Court from all over the world. A range of portraits and objects will explore the presence of Black and Asian royal servants and attendants at court.

Untold Lives: A Palace at Work, is included in palace admission.