The great, vaulted banqueting hall at Windsor Castle where Queen Elizabeth and her forebears wined and dined world leaders in opulent style is a burned-out wreck.
Friday's blaze that ripped through the sprawling, hilltop castle west of London that symbolizes Britain's rich royal heritage turned a prized showcase of pomp and circumstance into a pile of smoldering wood and rubble.The ornately carved and plastered roof of the centuries-old St George's Hall lies in a charred mess on the floor of what was one of Britain's most prestigious entertainment venues, where numerous heads of state have been feted at state banquets.
A recent television documentary of Queen Elizabeth's working life, broadcast on PBS stations last week to commemorate the 40th year of her reign, showed the full splendor of the 185-foot paneled room during a dinner in honor of Polish President Lech Walesa.
Millions have seen the ornate surroundings and the sheer scale of the banquets, at which 160 people were seated around the world's longest dining table, groaning under the weight of silver cutlery and valuable china.
A firefighter's video Saturday pictured a mass of blackened, twisted timbers and rain pouring in through a gutted roof.
Coats of arms that the queen's ancestors had painted on the plaster walls of the great hall were streaked with soot and tar, and steam from the rain-soaked debris rose up through the roof.
Luckily, the huge mahogany table which ran the length of the narrow, corridorlike chamber had been dismantled and removed because of renovation work in the castle, and the walls of the hall were intact.
The hall, begun by King Edward III to entertain his knights, was remodeled by Edward IV and George IV to become one of the finest chambers in the royal collection of palaces, decorated with statues and suits of armor. It is now the major casualty of "The Great Fire of Windsor."
Elsewhere in the castle flames still flickered through narrow slits in towers designed as lookouts for medieval archers.
In one wrecked state room, a battered chandelier hangs precariously from a ceiling gaping with holes. In the Grand Reception Room, a single vase presented to Queen Victoria by a Russian czar in 1844 stands unscathed on a window sill amid the fire-blackened wreckage.