The Hindu : International : Superstitions at royal palace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 30, 2004

International

International

Superstitions at royal palace

London: King George III might have been horrified to learn that his daughters were sleeping under witchmarks cut into the roof timbers above their heads — charms gouged into the wood, probably by superstitious servants, to keep witches from flying in at the windows or down the chimney. The witchmarks are among the secrets which have been uncovered at Kew Palace, west London, while the most intimate of all the former royal homes is closed for repairs. On Wednesday, the Historic Royal Palaces announced that Kew will reopen in 2006, 10 years after it closed for multi-million pound sterling repairs expected to take a few years. It stands within one of London's most popular attractions, Kew Gardens. Tourists have been clamouring to get into the building, which won fame as part of the setting for the Oscar-winning film "The Madness of King George". The ``palace'' — really a solid redbrick 17th century merchant's house — became virtually a prison for the unhappy King, where he suffered experimental and often excruciating treatments for the hereditary condition porphyria. The closure of the building has given historians a unique opportunity to study the skeleton of the building — which is where curator Lee Prosser found the witchmarks. ``They had been spotted before but dismissed as carpenter's marks, but these are quite different, sun symbols, eye shapes, M-shapes to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary, classic witchmarks — and from exactly the period, and in the positions near the potential points of danger, the door and window entry points, where you would expect to find them,'' he said. - Guardian Newspapers Limted 2004.

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