Renovators restoring Buckingham Palace have uncovered a trove of forgotten personal items hidden for decades beneath floorboards and within the building's fabric, offering a rare glimpse into the lives of past staff and royals. The finds have emerged during a £370 million, decade-long reservicing project to rewire the palace's electrics, upgrade its plumbing and heating, and overhaul its infrastructure, work that began in 2017 and is due for completion next year.

Among the objects recovered are a worn pair of hobnail boots, an empty Silk Cut cigarette packet (Princess Margaret's preferred brand), blank Littlewoods Football Pool betting slips from 1957, and a 1949 ticket to a Royal Household "whist drive" priced at sixpence. Also found were a fragment of 1889 West End theatre listings from the Evening Standard, 1966 newspaper pages about the imprisoned Great Train Robbers, and a typed 1977 schedule for a Silver Jubilee diplomatic reception detailing how the Queen would move round the room. Workers have also stripped out roughly 2km of fire-risk Vulcanised Indian Rubber cabling, equivalent to the length of 40 Olympic swimming pools.