00:00Friday, 20 de November, 1992,
00:03a work light, which had been left too close to a curtain,
00:06started a fire inside the Queen's private chapel at Windsor Castle.
00:11Within minutes, the 300-year-old room was ablaze.
00:15The fire moved through the crimson drawing room in St. George's Hall
00:18and showed no signs of slowing.
00:23The following morning, the full scale of the disaster became apparent.
00:26One hundred rooms had been damaged, nine completely gutted.
00:34In reality, the Queen doesn't own Windsor or any of the other royal palaces and estates.
00:41After her coronation, she, like every monarch for the last 200 years,
00:45signed a contract handing over all crown lands and buildings
00:49and their vast rental income to the government for the rest of her life.
00:52In return, she receives a large annual allowance.
01:01So legally, Windsor is the taxpayer's responsibility.
01:06But with the family's reputation at its lowest levels in a generation,
01:10the public didn't care.
01:11I used to like them a lot at one time, but now each time you read all what's going on,
01:18you think, well, you've gone right off of them.
01:19I think a whole lot of them should be strung up.
01:22Who do you think should pay for the restoration?
01:24Not the public.
01:25Why should we pay?
01:26Government don't pay, we pay.
01:29The Queen realised she needed to act.
01:31She needed to rebuild both Windsor and the reputation of the monarchy, and fast.
01:36A week after the fire, the Queen called a secret meeting of key family members and trusted advisers.
01:43They formed what's known as the Way Ahead Group.
01:48The meeting of the Way Ahead Group ended with a plan.
01:54Insisting that the taxpayers foot the bill for the fire was now out of the question.
01:58Instead, the Queen offered to raise the money by opening up her London headquarters to paying visitors.
02:03In August 1993, just eight months after the fire at Windsor Castle,
02:11Buckingham Palace opened its doors to paying visitors for the first time.
02:14Tickets please and a guidebook please.
02:17It was an enormous success.
02:20Nearly 400,000 people paid $10 a ticket to take the tour.
02:26Money was pouring into the Windsor Restoration Fund.
02:29Two years after the devastating fire at Windsor Castle, a huge restoration program began.
02:36And hundreds of craftsmen were working to return it to its former glory.
02:40Five years to the day after the fire that had destroyed it, the restoration of Windsor Castle was complete.
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