-One of Britain's most cherished and enigmatic buildings is in danger of crumbling away forever.

It's literally dissolving, that panel.

You give it a rub, it looks like it's almost sand.

-Yeah.

-To save it, there is stone to be hewn... -People might not know it, but we're actually going right underneath some houses at the moment.

-...towers to rebuild... It felt like the whole thing was moving when we were coming up the ladder.

-These minarets do move.

They do tend to sway in the wind.

-...and intricate carvings to restore... So it's all about patience.

-Oh, definitely.

-Were you a patient kid?

-No.

-[ Chuckles ] -...to secure the future of a palace full of some of our most valued treasures.

-The great loves of George's life were music, food, and women, and this place kind of sums all that up.

-From castles to stately homes, Britain boasts some of the world's most glorious buildings... Well, I think it's magnificent.

Nuts but magnificent.

...with hundreds of years of history.

-Why was it hidden under a floorboard?

How did he get there?

-But our heritage is under threat.

-Some of the 300-plus rooms are completely derelict.

-Come with me to see some extraordinary buildings being saved... Look at the scale of this.

It's vast.

...meeting the craftspeople dedicated to their rescue... -59.5 minutes of preparation, 30 seconds of glory.

-...and witnessing the skills and passion needed to keep these incredible places alive... -I'm leaving something behind that's gonna last longer than I am.

It's a good way to make a mark on the world.

-...for us all to visit and enjoy.

[ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ Everyone loves a visit to the seaside, and Brighton has always drawn the great and the good, royalty included.

In the late 18th century, the dandy and decadent Prince Regent, later to become King George IV, made it his home from home.

For him, it was a party town.

One of George's contemporaries wrote that he could drink, wench, and swear like a man who always preferred a girl and a bottle to politics and a sermon.

Plainly a man who enjoyed his R&R, he was looking for somewhere to stay and somewhere to throw a party.

And so he built what has become one of our most beloved, opulent, and quirky buildings.

The Brighton Royal Pavilion has become the iconic symbol of the city and a national treasure.

Just take a look at this magnificently wacky building.

There are influences from all over the world -- from the Far East, the Middle East, from China.

There's minarets, there's onion domes.

What isn't there in this piece of architecture?

Of course, some people would argue that it's the ultimate example of misappropriation of cultures all stuck together in one building.

But I think it's magnificent.

Nuts but magnificent.

♪♪ The Prince Regent originally commissioned a far more modest building -- the Marine Pavilion, built in the 1780s.

But then he wanted something a bit more showy, so in 1815, he asked revered architect John Nash, famous for his work on Buckingham Palace, to pimp the design, adding domes and minarets and enlarging it to create the fantastical version we've come to love today.

The problem is... it's falling down.

♪♪ Let's face it.

It looks like a building that should be somewhere tropical, not on the windswept English coast.

But before any restoration work can begin, the whole of the north end has to be encased in scaffold.

It's odd shaped, it's delicate, and it's the job of Dan Crook and his crew to wrap it.

Having spent some time around the building, it suddenly occurred to me this is not the easiest building in the world to scaffold.

-No.

No, it's not, no.

-Shape-wise, it's incredibly difficult.

-It's -- Yeah, that doesn't help.

But to be honest with you, the majority of it is that you just can't touch anything.

It's just such a fragile stone.

It'll just take a bit more time.

-What's different about this scaffolding?

-Because the roof is so soft, the whole structure is sitting on four towers on the corner of the parapets.

-All the weight goes through them?

-Yeah.

The idea is that that will take the weight of the parapet, spreading it down the whole building.

-So what's the difference between, like, drawing it up on a computer and actually being here putting it up?

-You generally need to be in the zone.

You have to be able to walk around it and be able to read your design.

You have to be able to think on the fly.

-Is there anything you couldn't scaffold?

-No.

No, I don't think there is.

I think I could do anything.

-[ Laughs ] With three miles and tons of scaffold pole in place... the stonemasons can finally see the extent of the damage close up.

Cary Wadey, who's worked on everything from Big Ben to the Tower of London, is the head mason trying to make sense of it all.

-It's a lovely piece of stone here.

-Now, you see a little more damage on the top, can't you, where it's worn away just because of the water?

-Yeah, especially like here, where it runs down.

-Yeah.

-And you can see where it just erodes the stone away.

-Yeah.

It's not so much the erosion, but the fact that they're working on such a complex building that will make their job so difficult.

For starters, they will be taking on the pavilion's famous jali screens, intricate stone lattice carvings, the design of which originate from India.

-And this is what I wanted to show you is the jali screen, where it's really heavily eroded.

-It's literally dissolving, that panel.

You give it a rub, it looks like it's almost sand.

-Yeah, you can see that in just areas it's just crumbling away.

-Why are some stones really badly damaged and others aren't?

-A combination of water damage and wind.

And this being a pierced panel, it just rushes through and wears the stone away naturally.

With stone, you always get this natural caisson, which gives it a good weathered face.

And that's what's worn away.

Here it gets into the more softer stone behind.

-Is that like enamel on your teeth?

You've got like a protective enamel on the front?

-Very similar.

-If you wear that away, you're in trouble with... -Exactly.

Yeah.

It's a very similar process.

-Tell me about some of the shapes, 'cause that looks fairly complex.

What are they called?

-With this, you've got cavettos, which are the moldings which scallop inwards, and then you have ovolos, which scallop outwards.

And then you've got a combination of the fillets running across here, and then you work these into the cusps, which almost form part of the eyes.

-When you can no longer tell your ovolos from your cavettos, you know it's time to call time on the old stone.

The challenge of removing the disintegrating stone screen falls the to masons Sam and Eugene, but it's a delicate operation.

-As long as we take down parts of it and keep an arch underneath all the time, it should support itself right till the end.

And bath stone, it's so soft, so we can use a normal wood saw to cut through small sections.

We don't really want to use the grinders because they won't make it all the way through the stone.

And we don't want to hit it with a hammer because we can't keep the arch shape intact.

-There something in there?

Maybe just put a cut through there.

-Yeah.

♪♪ -Beyond repair, the crumbling stone ends up in the skip.

-I'd like to take it all home probably, but I just can't get it on the train.

[ Chuckles ] -That's all stone that needs replacing, so it's safer in the skip than it is up here.

[ Laughs ] -I still find it odd to see pieces of a historic building ending up in the skip, but what else do you do with it?

Soft bath stone may look beautiful, but it wasn't necessarily the most practical choice.

The design of this pavilion and the materials chosen meant that, long term, it was an expensive building to maintain.

The team may have taken out some of the worst stonework, but the huge challenge of recreating the jali screens and the minarets is just beginning.

♪♪ On the south coast of England, the 350,000 visitors who come to Brighton Pavilion every year might not know that it's disintegrating in front of them.

Now a crack team of stonemasons are trying to save it from the ravages of the weather.

♪♪ Built as a party palace, outside, it's a beautiful mish-mash of influences from India and the Middle East.

If you think the exterior is a little bit ostentatious, this interior is gonna blow your socks off.

Look at it!

Plainly the work of a prince trying to put on a show.

♪♪ Have you ever seen anything like it?

♪♪ Much of this flamboyant display of overstatement has already been restored to its original 1820s glory, from silk wool coverings to silver leaf detailing.

David Beevers, as keeper of the Royal Pavilion, is overseeing its restoration to how the Prince Regent, who became King George IV, would have had it.

So, which room is this?

-Well, this is the saloon, formal reception room, which has been here since 1787.

-The opulence is astounding.

-Yeah.

It is.

-He didn't spare the horses at all, did he?

-No.

No.

It's one of the richest rooms in the building, this, and it's been restored now as it was in 1823.

-Sort of taking it in.

It's an assault on the senses, isn't it?

I mean, I was first struck by all the gold, but I've just noticed that the walls are...silver?

Or what?

-Well, it looks like silver, but in fact it's platinum leaf.

-Extraordinary.

You've got platinum on the wall.

So, did the original silver tarnish?

-Yes, it did, it did.

-What did he do?

-Well, he just replaced it.

-Because he didn't care about money.

-He didn't care about money.

Yeah, it's completely overwhelming.

I mean, it's so rich that it takes the breath away, really.

-It does.

The vases and various different urns and things around the edge, are they originals?

-They're all original to this room, and this is why this room is so extraordinary at this particular moment, because most of the objects here are on a two-year loan from Buckingham Palace.

-Why did they end up at Buckingham Palace?

-They ended up there because when Queen Victoria decided she no longer wanted to live here between 1847 and 1848, everything, absolutely everything, was stripped out of this building, including 40 fireplaces which were jemmied off the walls.

-Returning the Pavilion to its original splendor has been a huge and expensive task.

In the saloon, the silk walls were recreated using an original watercolor to inform the design from which new silks could be woven.

There are 12,000 platinum motifs, all applied individually by hand.

♪♪ In total, to restore this one room, the Pavilion had to raise nearly £400,000.

♪♪ What sort of timescale does something like that take?

-Well, the serious restoration of this room started in about 2008, and it took about 10 years.

-[ Exhales sharply ] It's literally nuts, isn't it?

But extraordinary.

This is how the Prince Regent would have walked in and said, "Yep, this will do for me."

-Yeah.

I mean, George was a wicked old rogue, but there's something about him.

He did everything with such panache.

There was nothing mimsy or half-hearted.

He just went for it hook, line, and sinker.

And I can't quite help admiring that rather.

-But King George was far from popular in his day.

In fact, he's considered to be the most unpopular monarch the country has ever seen and was portrayed as a glutton, a spendthrift, and completely detached from his subjects.

George knew he was absolutely reviled by the public, so much so that he had a tunnel built between the palace and what was the stable block, so he didn't have to encounter anyone.

I might get one of these built to my local corner shop.

[ Chisel banging in distance ] It's now February, and the stonemasons have been on site for four months.

One of their most complicated jobs is to replace the curved stone lattices known as jali screens.

In places, they're literally crumbling to dust, leaving the masons to turn detective in order to recreate them.

-We're making templates for a replacement stone that we have to make.

The other side is so weathered that we need to copy something that's in good condition.

This is supposed to be an exact copy of that one, so it's the closest thing we have to get what it would have looked like.

We always use a 9H pencil because we use them on the stone.

Anything softer... and you're going through like a couple of pencils a -- a couple of pencils a day.

They just wear out.

So we'll have to do it for this whole -- this whole screen, and then send it all off.

-Eugene's initial tracings are sent to London, where it's draftsman Hugh Grace's job to turn them into precise templates.

-The screen is quite big, so it can't be made out of one stone.

It has to be divided up into 28 stones.

So one of the jobs is to work out the size of these individual stones and where the joint lines are going to go.

It's important to get the joints right, 'cause otherwise it's not gonna fit together correctly on site.

On the plotting machine which creates the template, blue lines are cut through and red lines are printed.

The masons will have these templates, and then they apply the templates to the stone and they can carve the stone.

Hopefully, if they follow the templates correctly then it'll all fit together, because it's been fitted together on the computer.

So it should be okay.

[ Chuckles ] Should be.

♪♪ -Recreating the jali screens is just one part of the challenge.

The masons are also trying to save four of the minarets from collapse.

It's a lovely view up here.

-On a day like today, it's amazing.

-[ Laughs ] When the wind's whistling and it's raining, not so much fun.

-Exactly.

-And one of these minarets, which I can see this side and on the far side there, is particularly badly worn.

-Yeah.

Once again, it's wind erosion being how high we are.

It's literally whipping through and just wearing it away.

-Does it move much?

'Cause it felt like the whole thing was moving when we were coming up the ladder.

-Yeah, they do tend to sway in the wind.

Yeah.

So, you can see that's actually moving.

-That is moving.

[ Laughs ] Given the building wobbles and the rain comes in horizontally and you're on the top of buildings quite often, why do you do it?

-To be a stonemason, you need to be passionate.

You need to enjoy your work, enjoy the carving, enjoy the training, and the history of the buildings that you work on.

-I presume though, because it's such a specialist skill, you're well paid for it.

-Nah.

No, we, uh, we get paid less than bricklayers.

-That can't be true.

-It's true.

Absolutely true.

And that's where the passion comes into it.

You wouldn't be a stonemason for the money, but -- -That's nuts!

It's a specialist skill!

That's ridiculous!

-Part and parcel of it.

You get into it because you're passionate about it.

♪♪ -Cary's team of passionate masons is six strong.

With months of work still ahead of them, they'll need a constant supply of new stone.

And that comes through a deep hole 100 miles away near Bath.

Simon Hart is the man in charge.

♪♪ -So this is Hartham Park underground quarry in Corsham, Wiltshire.

It's the oldest operational bath stone mine dating back to the 1920s.

It covers approximately 50 acres, and there's probably over 60 kilometers of passageway here.

We've still got consented reserves of over about a million tons, so it's going to be here for many years to come, yeah.

-The stone is extracted by what can only be described as the mother of all chainsaws.

The blade -- or bar, as it's called -- is 1.7 meters long.

Brian McKinley is the lucky operator of this beast.

-What we're doing is we've got the heading, and a heading normally consists of 10 cuts -- six horizontals, four verticals.

I try and do four lower ones, horizontals.

Flip it over, top horizontal, do that on each side, and then just do the verticals.

-So Brian's just flipping the bar around now, so he's just about to start performing the vertical cuts and get them in place.

So this is quite a critical part of the process.

There is a potential risk that the blocks or stones could actually fall out of the face.

♪♪ -As the huge blade slices through rock like a hot knife through butter... on the surface, you'd be blissfully unaware anything was happening at all.

-At the moment, we're 20 meters below ground, and just above us there's actually houses.

Occasionally we do actually get comments from people up on the surface that they can hear noise coming up through the rock.

-Cuts done, they now need to break the huge blocks away from the rock face.

-And the way we do that is using what's called a hydro bag, which is two sheets of mild steel seam-welded together, and it gives us this pillow effectively.

We're going to push this into one of the cuts, and we're going to inflate it with high-pressure water.

Okay, it's just turning on the bag machine.

Put some pressure into the bag.

When we go up to a maximum of 45 bar, that will take us up to 800 tons thrust, and that will be enough to snap them off at the back.

-It takes five minutes to inflate the bag, and if you've got your fingers in your ears waiting for a loud bang... ♪♪ [ Cracking ] ...think again.

-A lot of people think there's gonna be some sort of explosive force, and there isn't.

You quite often don't hear anything at all.

We can see from the width of this cut that the bag has now snapped the blocks off, so we'll disconnect it, and these blocks will be ready to take out with one of the machines.

-The huge slabs of rock are then winched up and taken to another mill 30 miles away to be cut down to order.

-This is our primary saw, and it will be slicing up the stone into individual slabs.

♪♪ It then gets taken over to our secondary saw over here, and then that starts to be squared up into smaller pieces then, ready to go out to site.

For the Brighton job, it requires about 45 tons of raw material, and that's then being cut up into over 300 individual pieces of stone.

♪♪ -Back on site, the new blocks have arrived.

Each and every one holds the solution to a different problem.

And working 70 feet up, today, masons Ben McKinnell and Asher Dunn are taking on the weathered mullions around the top of the north minaret.

[ Tools clanking ] -At the moment I am cutting out a pretty awkward hole for this stone to go in.

Because it's on the ceiling, essentially, it has to be locked in in a certain way, so it's a little bit more difficult to cut out.

I can't really go too heavy on it either, because the stone is quite old... so if there's any, like, damage inside it or like cavities or cracks or anything like that, I don't want to make any of them worse.

[ Thumping ] Oh, that sound is just... It's like, "Donk, donk, donk, donk."

It'll be alright, I think, but it's just not good for it hitting it, is it?

-No.

-You can hear it, basically.

When you hit the stone, like, healthy stone... [ Clinking ] ...rings.

[ Thumping ] Can you hear the difference?

It makes a dead sound because the vibration's stopped by the opening, basically.

That's right, isn't it, Ben?

[ Clinking ] -Sounds good to me, mate.

-[ Chuckles ] -With freshly carved stones at the ready, the next challenge is to rebuild the pillar where the new pieces can add support to the old.

-Yeah, I'm in.

-Drop it, let it go that way.

-So we're very tight on this side here, so I think it needs a twist around a bit.

-Yeah.

Nice.

-Ready?

-Your side needs to come out, doesn't it?

-Sometimes you want to keep your lines the same to the building.

-If you tilt it a little bit.

-And sometimes you want to try and make it look like it's an older bit of stone, basically.

-This has to come back on Eugene's bit.

-It's a bit of a balancing act 'cause we've got new, new going through against a really old bit of stone here, splitting the difference between what's true to the level and what looks right to the eye.

-Bit more.

Yeah.

That's it.

It's in.

♪♪ -Work on a building like this is glacially slow by the very nature of the skills being practiced.

I'll be back to see the transformation six months' work actually brings to this incredible place.

♪♪ The ongoing work to save the exterior of Brighton Pavilion is painstakingly slow.

Each stone takes days to carve... and there are hundreds to do.

In a place like this, every decision about its restoration has to be carefully considered.

♪♪ I say "in a place like this," but then... there is no other place like this.

♪♪ Well, even a fool like me can see that this is a dining room.

-Well, not a dining room.

In fact, it's a banqueting room.

-This is extraordinary, isn't it?

Absolutely incredible.

From the -- The chandelier is just amazing, and with a huge dragon at the top.

-One of the most splendid chandeliers, perhaps the most splendid chandelier ever made.

It's 30 foot high, weighs a ton.

Made by Perry and Company, the greatest chandelier makers of the time.

-Absolutely extraordinary.

You just -- You can't help looking at a table like this and thinking of all the wild parties and the extraordinary guests that must have sat at this table.

-The great loves of George's life were music, food, and women, and this place kind of sums all that up.

There's nothing like this anywhere in the world.

It's a completely unique work of art.

-The flamboyance of the banqueting room was only matched by the decadence of the feasts it hosted.

Serving George his huge banquets required a very special kitchen, and here it is -- considered one of the greatest of his day.

But there's no point in having a great kitchen if you don't have a great chef.

So George employed the renowned Marie-Antoine Carême, considered the first celebrity chef and probably the world's greatest.

Though George was unpopular, with Carême as his chef, people still wanted to dine with him, if only for the gourmet grub.

I can show you one of his menus here.

It contains 36 main courses and 32 side courses.

If I just run through these here... fillets of game, sliced duck, salmon steaks, mousse of game fowl.

fillet of lamb, rabbit pie, spring chicken.

It goes on and on and on, enough to feed a village for a week.

But this was just one meal.

♪♪ Like the building itself, its contents have to be meticulously taken care of, from silverware on the dining table to the 500 copper pots in the kitchen.

Sandra is the pot polisher extraordinaire.

Sandra, it's kind of mesmerizing watching you do this.

-Thank you.

-[ Chuckles ] But part of the reason it is, is because we sat in a -- in a kitchen full of copper pots, and that you were taking so much time over just one.

-Yeah.

-How long does it take you to do one pot?

-About four or five hours.

-So really, you can only do two a day.

-Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

-Well, that's over a year.

-We try to do it every two years, but it's not always possible.

-Oh, I see, that's the loop.

A two-year loop.

-Yeah.

You need to do it quite slowly.

-Oh, I see.

-Yeah, that's the trick, because it needs to be perfect.

-Do you like doing this?

-Yeah.

It's very satisfying.

-Why is it satisfying?

-Because you can actually see the difference between the shiny part and the part that hasn't been done yet.

-Yeah, you really can.

So this would have been in use when Carême was cooking here?

-Yeah.

You can see that in here as well.

-18-- Oh, yeah.

1817.

-Yeah.

♪♪ -When it comes to saving the silver, it's a whole different ballgame.

That job falls to the Pavilion's conservator, Andrew Thackray.

-This is a wine cooler that's slightly more ornate than what we're used to.

-It's over 200 years old, and every inch of it has to be fully assessed and prepared before it can be worked on.

-There's holes in the handles.

The handles are actually hollow 'cause otherwise it's quite expensive to make all of that out of silver.

And because of the chemical treatment I'm using is going to be -- I'm going to be applying like a liquid, I don't want the liquid to go within inside the metal because it's actually an acid.

So I'm just putting a wax into the recess and then plugging it with a piece of bamboo.

The main cleaning process is using the silver dip to remove the tarnish.

All of this discoloration, this is all supposed to appear like a pale gold color.

This is the silver dip solution.

So, I'll decanter a little bit into here fast.

-For the boffins amongst us, your silver dip basically contains your run-of-the-mill acidified thiourea.

-So, apply it quite liberally... ...and work kind of a section at a time.

The action of bristling it down like this is just to push the silver dip into the recesses.

But in reality, this is mainly the chemical converting the silver sulfide into hydrogen sulfide, which in large quantities is poisonous.

It tends to smell like rotten eggs.

I found chemistry quite difficult at school, but when you're training to do conservation at university, it's just more interesting than when you're at school because it actually applies to actual objects.

Like, you're learning it for a reason.

But, yeah, because it kind of straddles art, science, history, it kind of links those things together.

-There are numerous disciplines in the conservator's repertoire, and as the wine cooler goes under the rinse... -How was your holiday, dear?

[ Chuckles ] -...it seems even hairdressing might be useful too.

-Yeah, I do love it.

Being this close to objects that are this incredible is just, yeah, a great privilege.

You can already start to see some of the decoration coming through.

So the next stage is basically to do the drying.

Another hairdresser's trick.

Two hair dryers.

♪♪ So the lacquering is the final process.

So, get someone the brush.

Not too much.

It's an entirely sort of preventive thing to try to limit the corrosion on the object in the future.

♪♪ All of a sudden the decoration comes out to you.

-If I thought the work on the outside on the stone was slow, there's not much difference inside.

-From start to finish, an object like this will probably take four days.

Just in the banqueting room alone, there's probably around 300 objects.

The task is endless.

♪♪ -An upside to all this work, inside and out, is the opportunity to see parts of the building that very few have ever seen.

Where are we going?

In there?

-So we're going into the onion dome in through this hatch here.

-Okay.

You lead the way.

Adrian Attwood, who's overseeing the restoration, is taking me inside the Pavilion's most iconic feature.

I'm not as lithe as I used to be.

Wow!

Look at this.

-So this is Nash's masterpiece over the saloon.

-We looking at wood beams, or is that iron?

-So these are cast iron beams.

Nash brought cast iron engineering technology to the Pavilion, a very early pioneer, really.

-What's fascinating to me is that not only is this building unique from the outside, it's obviously unique from the inside, too.

Its very skeleton is unique.

-It is.

I mean, it's an illusion, effectively, with state-of-the-art technology and engineering at the time.

-Cast iron and stone don't really work very well together weather-wise, do they?

-No, they don't.

And one of the big problems is water ingress.

If joints are not kept watertight, then the ingress will get into the cast iron and it will corrode.

And to consider that this very geometrically complicated structure is clad with this very, very ornate Indian architecture on the outside, there's a great deal of maintenance that's required on this building to keep this amazing structure in good order.

♪♪ -Outside, the work continues apace as the masons use the precision-printed templates to carve the 28 new stones for the jali screen.

♪♪ Jerry Thomson's been a mason for 30 years, working on buildings like the Houses of Parliament.

Hello, Jerry.

-Oh, hello.

-How you doing?

-Yeah.

Not bad.

Yourself?

-Yeah.

Very good.

Show us what you're up to.

-Okay, so I'm just doing the final process on this molding here now, which is using the bull-nose chisel.

And that makes the actual curve of the design.

So I've already roughed it out, this area here, using a flat chisel.

Now I'm just finishing it off with this now to get the curve.

-And how do you know it's going to come off in little tiny bits rather than a great lump?

-Because I've worked it down to a -- to a level already, so I know that it's pretty much safe there.

So I'll just take off a small amount at a time.

-So it's all about patience?

-Oh, definitely.

Yeah, yeah.

You need a bit of patience for this, yeah.

-Were you a patient kid?

-No.

-[ Laughs ] -I'm not patient now either.

-You're not?

You're not really?

-I mean, even in this, you know, I, um, I have to get into a mindset to do it, really.

That's why I'm out here, not in there with the others.

A bit of banter doesn't really go down that well.

-Does it not?

You don't like to be disturbed?

-No.

-So you're happier with stone people carved into buildings than you are with real people?

-Uh, yeah.

Pretty much.

-[ Chuckles ] Can I have a go?

-Yeah, you can have a go.

Alright, let's have a look.

-See how hard to hit it.

-So do you want to come through here like this?

Just run over that.

You see that lighter there?

You can finish that off if you want.

Just come from both ways, and then you've left your mark.

-Yeah.

Let's hope it isn't too much of a mark.

-Just continue with that there.

You can see where I've started.

-Yeah.

Alright.

So now I'm gonna go gentle at first 'cause I want to know -- Oh, I see.

-Yeah.

-Blimey, that really is.

-It is pretty soft, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Oh, I'm nervous about this.

-No, that's good.

That'll be there for good now.

-I'm barely tapping the end of this.

That's alright, actually, isn't it?

-Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

Do you want to start?

-[ Laughs ] Well, if the TV game goes a bit wrong, I'll be giving you a call.

As six months comes to a close, all that's left is to fit the final carvings onto the building itself.

I can't wait to see the transformation.

♪♪ In Brighton, the stonemasons have been on site at the Royal Pavilion for six months... ♪♪ -And away we go.

-...and are approaching the end of the job.

One of the most difficult parts of the restoration work is replacing the jali screen.

Here we go.

Done.

It'll be made from 28 intricately carved stones, the first of which is now ready to be fixed in place.

So this is piece number one.

-Yeah.

-How does that fit here?

-On our drawing, we've got various hearts that we need to hit.

We're going to mark these on the wall and on the column just so that when we fix everything we know we're hitting the right spots.

So from the bottom of the first stone to that cusp should be 760.

-Getting the first stone right is critical to ensure the screen will fit when they reach the top.

So this is just the first of 28 stones?

-Yeah.

-It's gonna take a long time, isn't it?

-We estimated about a month, but it's gonna be four of us working on it.

-In masonry, nothing happens quickly, but with steely determination and a hard hat full of patience, the team slowly assemble the new screen.

On a good day, they might get two stones in.

[ Seagulls calling ] Two weeks later, they reach a crucial stage.

-We're getting to a point where they're starting to meet each other, so if they have gone in wrong, they're either going to overlap and they won't meet in the middle, or one's going to be higher than the other.

I don't think this way is... This way isn't the right way.

We've done all the measurements we can, and they should line up.

[ Chuckles ] -Combination of perseverance, skill, and constantly checking the plans sees each stone cajoled into place.

-I don't know why, but that's like -- It's hard to the back now.

We're up.

-Yep.

-Masons do tend to fuss about half a mil, like, 60 feet up in the air when no one's ever, ever going to know.

[ Laughs ] Stay there.

[ Chuckles ] ♪♪ -It's mid-summer and eight months since my first visit.

I'm back to see the fruits of everyone's hard work.

♪♪ Look!

No scaffold.

I can't wait to see all of it now that it's unveiled.

Free from the clutches of its metal frame... ...the famous silhouette of this extraordinary building... ...once again dominates the city skyline.

On the roof where the four towering minarets were once worn, weathered, and wobbly... they are now repaired, renewed, and standing proud.

This is the minaret that the lads were working on, and you can see the stone mullions that they replaced.

It looks great.

Absolutely fantastic.

Gentlemen.

Admiring your handiwork?

-Yeah.

-Pleased with it?

-Very pleased.

Yeah.

Yeah.

-I mean, it's very clear which bits you've replaced 'cause of the color difference on the stone, but that will change over time.

-Yeah, it'll weather down nicely and hopefully in time you won't see it too much.

But also some architects like to see the new stone and the old stone and the difference.

-Honest repairs.

-Honest repairs, they call it.

-Is that what they call it?

Honest repairs?

-Yeah.

-I mean, those ones over there are already weathering down on that column.

You can see the color's slightly changing on a few of them.

-Yeah, you can actually, can't you?

So how do you feel walking away from a job like this on such a spectacular building, knowing that you've played your part in keeping it going?

-Yeah, that's why I became a stonemason, really.

To work on buildings like this and, you know, do something that's going to last.

To be part of the history of the building now is, you know, makes you feel good when it's all done.

-And that minaret will stay up now.

We hope.

-[ Chuckles ] We hope.

Fingers crossed.

-Are you a little bit sad that all of your amazing work is actually so far away from the public?

I mean, it's really intricate, really skilled, really important to the well-being of the building, but hardly anybody can see it.

-No.

Unsung heroes.

-You should wear capes.

[ Laughter ] Below the minarets, the old, crumbling jali screen which was on the verge of collapse... ♪♪ ...is reborn... and casting perfectly sculpted shadows on the east wing once more.

Jerry, Eugene, this is your first chance to get a look at your jali screen.

Do you like it?

-Very nice.

Yeah.

-Amazing, you can't actually tell that it's made of several different blocks.

-28 stones.

-Yeah.

You just can't see it at all, can you?

You pleased with the finished job?

-Very pleased, yes.

Very nice indeed.

-What was the most difficult part of it, do you reckon?

-Starting it really.

Once you get into the rhythm of working the stones, it's okay.

But it's the actual start that can be a little bit nerve-wracking.

-Eugene, when we first went round this, I could literally poke my finger through these stones.

The sea air had absolutely destroyed it.

How long till these are gonna be under the same sort of damage?

-Oh.

[ Chuckles ] That is a hard one.

We would hope that we wouldn't have to come back again and do it.

-You'd hope it would outlast your lifetime.

-We'd hope that.

-So, built for a king.

-Yeah.

-Made by artisans like yourself.

-Yeah.

-Who is this palace a tribute to?

Do you think it's a tribute to the Prince Regent, or is it a tribute to the people who actually put this together?

-I'd say it's more to the people that put it together.

He was just here to party, wasn't he?

[ Chuckles ] -Yeah.

-Talking of artisans, there's one more question I have to ask.

You know the bit I did.

-Yeah.

-Is that up there?

-It is, yeah.

-Is it?

-Yeah, it is.

-I genuinely thought you'd throw that away after I'd gone.

-No, no, it's up there.

You see the center joint running right up the middle there?

-Yeah.

-It's one of those stones.

-The one that's slightly off center?

-No, no.

-[ Laughs ] I'm joking.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ Here's the thing about the jali screens.

They really don't belong here.

I mean, they're an Indian design sat in the Sussex countryside.

They're about as likely as a cherry on a shepherd's pie.

But on a day like today, with the sun shining, casting shadows through the fretwork onto the walls, there's something architecturally magical about them.

I think they're lovely.

Once again, the exterior of this extraordinary palace is worthy of its equally incredible interior.

♪♪ ♪♪ What's marvelous about being here at this moment in time is that because Buckingham Palace have lent back all the bits and pieces and all the silver gilt has been polished up.

Here we have a banquet setting as it would have been when this place was first built.

And it is, well, it's sparkly and over the top and beautiful and kind of magnificent, isn't it?

So with the state rooms gleaming again... You don't realize how much gold there is in the place as you go around until suddenly the sun comes out.

-Yeah, yeah.

And then it absolutely glistens.

-...what does keeper of the Pavilion David Beevers see as its future?

With this most recent tranche of restoration, this is getting back to how George would have known it, isn't it, in certain parts of it?

-Yeah, certainly this is as close as it's ever been to what it looked like in George's day.

-Does that mean you can put your feet up now?

You don't -- -Oh, no.

[ Chuckles ] No.

There's a Forth Bridge aspect to this building.

It never, never ceases to need attention.

-What do you think George would have made of this?

Other than kicking me out for being the wrong kind of person to be in here?

[ Laughter ] -Well, I think he'd probably be surprised it's still here.

He got bored with things very quickly.

It was the creation of a masterpiece that interested him, but I'm sure completely delighted as well.

He is the greatest of all royal patrons, and you tend to find that royal extravagance always ends up to the public benefit in the end, because we can enjoy the results.

-So his excesses and his profligacy and all the things that he was hated for in his lifetime have actually resulted in some of our finest buildings that we treasure today?

-Absolutely, yes.

Yeah.

We owe him a great debt.

-Restoring this crazy palace of pleasure was never going to be easy.

I mean, it took 40 years to restore the interior alone.

And despite all the great efforts and skill of the craftsmen who worked on the outside of the building this time, because of the salt air battering in and the rain and the wind, it's going to need constant attention and care.

So is it worth it?

Well, all I can do is tell you this -- I've been lucky enough to come here several times, and if you can find your way to Brighton to see this building, you really should, because there's not another one like it anywhere in the world.

It is absolutely unique.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪