The original Royal Mews stood at Charing Cross, where Trafalgar Square now lies. For nearly two centuries it housed the royal falcons - prized birds kept caged during their annual moult, which is what "mewing" originally meant. Then in 1534 fire destroyed the Royal Stables in Lomesbury, the area now called Bloomsbury. Henry VIII decided he would relocate the horses to the hawks' building rather than rebuild. The hawks were sent elsewhere. The name stayed. On the "Woodcut" map of London from the 1560s, the Mews can be seen extending back toward what is now Leicester Square. When George I came from Hanover in 1714, he brought his famous cream stallions. They became the iconic horses of British coronations, used until inbreeding in the early twentieth century forced their retirement in 1920.

In the 1760s George III began moving everyday horses to the grounds of Buckingham House, the residence he had acquired in 1762 for his wife. The Riding School, attributed to William Chambers, dates from this period - completed in 1764, with a 54-metre interior where horses are still trained today. The pediment with William Theed's sculptural motifs was added in 1859. When Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and made Buckingham Palace the monarch's principal residence, the Mews followed. By the 1850s nearly two hundred people worked there, most of them living on site with their families. Prince Albert used the back mews to stable his own personal horses. The original Charing Cross site was demolished to make way for Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, which opened in 1838.

The collection is unusual because it remains in use. The Gold State Coach is brought out only for coronations and the most extraordinary state occasions - a four-ton gilt extravaganza built for George III in 1762, said to ride so badly that monarchs have complained about it for over two centuries. The 1902 State Landau, last in a long line of state landaus, was for a long time the newest royal coach until 1988, when W. J. Frecklington - a former Mews employee - delivered the Australian State Coach as a bicentenary gift. The list runs on: the Irish State Coach, the Scottish State Coach, the Glass Coach used for many royal weddings, the Diamond Jubilee State Coach (2014). There are barouches, sociables, broughams, clarences, phaetons, victorias, a rare curricle, and a Louis-Philippe charabanc presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in 1844. Some of these are driven daily.

Edward VII established the first garage at the Mews in the early 1900s. Today the official state cars are all painted in a distinctive black-over-claret livery known as Royal Claret. Two 2012 Jaguar XJ limousines carry the registration plates NGN 1 and NGN 2. Three 2022 Range Rovers wear MYT 1, MYT 2, and MYT 3. There is a State Hearse, commissioned for the funeral of Elizabeth II in 2022. Since 2012 the Mews has acquired electric vehicles - a BMW i3, a BMW 7 Series hybrid, a Nissan van, even a Renault Twizy. The juxtaposition is the point. A working royal household needs to move people from A to B every day, in addition to producing the centuries-old pageantry. The Twizy and the Gold State Coach share a postcode.

The titular head of the Royal Mews is the Master of the Horse - one of the three great officers of the Royal Household, an inherited dignity going back centuries. The executive head is the Crown Equerry, who lives on site and oversees the department. Around fifty people now live and work here, down from the two hundred of Victorian times. For most of the year, the Mews is open to visitors, who walk past the coaches and into the stables. Other Royal Mews exist - Hampton Court, Windsor, Holyrood in Edinburgh - but the one at Buckingham Palace is the operational center. The hawks would not recognize it. The name they gave it has outlasted everything but their feathers.