PICTURED: Inside the Eltham Palace time machine as five new rooms opened

Following its £1.7m restoration, if you haven't been there for a while now could be a great time to revisit it and, if you've never been, what's wrong with you?

English Heritage have been hard at work, recreating the building's luxury wartime bunker, a walk-in wardrobe including a 1930s tennis outfit and green velvet driving coat, plus a basement billiards room where you can take in a quick game.

Perhaps most excitingly, a magnificent map room has been revealed for the very first time, with white paint and wallpaper being painstakingly removed by conservators from the walls to reveal maps of the Middle East, Europe and South America which the rich family who owned it used to plan their holidays.

But these new attractions are just added splendour to what was already an impressive building - a rare example of a 1930s art deco mansion combined with a medieval and Tudor royal palace - of which the Great Hall still survives and where Henry VIII once played as a child.

What we see today is down to the work of Stephen and Virginia Courtauld - rich textile magnates who bought the old palace in the 1930s and then transformed it - a controversial move at the time.

English Heritage chief executive Simon Thurley explained: "People were absolutely horrified. People don't like change and people definitely didn't like change here because the charm of this place had always been its collapsing nature. The great hall had always been a kind of cow barn."

Yet, despite fears by the press that "ghastly modern architecture" would take over, the finished building would later be praised for its cutting edge design, including the imposing Swedish entrance hall, and use of new technology like electric clocks, a loudspeaker system and centralized vacuum cleaner.

Mr Thurley said: "It's actually a real masterpiece of the incredible period just before the Second World war, a period where, for this family, money was really no object. Fun was really the order of the day."

He went on: "We've man aged to take this place on to a new plain. I just feel it's so much easier to get close to the people who actually lived here."

The bedrooms of Virginia's nephews have been restored - including the room of Paul Peirano a naval flyer whose Second World war death led his grieving aunt to keep his flying helmet under her bed for some time afterwards.

Downstairs, an old bunker room, whose guest once included cabinet minister Rab Butler is now on display.

And there's also an interactive children's tour exploring the stories of animals who lived there, including the family's pet lemur Mah-Jongg who had his own bedroom and who pops up in several parts of the building.

Then of course there are the beautiful grounds - the result of the family buying up land around the place to stop suburban housing encroaching upon it. Even today, it's easy to forget Mottingham and Eltham lie just outside.

Eltham Palace and Gardens is open Sundays to Thursdays. Visit english-heritage.org.uk/eltham or call 020 8294 2548 for details.