The Queen's Houses

by Alan Titchmarsh

  The second of Albert’s requirements for his eldest son was achieved when the prince married Alexandra of Denmark at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 10 March 1862, in a glittering ceremony marred only by his mother’s determination to cast a pall of gloom over the proceedings (she wrote later, ‘what a sad and dismal ceremony it was!’). After the honeymoon at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight Bertie and Alexandra went to Sandringham to take up residence for ten days in their new house and observe the remedial work then underway. Over the next 50 years they were to transform both the house and the estate into the model of an immaculately run and comfortable Edwardian country house and a first-class agricultural and sporting estate. No expense was to be spared.

  The famous Norwich Gates at Sandringham

  At first they updated the farms and buildings of the estate. A range of houses was built to house the rector of the church, the land agent and head gardener; Lady Cowper’s school and the farms were rebuilt; a new stable range was created and new garden buildings added. New roads were driven through the estate and a carrstone wall was erected around the 300 acres of park and gardens that surrounded the house and culminated at the new Norwich Gates. These spectacular iron gates are surmounted by a plaque bearing The Prince of Wales’s emblem, the three feathers, on one side, and his coat of arms on the other. They had been designed by Thomas Jekyll and given as a wedding gift by the citizens of Norwich and Norfolk.

  Keen country sportsman Edward VII out with his shooting parties

  However, it was soon evident the house itself was too small. With the size of Bertie’s household and the number of servants required to service his numerous guests, many more bedrooms than the 29 existing ones, and other facilities, were urgently needed. For a time his advisers attempted to stop his grandiose ideas – the prospect of the cost required to build an entirely new palace appalled them. And so the house was initially added to, piecemeal. In due course a cryptic note appears in The Prince’s diary (he was never effusive) recording a meeting where the subject for discussion was whether to continue adding to the house or build an entirely new one. The laconic entry notes the latter course was decided on.

  Albert Jenkins Humbert, an architect who specialized in building churches (ten years earlier, in 1854, he had begun Whippingham Church on the Isle of Wight, close to Osborne House, for Prince Albert), was retained to add the necessary space. His initial plans and elevations show a curious, truncated, Jacobean, Dutch-gabled redbrick house with twin towers linked to Teulon’s conservatory; the new house was to be at a right angle to the conservatory and the main house. The plans evolved as the decision was taken to demolish the old house and completely rebuild it, although Teulon’s conservatory was to be retained at The Prince’s insistence. A plaque in Gothic script recording the completion of the house was erected above the front door, where it still hangs: ‘This house was built by Albert Edward Prince of Wales and Alexandra his wife in the year of our Lord 1870.’

  The Prince and Princess of Wales with their dogs, 1893

  A year after taking possession of the old house, at Christmas 1864, The Prince began the tradition of the Christmas party at Sandringham, which has been adopted enthusiastically by the present royal family. Shooting played a prominent part and the fruits of The Prince’s plans for stocking and breeding pheasants resulted in the kind of ‘bag’ which, in Edwardian times, was regarded as indicative of the health of the estate: over 800 pheasants and hares. After Christmas The Earl of Leicester invited him to shoot at his neighbouring estate, Holkham Hall. Lord Leicester had taken a lead in the newly fashionable sport of driven-pheasant shooting and had created one of the great shooting estates in the country. Men and dogs in a long line beat the cover while walking slowly forwards, so that the birds took off over the guns stationed in front of them. ‘Holkham Time’ was kept 40 minutes ahead of London time to maximize the winter daylight for the guns, a practice The Prince adopted at Sandringham (‘Sandringham Time’, or ‘ST’, was 30 minutes ahead). On her first visit in 1871, Queen Victoria was not amused by this practice, declaring it ‘a wicked lie’. On her second, all the clocks reverted to Greenwich Mean Time for the duration of her visit.

  At Holkham a vast octagonal game larder lined in Derbyshire alabaster with slate shelves and with a cast iron octagonal game rack had been constructed earlier in the century to hold the huge number of birds and animals killed. It was then the largest game larder in the country. The Prince wanted to copy the idea at Sandringham and an even larger octagonal game larder to hold ‘six thousand head’ was in due course erected. A guest describes the game larder:

  ‘The room presents a wonderful sight at the end of a shooting party, when it is well filled with pheasants, partridges, hares, rabbits and wild fowl, which are finally despatched to charitable institutions, to employees on the royal estate, to the different royal households, to the rich, and to the poor, neighbours of the King. No one is forgotten, but not a single head is allowed to be sold.’

  The estate was extensively modified and cultivated to provide the right habitats for partridge, woodcock, pheasant and duck.

  Shortly after it was purchased:

  ‘the estate had comparatively little except the sandy soil to recommend it from a sporting point of view; the coverts were scanty, the cultivation poor – involving much necessary outlay for artificial feeding – the stock of game very limited, and the woods ill-adapted for that system of beating which has now been recognised as mainly important to provide rocketing pheasants, and to impart a true sporting character to a day’s shooting.’

  Top: A photograph of The Prince of Wales’s children at Sandringham, taken by The Queen.

  Above: Edward VII arrives at Sandringham Church, 1901

  Sandringham is now a magnificently managed sporting estate that comes into its own in the shooting season, and in the past the royal family was traditionally in residence between the months of November and February. During his nine years as monarch from 1901, an invitation from Edward VII, as Bertie became, to shoot at Sandringham was one of the most coveted. His hospitality was legendary. A regular guest, the Marquess of Ripon, wrote of him:

  ‘King Edward was an ideal host. His was not the manner of polished civility which is so often merely a cloak for indifference. His extreme courtesy was the outcome not only of good breeding and good taste, but of genuine kindness of heart … When he took his guests round his places – gardens, stud, or farm – his delight lay not in the display of his wonderful possessions, but in the fact of being able to show each person the things which individually interested and pleased him most.’

  He had two shooting parties each week, a Friday to Monday, and a Monday to Friday. The former would include a cleric for the Sunday service and some eminent politicians as well as a selection of celebrities who amused him, but never more than ten guns were allowed on any shoot. The other party would comprise perhaps a foreign dignitary and his suite, aristocrats and The King’s personal cronies.

  We have an anonymous guest to thank for a record of his time as an invited ‘gun’. Arriving by Royal Train at Wolferton station on the branch line from King’s Lynn, carriages and baggage wagons awaited the guests. ‘Outer wraps’ were removed by footmen on arrival and in the spacious hall, ‘you are received with the distinguished grace and courtesy for which the royal host and hostess are so justly celebrated’. The shooting was eagerly awaited as for The King the ‘preserves [parcels of land specifically given over to the raising of game for shooting] are his great hobby’ and at Sandringham ‘are among the finest and best stocked in the kingdom’. The statistics are impressive, if rather eye-watering by today’s standards. Between 1878 and 1888 the bag ran between 6,831 to 8,640 head killed per annum. For the next roughly 20 years the bag ran from 10,000 to 20,000 head per annum of which never less than two-thirds were pheasants. The ‘Sandringham Game Book’ records it all with meticulous precision.

  Breakfast was at 9.30 ST (Sandringham Time). The royal family breakfaste
d in their own rooms. Shooting commenced at ten (the breakfast must have been consumed at speed) and ended at four. The King, seated on his one-legged shooting stool, which gave him ‘the appearance of being seated in the air’, told ‘good-natured jokes’ during the waits. At about 11 o’clock some 40 beaters, ‘looking picturesque in their blue blouses and low felt hats trimmed with royal scarlet, and armed with formidable looking quarterstaffs’, assembled in front of the guns ready for the blast of a horn to signal the beginning of the beat.

  The weekly shooting parties were varied from time to time with ‘big’ shooting days, which were important affairs, held on the birthdays of The King on 9 November and The Queen on 1 December (both happily falling at the height of the shooting season) and during the Christmas holidays. On these days guests might include the Kaiser or The King of Portugal, and a high proportion of expert shots. All work on the tenanted farms and estate had to cease, all machinery to be at a standstill, ‘a complete silence having been secured for miles around’, as shooting took preference and The King would not allow the birds to be disturbed by any noise except that of the beaters. Each member of the party had two loaders and worked with two to four guns so rapid fire was possible. When the Kaiser came to shoot, his loaders and beaters were dressed in gold-laced uniforms. He shot single-handed, as his withered left arm (due to a birth trauma) was about six inches shorter than his right. But he shot ‘with a deadly certainty – as he is one of the surest shots in Europe’, as was his first cousin, the then Prince of Wales, later George V. At a shoot during The King’s birthday week The Prince killed two partridges in an outstanding display of shooting: ‘two cocks, right and left – a feat, needless to say, opportunity for which can rarely arise, and then it is long odds against its accomplishment’.

  Queen Victoria visits Sandringham, 1889

  On these big shooting days ‘the Queen, the Princess of Wales, the Princesses, and any other lady visitors invariably grace the shooters’ luncheon tent with their presence’. Lunch was always at one o’clock and was served hot (it would be interesting to know how the catering staff did that, if it was a tented lunch): an Irish stew, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or boiled beef and batter pudding. If the rabbit warrens were the shooting venue, the rooms added to Wolferton station would be the lunch venue or occasionally the party would take over one of the estate farmhouses – due notice having been served on the tenant – or a marquee erected. The beaters, maybe 100 in number on big shooting days, would wear blue blouses with lace fronts, each with a number on his chest and soft felt hats encircled by blue or red bands. The King and The Prince of Wales would always take outside places so the guests would have the best of the shooting. The King had, in his gunroom, one of the finest private collections of guns in the world.

  Illness and Edward VII’s return to favour

  Back in 1871 at Sandringham for Easter, the future Queen Alexandra went into premature labour and gave birth to an infant son, six weeks early. He failed to thrive and was quickly baptized. Prince John died at just over a day old and was buried at Sandringham Church, Bertie weeping throughout the service. Alexandra had given birth to six children in eight years and Prince John was to be their last child. That same year, Queen Victoria’s first visit to Sandringham – when she took such exception to Sandringham Time – was occasioned by the grave illness of The Prince of Wales. Soon after celebrating his thirtieth birthday at Sandringham on 9 November Bertie fell ill, and on 23 November The Queen was informed that he had contracted typhoid fever, the disease that had supposedly felled her beloved Albert almost exactly ten years before (a modern diagnosis points to Crohn’s disease with pneumonia as a complication). On his way to Sandringham from Balmoral where he had been staying with The Queen, The Prince of Wales had visited his friend Lord Londesborough in Yorkshire and several of those visiting at the same time – and their servants – contracted the disease (The Earl of Chesterfield, also in the same party, died from it on 1 December). By 25 November, despite the favourable reports issued from Sandringham by his doctors, ‘the course of the fever continues uncomplicated’, Bertie became very ill.

  When The Queen ordered a special train to take her to Wolferton station on the 29th, it was clear to the nation that the situation was grave. It took Victoria and her party from 11 in the morning, when they left Windsor, until three in the afternoon before the party arrived at Wolferton. Victoria’s entourage immediately swamped the guest accommodation at Sandringham, displacing many to houses nearby and forcing some of those remaining in situ to share beds. The Queen stayed a few days, until The Prince regained consciousness, before returning to Windsor. On 5 December, The Queen received a telegram which ‘dreadfully alarmed’ her, and she once more ‘started our melancholy journey’ to Sandringham. By 8 December The Prince’s doctors acknowledged ‘a considerable increase in febrile symptoms’ and the next day the headlines read ‘Dangerous Relapse’. The Prince in delirium shouted, sang and threw his pillows at his doctors, imagined he was back at the Curragh Camp – the site of his first sexual trysts with the actress Nellie Clifden – and became so indiscreet The Princess of Wales had to be removed from the room.

  ‘THAT AT ANY MOMENT DEAR BERTIE MIGHT GO OFF, SO THAT I HAD BETTER COME AT ONCE’

  Queen Victoria

  By Sunday 10 December the situation appeared desperate and Dr Jenner accordingly alerted The Queen who reported his message: ‘that at any moment dear Bertie might go off, so that I had better come at once’. On the 11th the immediate family was told to assemble and expect the worst but the days passed with no change until the 13th (the day before the ‘dreadful anniversary’ of Prince Albert’s death) when as a last resort the doctors massaged a mixture of old champagne and brandy into The Prince’s body. Whether as a result, or given his liking for champagne and brandy – in moderation, he was not a heavy drinker and perhaps the heady smell gave him the strength to cling to life – by the next day the worst had passed and The Queen returned to Windsor. She was back again after a relapse on 17 December and again after Christmas on the 27th. It took until the beginning of February 1872 for The Prince to overcome his illness – a long and agonizing recovery both for him and his mother, and, as it transpired, for the country. His groom, however, had died on 1 December, the same day as Lord Chesterfield, and The Princess of Wales paid for his tombstone in Sandringham Churchyard, which bears the inscription: ‘The one is taken, the other left.’

  The length and severity of his illness had a beneficial effect on The Prince’s popularity. His philandering, his love of pleasure and his name being linked to several of the high-profile scandals of the time had severely dented the estimation in which he had been held, with his carriage at Ascot being openly hissed at and booed. The fact that Queen Victoria had hidden herself away from the gaze of her public for so long had also allowed republican sentiments to gain ground. A remarkable reversal in public opinion now occurred: when The Queen and The Prince of Wales attended a Thanksgiving Service in St Paul’s on 27 February 1872 they were besieged by a vast and enthusiastic crowd.

  In April 1889 Queen Victoria paid another visit to Sandringham, on the betrothal of her granddaughter Louise to The Earl of Fife. She wrote of the match: ‘It is a vy brilliant Marriage in a worldly point of view as he is immensely rich.’ Bertie was determined to impress and had gone to great pains to honour the four-day royal visit and to make it a great success, including reverting from Sandringham Time to Greenwich Mean Time. A large crowd attended a decorated Wolferton station, where a triumphal arch had been erected. Driven in an open landau, Victoria was escorted by The Prince of Wales on horseback and 60 members of the hunt, 40 in red coats, and the route was lined with enthusiastic crowds. Two more triumphal arches and a row of ‘Venetian masts’ reaching from the final arch to the main gate had been constructed in her honour. Once at Sandringham she stood at the front door to review the hunt as its members passed by to pay their respects, and a Guard of Honour from the Norfolk Artillery marched past to th
e strains of the regimental band. The new ballroom had been converted into a theatre and a melodrama followed by a scene from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice were performed by some of the best-known actors of the era, including Sir Henry Irving in his celebrated and much-discussed role as Shylock and Ellen Terry as Portia. Victoria, who was never to visit Sandringham again, was impressed: ‘[we] spent a very pleasant time under dear Bertie and Alix’s hospitable roof, and I was greatly touched by all their kindness and affection’.

  Prince Albert ‘Eddy’ Victor and his brother George, 1875

  At the end of October 1891 a fire broke out at Sandringham. In scenes repeated at Windsor over a hundred years later, teams of men repeatedly went into the burning house to rescue paintings, furniture and any other treasures that could be moved, as the pumps of the Sandringham Fire Brigade trained jets of water at the blaze. In due course ceilings fell, but the fire was contained within the top floor. The destruction had apparently been in some way connected with the number of fires that had been lit to air the house in preparation for The Prince of Wales’s fiftieth birthday. The house was patched up, tarpaulined and dried out in time for the birthday celebrations. The Princess, however, did not attend – she had been away visiting her family in Denmark when news of her husband’s involvement in yet another scandal, involving ‘Daisy’ Greville, reached her. She extended her trip abroad to visit her brother-in-law and sister, the Tzar and Tzarina. The day after the party, Prince George, known as Georgy, The Prince of Wales’s second son, afterwards George V, became seriously ill and was sent back to London where – in what must have seemed like history repeating itself yet again – typhoid fever was diagnosed. Fortunately Prince George recovered and returned to Sandringham in December with the rest of the family for the Christmas holidays, still very weak from the after effects.