Sandringham House

Sandringham House

Sandringham House is a country house in the parish of Sandringham, Norfolk, England. It is the private home of Elizabeth II, whose father, George VI, and grandfather, George V, both died there. The house is listed as Grade II* and the landscaped gardens, park and woodlands are on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

About Sandringham House in brief

Summary Sandringham HouseSandringham House is a country house in the parish of Sandringham, Norfolk, England. It is the private home of Elizabeth II, whose father, George VI, and grandfather, George V, both died there. The house is listed as Grade II* and the landscaped gardens, park and woodlands are on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. The site has been occupied since Elizabethan times, when a large manor was constructed. This was replaced in 1771 by a Georgian mansion for the owners, the Hoste Henleys. The estate passed to Edward VIII and, at his abdication, as the private property of the monarch, it was purchased by Edward’s brother George VI. In 1977, for her Silver Jubilee, the Queen opened the house and grounds to the public for the first time. Unlike the royal palaces, such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, Sandringingham and Balmoral Castle are the Queen’s private homes. The Queen spends about two months each winter on the Sandringsham Estate, including the anniversary of her father’s death and of her own accession in early February. In the 1960s, plans were drawn up to demolish the house. and replace it with a modern building, but these were not carried out. The current owners are the family of Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Camilla, Countess of Wessex, and their son, Prince Charles, Prince Philip, Prince Harry and Prince William.

The family live in a five-bedroomed mansion on the estate, which was built in the early 19th century in a Jacobean style. The property is on a 20,000-acre estate in the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was the setting of the first Christmas broadcast in 1932, when Queen Elizabeth II broadcast her first televised Christmas message from the country home. In 1771 Cornish Henley cleared the site to build aGeorgian mansion, Sand ring Hall. In 1834, Henry HosteHenley died without issue, and estate was bought by John Motteux, a London merchant. Motteix was without heirs and bequeathed the estate to his third son, Charles Spencer Cowper, together with another Norfolk property in Surrey, to the third son of his close friend, Emily Lambston, the wife of Lord Palmerston. At the time of his death in 1843, Cowper was a bachelor diplomat based in Paris. He undertook extensions to the hall, employing Samuel Sanders Teulon Sanders, who built an elaborate porch and conservatory. In 1870 and 1900, the house was almost completely rebuilt in a style described by Pevsner as \”freneticJacobean\”. Edward also developed the estate,. creating one of the finest shoots in England, and described the house as \”dear old Sand ringham, the place I love better than anywhere else in the world\”.