Crown Estate
The Crown Estate is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British monarch as a corporation sole, making it "the sovereign's public estate", which is neither government property nor part of the monarch's priv ...
. It is a historic Grade I listed building. The house is located on the Frogmore estate, which is situated within the grounds of the
Home Park
Home Park is a football stadium in Plymouth, England. The ground has been the home of Football League One club Plymouth Argyle since 1901.Windsor,
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...
. Half a mile (800 m) south of Windsor Castle, Frogmore was let to a number of tenants until the late 18th century, when it was used intermittently as a residence for several members of the British royal family.
Queen Charlotte
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Sophia Charlotte; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was Queen of Great Britain and of Ireland as the wife of King George III from their marriage on 8 September 1761 until the union of the two kingdoms ...
spent much time on the estate, and it was later the home of Queen Victoria's mother. Although occasionally used as a retreat into the early 20th century, the house has been largely unoccupied since 1872. Queen Mary often stayed there early in her marriage and for the rest of her life took a special interest in furnishing the house with family mementos. Keepsakes from the royal yacht HMY ''Britannia'' were placed there in the late 20th century by Prince Philip. In the 21st century, it is used by the royal family to host both private and official events.
History
Early tenants
The Frogmore estate has been under royal ownership since the 16th century and was then leased to a series of
Crown
A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...
tenants. Construction on Frogmore House was not begun until 1680 for tenants Anne Aldworth and Thomas May. Work continued until 1684 and is thought to be the work of
Hugh May
Hugh May (1621 – 21 February 1684) was an English architect in the period after the Restoration of King Charles II. He worked in the era which fell between the first introduction of Palladianism into England by Inigo Jones, and the full flower ...
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, Countess of Castlemaine (née Barbara Villiers, – 9 October 1709), was an English royal mistress of the Villiers family and perhaps the most notorious of the many mistresses of King Charles II of Eng ...
. The duke died in 1716, but his wife continued to live at Frogmore until her death in 1738. There were a number of successive tenants, including
Edward Walpole
Sir Edward Walpole KB PC (Ire) (1706 – 12 January 1784) was a British politician, and a younger son of Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742.
Early life
The second son of Sir Robert Walpole, he was educated at Eton (1718) a ...
, until 1792 when
George III
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
purchased the house for his wife,
Queen Charlotte
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Sophia Charlotte; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was Queen of Great Britain and of Ireland as the wife of King George III from their marriage on 8 September 1761 until the union of the two kingdoms ...
.
Royal retreat
Queen Charlotte used the house as a country retreat for herself and her unmarried daughters. They used Frogmore as a "refuge" away from court life where they could practise their pastimes of "painting, drawing, needlework,
japanning
Japanning is a type of finish that originated as a European imitation of East Asian lacquerwork. It was first used on furniture, but was later much used on small items in metal. The word originated in the 17th century. American work, with ...
, reading and 'botanising'". The Queen's interest in botany is reflected in a number of the rooms at Frogmore, including a room decorated with painted flowers by the artist
Mary Moser
Mary Moser (27 October 1744 – 2 May 1819) was an English painter and one of the most celebrated female artists of 18th-century Britain. One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768 (along with Angelica Kauffman), Mose ...
. Great attention was paid to the gardens, where the queen planted a number of Spanish chestnut, laburnum and birch trees and installed a number of follies.
The house was in good condition, but to make it fit for royal inhabitants, James Wyatt was employed to enlarge and modernise Frogmore House. Between 1795 and 1804, Wyatt enlarged the second floor, added flanking pavilions to the north and south of the house and extended to make room for a new dining room and library. As part of developing Frogmore's gardens, Queen Charlotte had built a simpler retreat house in 1801, now known as
Frogmore Cottage
Frogmore Cottage is a historic Grade II listed home on the Frogmore estate, which is part of Home Park in Windsor, England. Built in 1801 at the direction of Queen Charlotte in the gardens near Frogmore House, Frogmore Cottage is part of the ...
. When Charlotte died in 1818, she left the house to her daughter Princess Augusta Sophia, who lived there until her death in 1840.
File:Frogmore House, Dining Room, by Charles Wild, 1819 - royal coll 922119 257039 ORI 0 0.jpg, The Dining Room, 1819
File:Frogmore House, Japan Room, by Charles Wild, 1819 - royal coll 922122 257046 ORI 0 0.jpg, The Japan Room, 1819
File:Frogmore House, Queen's Library, by Charles Wild, 1817 - royal coll 922120 257041 ORI 0 0.jpg, The Queen's Library, 1817
File:Frogmore House, Green Pavilion, by Charles Wild, 1817 - royal coll 922121 257043 ORI 0 0.jpg, The Green Pavilion, 1817
Following Augusta Sophia's death, Queen Victoria gave Frogmore to her mother, the
Duchess of Kent
Duchess of Kent is the principal courtesy title used by the wife of the Duke of Kent. There have been four titles referring to Kent since the 18th century. The current duchess is Katharine, the wife of Prince Edward. He inherited the dukedom o ...
. During this time, the house was subject to a number of alterations. The Duchess's taste differed greatly from Queen Charlotte's and much of the decoration from her time was lost. The house was used regularly between 1841 and the death of the Duchess of Kent in 1861, with Queen Victoria often visiting and a number of private family functions being held there. Victoria wrote of the house: "All is peace and quiet and you only hear the hum of the bees, the singing of the birds and the occasional crowing and cackling from the Poultry Yard!"
Recent history
Frogmore was used intermittently for the remainder of the 19th century. Princess Alexandra (then Princess of Wales) gave birth to her first child (
Prince Albert Victor
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (Albert Victor Christian Edward; 8 January 1864 – 14 January 1892) was the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and grandson of the re ...
Cumberland Lodge
Cumberland Lodge is a 17th-century Grade II listed country house in Windsor Great Park 3.5 miles south of Windsor Castle. Since 1947 it has been occupied by the charitable foundation known as Cumberland Lodge, which holds residential conferences ...
in 1872. Queen Victoria's great-grandson
Louis Mountbatten
Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British naval officer, colonial administrator and close relative of the British royal family. Mountbatten, who was of Germa ...
was born on the estate in 1900. From 1902 to 1910, the Prince and Princess of Wales (later
George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Quee ...
and Queen Mary) were frequent residents. From 1925 until her death in 1953, Mary collected and arranged in the house souvenirs of the Royal Family, describing it as "a 'family' souvenir museum as well as a museum of 'bygones' and of interesting odds and ends."
During this time, George V allowed his first cousin Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia to live at
Frogmore Cottage
Frogmore Cottage is a historic Grade II listed home on the Frogmore estate, which is part of Home Park in Windsor, England. Built in 1801 at the direction of Queen Charlotte in the gardens near Frogmore House, Frogmore Cottage is part of the ...
by 1925 when she was escaping the Russian
February Revolution
The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...
. Xenia was "very grateful" that her cousin let her stay at Frogmore. By March 1937, Xenia had moved from Frogmore Cottage to Wilderness House in the grounds of
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. The building of the palace began in 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the chief ...
. Since 1928, most members of the Royal Family, except for sovereigns and their consorts, have been interred at the
Royal Burial Ground
The Royal Burial Ground is a cemetery used by the British royal family. Consecrated on 23 October 1928 by the Bishop of Oxford, it is adjacent to the Royal Mausoleum, which was built in 1862 to house the tomb of Queen Victoria and Prince Alb ...
, on the Frogmore Estate.
In 1997, following the decommissioning of the Royal Yacht ''Britannia'', Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, furnished what had previously been Queen Charlotte's library and the Duchess of York's dining room with a selection of items from the vessel. This included a mahogany table constructed for ''Britannia'' c. 1950.
The house continued to be used by the royal family for entertaining and it was used as a venue for the
wedding reception
A wedding reception is a party usually held after the completion of a marriage ceremony as hospitality for those who have attended the wedding, hence the name reception: the couple ''receive'' society, in the form of family and friends, for t ...
after the marriage of the Queen's grandson, Peter Phillips, to
Autumn Kelly
Autumn Patricia Phillips (née Kelly; born May 3, 1978) is the Canadian-born former wife of Peter Phillips, who is the son of Anne, Princess Royal and the eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. After gradu ...
in May 2008. In May 2018, it was also used for the reception after the marriage of
Prince Harry
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, (Henry Charles Albert David; born 15 September 1984) is a member of the British royal family. He is the younger son of Charles III and his first wife Diana, Princess of Wales. He is fifth in the line of succe ...
During the 1980s, the house underwent extensive restoration, revealing the lost early 18th-century wall paintings by
Louis Laguerre
Louis Laguerre (1663 – 20 April 1721) was a French decorative painter mainly working in England.
Born in Versailles in 1663 and trained at the Paris Academy under Charles Le Brun, he came to England in 1683, where he first worked with Anto ...
. Work was also done on the ''Green Pavilion'', in an effort to restore it to its appearance during the occupation of Queen Charlotte. Work was done on the cornice, dado and chimneypiece, which retain Wyatt's "characteristically crisp detailing." The restorations cost a total of £2.5 million by the time they were completed in 1990.
Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore
The Royal Mausoleum is a mausoleum for Queen Victoria and her husband Albert, Prince Consort. It is located on the Frogmore estate within the Home Park at Windsor in Berkshire, England. It was listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for En ...