Frogmore House

The Frogmore estate, half a mile south of Windsor Castle within the grounds of the Home Park, has been under royal ownership since the 16th century and was then leased to a series of Crown tenants. Building on Frogmore House itself did not begin until 1680, for the tenants Anne Aldworth and Thomas May, and work continued until 1684. The design is thought to be the work of Hugh May, an architect employed by Charles II at Windsor Castle and uncle of the tenant Thomas May.

The first royal resident was George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, the illegitimate son of Charles II and Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland. The Duke died in 1716, and his widow went on living at Frogmore until her own death in 1738. A number of tenants followed, among them Edward Walpole, and the arrangement lasted until 1792, when George III bought the house for his wife, Queen Charlotte.

Charlotte used the house as a country retreat for herself and her unmarried daughters, a refuge away from court life where they could pursue their pastimes of painting, drawing, needlework, japanning, reading and botanising. The Queen's interest in botany shows in several of the rooms, including one decorated with painted flowers by the artist Mary Moser. Great attention was paid to the gardens, where she planted Spanish chestnut, laburnum and birch 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 it. Between 1795 and 1804 he enlarged the second floor, added flanking pavilions to the north and south, and extended the building to make room for a new dining room and library. As part of the same development of the gardens, Charlotte had a simpler retreat house built in 1801, now known as Frogmore Cottage. When she died in 1818 she left Frogmore to her daughter Princess Augusta Sophia, who lived there until her death in 1840.

After Augusta Sophia's death, Queen Victoria gave Frogmore to her mother, the Duchess of Kent and Strathern, and during that time the house was subject to a number of alterations. The Duchess's taste differed greatly from Charlotte's, and much of the decoration of the earlier occupation was lost. The house was in regular use between 1841 and the Duchess's death in 1861, with Victoria a frequent visitor and a number of private family functions held there. The Queen wrote of it: "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!" The Duchess's large mausoleum stands in the estate's 33 acre gardens.

Frogmore was used only intermittently for the rest of the 19th century. Princess Alexandra, then Princess of Wales, gave birth to her first child, Prince Albert Victor, at the house in 1864, after which it became the home of Princess Helena, third daughter of Queen Victoria, and her husband Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. Helena and her husband moved to Cumberland Lodge in 1872. The house has been largely unoccupied since that year, though it was occasionally used as a retreat into the early 20th century.

Queen Victoria's great-grandson Louis Mountbatten was born on the estate in 1900, and from 1902 to 1910 the Prince and Princess of Wales, later King George V and Queen Mary, were frequent residents. Mary often stayed at Frogmore early in her marriage, and from 1925 until her death in 1953 she collected and arranged souvenirs of the royal family in the house, describing it as "a 'family' souvenir museum as well as a museum of 'bygones' and of interesting odds and ends."

During those same years, George V allowed his first cousin Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, who had escaped the Russian February Revolution, to live at Frogmore Cottage by 1925; she was "very grateful" that her cousin let her stay. By March 1937 she had moved on to Wilderness House in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace.

The house underwent extensive restoration during the 1980s, in the course of which the lost early 18th-century wall paintings by Louis Laguerre were revealed. Work was also carried out on the Green Pavilion in an effort to return it to its appearance under Queen Charlotte, and on the cornice, dado and chimneypiece, which keep Wyatt's characteristically crisp detailing. By the time the work was completed in 1990 it had cost a total of 2.5 million pounds.

In 1997, after the decommissioning of the royal yacht Britannia, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, furnished what had been Queen Charlotte's library and the Duchess of York's dining room with a selection of items from the vessel, among them a mahogany table built for Britannia in about 1950. The house has gone on being used by the royal family for entertaining: the wedding reception for the Queen's grandson Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly was held there in May 2008, and that for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018; the wedding of Lady Gabriella Windsor and Thomas Kingston followed there in May 2019.

Frogmore House is owned by the Crown Estate and has been a Grade I listed building since October 1975. Since 1928 most members of the royal family, other than sovereigns and their consorts, have been interred at the Royal Burial Ground on the Frogmore estate. The house itself is used by the royal family to host both private and official events.