Visiting Sandringham, the Queen’s Country Home in Norfolk
Sandringham House has been in the news over the past week as the setting for a royal ‘summit’, held to discuss the crisis over Harry and Meghan’s decision to break away from the family firm. Having been to Sandringham as a sightseer, I thought readers might be interested to know what the house and grounds are like, and how to visit them.
Sandringham is in the county of Norfolk, about two-and-a-half hours’ drive from London. The house and gardens are open to the public daily from early April to mid-October. In winter, Sandringham is the Queen’s private country residence and therefore closed to the public, although the country park (243 hectares, mainly woodland) remains open all year. I was lucky enough to see the house and grounds on a private, after-hours tour with only about 30 other guests, which made the experience wonderfully relaxed and exclusive. You can read more about the various options for visiting Sandringham here.
Purchased in 1862 as a family home for the newly married Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), the eighteenth-century ‘Sandringham Hall’ was almost completely rebuilt by 1870 to become the Victorian country house we see today. So, although Sandringham House, as it was renamed, has features that suggest older architectural traditions – such as the impressive Jacobean-style Saloon – in fact this royal residence isn’t particularly old. Nor is it especially grand, as such things go. Although a royal residence, Sandringham isn’t a castle or a palace. It is simply a pretty and very comfortable-looking country house.
It’s not the age or architecture of the house that draws visitors here. They come because of Sandringham’s close personal and domestic association with the last five generations of the British royal family. As you walk through the house, you can see many traces of the habits and personalities of the inhabitants. There’s always a jigsaw puzzle on the go on a side table in the Saloon, which also contains elaborate instruments for measuring wind speed and direction, to help with planning outdoor activities. Tupperware containers of breakfast cereals are set out, somewhat incongruously, in the elegant room where the royals have their morning repast – apparently the Queen is quite thrifty and doesn’t like to see opened packets go stale.
Personalities from the past come to life here too. A beautiful folding screen in the Drawing Room is inset with photographs of visitors who came to the house in the late nineteenth century, including many celebrities of the time such as the poet Lord Tennyson. And a jockey’s weighing chair near the entrance shows how Edward VII measured the success of his hospitality. Guests were weighed upon arrival and departure, and were expected to gain weight during their stay – otherwise all the fine food served was considered to have been a failure!
Sandringham is much more than a house. It’s also an agricultural estate of nearly 3,000 hectares, which includes lavender fields, apple orchards and a horse stud. The grounds include about 25 hectares of beautifully landscaped gardens, and these are well worth visiting, regardless of whether you have any interest in British royalty or not. The gardens have been open to the public since 1908 – a great example of how the privilege of a few can become a benefit to many. During my visit, on an evening in late summer, I loved seeing the rich greenery of the gardens and woodlands, the luxuriant flower meadows and the reflections of house and sky in the lake. In fact, for me the gardens were more memorable than the house, so don’t miss these by any means.
If you’re planning to be in the UK in July (this year, or any year), you might consider making the Sandringham Flower Show part of your itinerary. 2020 will mark the 139th SFS, which makes the event quite a bit older than the more famous Chelsea Flower Show, held in London each May. Another way to experience the Sandringham estate is to stay onsite, either in a self-catering cottage or at a campground; see here for more information.
I find it significant that the ‘Megxit’ summit was held at Sandringham. Of course it makes sense that, this being the Queens’ winter residence, a January meeting would take place here, but I believe there could be more to it. Unlike grander royal residences such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, Sandringham is a beloved family home for the Queen and her close relatives. Maybe holding the summit here was meant to remind Prince Harry of his family ties, at a personal level? Another interesting connection is that his mother, Princess Diana, was born and spent her early childhood at a house on the estate. Who knows what emotional connections were evoked by the summons to this particular royal residence?
Did you know?
The ‘Sandringham Company’, a military unit formed of men who worked on the Sandringham Estate, fought at Gallipoli in 1915, where all disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Their story was the subject of a BBC television drama, ‘All the King’s Men’, and is also told in an exhibition at the Sandringham Museum.
