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BBC News
17-07-2025
- BBC News
Sandringham head gardener's home becomes holiday let
The former home of the head gardener at a royal estate is being offered as a holiday let - with a stately price tag six-bedroom Gardens House was once the residence of the head gardener on the Sandringham Estate, the Norfolk home of King Charles is being marketed as a holiday let "within the heart of Sandringham's royal grounds", with the cost starting from £4,110 per Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said the let was a sign that royal estates were "actively striving to bolster their revenue streams" and the house would appeal to "well healed Brits". The Gardens House joins another property on the Sandringham estate, called The Folly, as holiday homes available to the general public. The Sandringham Estate covers approximately 20,000 acres (8,100 hectares) with 600 acres (242 hectares) of gardens. The estate is a popular tourist destination with both the house and garden open to the the grounds is a working sawmill and organic farm - and a number of properties. 'The Gardens House sleeps eight people, has three bathrooms and is dog-friendly. The listing describes it as "once home to the Estate's head gardener, this handsome brick residence now offers guests a rare invitation to experience the grace and quiet rhythm of life on one of Britain's most storied country estates". Mr Little said royal estates had always had commercial offers but the way they were being presented had changed. "The way in which these properties are marketed is much more upfront these days, a consequence perhaps of the fairly recent change of ownership," he said. "Given the grandeur of The Folly, in particular, there is a heightened awareness that the privately owned royal estates are actively striving to bolster their revenue streams."Sandringham is not the first royal residence to rent out property to holidaymakers, with eight cottages and lodges available for hire at Balmoral Castle, is stated on the Balmoral website that "some cottages are not available for rent for certain dates during the Royal Family's visit". Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Daily Mail
16-07-2025
- Daily Mail
A BnB fit for a King! Holiday home on the Sandringham Estate just yards away from the royal home is available to let - here's a look inside!
A property on King Charles III's Sandringham Estate is available to let for an eye-watering £5,623 a week. The Gardens House - which was the house of the late Queen Elizabeth II's head gardener - is just a stone throw away from Sandringham House. It is nicknamed 'the most comfortable house in England' and holidaymakers can now discover just how cosy this royal home really is with the unique opportunity to stay within the grounds of the Sandringham Estate. The Gardens House is a beautiful four bedroom Edwardian property situated 300 metres from Sandringham House - one of King Charles III most beloved royal households where the family are known to spend their Christmases. However, the privilege of staying on the grounds of the palace comes with the hefty price tag of £5,623 a week. But at that price visitors will be staying in the closest cottage to the estate while also being able to enjoy the home's timeless period features and the expansive grounds which surround it. Indeed, guests - including their pets - are free to roam the gardens as they wish. Oliver's Travels, which is exclusively marketing the rental home, said: 'The Gardens House rests within the heart of Sandringham's royal grounds, where manicured borders give way to woodland stillness. 'Inside, the house unfolds with warmth and character. Botanical wallpapers, timeless furniture and rich textiles echo the rhythms of the gardens beyond. 'Light spills through tall windows into a choice of inviting sitting rooms, while the kitchen offers a rustic heart to the home. French doors open onto the terrace for alfresco breakfasts or evening drinks beneath the Norfolk sky.' The Gardens House is not the only royal property that holidaymakers can rent for a getaway. This includes homes that the King and Queen are known to stay in throughout the year. Including Charles' secluded three-bedroom farmhouse on the Llwynywermod estate in Carmarthenshire. Charles and Camilla are known to spend a couple of weeks a year at the home. They bought the £1.2 million estate in 2007 including two cottages available to rent. The North Range and West Range cottages, which cost between £1,400 to £2,400 a week depending on the time of year, are ideal for walkers due to their short distance from the Breacon Beacons National Park. Outside of the UK, fans of the Royal Family can rent Charles' getaway in Transylvania, Romania. Charles bought the estate in Valea Zalanului, Szeklerland, in the 1990s and now rents it out as a nature retreat to those wanting to explore the Zalán Valley and the surrounding mountains. The guest house is situated near to the village of Viscri, and the 400-year-old cottages have been decorated with traditional antique Transylvanian furniture, and textiles. Prices range from around £100 to £300 a night depending on the size of room and whether or not guests have chosen full or half-board. North of the border, visitors can stay on a royal estate as equally grand as Sandringham - Balmoral. Members of the public can stay on the historic estate in an array of different cottages including - Colt Cottages, Connachat Cottage, Karim Cottage, Knocks Cottage, Rhebreck Lodge. Garbh Allt Shiel, Sterinbeg and Tigh Na Garaidh. The most affordable are the Colt Cottages, near the castle. The pricier Rhebreck Lodge is 'set in a quiet location at Easter Balmoral and enjoys wonderful views across the valley towards Crathie Church.' All self-catering, the cottages range in price from £645 in the smallest cottage during off peak season to £1975 in one of the larger cottages during the Christmas period. The King and Queen Consort spend a couple of weeks a year in the secluded three-bedroom farmhouse on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Two adjoining cottages are available to rent The Royal Family have been in love with Balmoral since the days of Victoria and Albert. Tucked away in the Cairngorms National Park in Crathie, Aberdeenshire, the 50,000-acre estate was bought by Prince Albert in 1852. More recently, It was one of the happiest places for the Queen and Prince Philip, who spent many weeks in the late summer and autumn there. Travellers also have the opportunity to stay in historic royal households. This includes Osborne House on the Isle of Wight which was Queen Victoria's favourite royal palace. Guests can stay in holiday lets, including No 1 Sovereign's Gate and No 2 Sovereign Gate at the formal entrance to the estate. Each two-bedroom property sleeps four people with a private garden. Residents at Sovereign's Gate have access to the beach at all times, even when it is closed to the general public. Pavilion Cottage overlooking the old estate cricket ground is also for hire. The two-bedroom cottage, sleeping four, is a short walk from the stately home and its formal garden. Victoria commissioned an extensive redesign of the estate, which was carried out by leading architect Thomas Cubitt with help from her husband, Prince Albert. And it was at Osborne, now fashioned into an Italianate Palazzo that she chose to live where possible, bringing up her large family there. The sprawling grounds included a private beach, gardens and a full-sized Alpine playhouse for the nine children called Swiss Cottage. Her son Edward VII had her private rooms sealed off when she died in 1901.
BBC News
15-07-2025
- BBC News
The secret royal 'pyramids' of Scotland
Tucked deep in the woods of Balmoral, the Scottish royal estate beloved by Queen Victoria, lie 11 little-known memorial cairns – including one massive granite pyramid. Built to commemorate royal milestones and loss, they tell a quiet story of love, grief and nation building. When Queen Victoria first visited Balmoral Castle in rural Aberdeenshire on 8 September 1848, six years after her first visit to Scotland, she took time out to appreciate the woodlands, gardens and rippling mountains. Perhaps she deeply breathed in the Caledonian pine air. Perhaps a deer stood motionless, caught in her gaze. Certainly, she saw a different future for herself and her husband, Prince Albert, on Deeside in the Highlands. "All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils," she recorded in her diary. Soon after, the baronial estate became a mainstay for the rest of her life – and it remains a sanctuary for the British Royal Family to this day. There are many stories hidden at Balmoral Castle, but perhaps none so intriguing as that of the estate's secret "pyramids", or memorial cairns. There are 11 of these, strewn almost negligently around the near-50,000-acre estate. The largest is a stone monolith more in keeping with the design of the great dynastic structures of Ancient Egypt than anything Scottish, while the smaller ones are scattered like clues to a greater mystery. And seeking them out – on a hunt akin to an Indiana Jones-type treasure hunt – is a little bit of everyday magic hidden among the Scots pine, firs and hemlocks. Like many visitors to the Royal Deeside, I'd been to the country's best-known estate before. Located in the eastern Cairngorm mountains, the turreted 167-room castle, ballroom, mews courtyard, sunken garden and thistle-shaped maze are a bonanza for visitors, especially between April and early August when the full grandeur of the castle is open to ticketed visitors. There are around 80 residential properties on the wider estate, too, plus commercial forestry plantations, a hydroelectric dam, facilities for deer stalking and grouse shooting and a golf course. But following the Covid-19 pandemic, when locals were forced to stay closer to home and making nearby discoveries became the national habit, the unlikely memorials appeared on social media posts like whispered secrets. Balmoral estate is 100 miles from where I live in Edinburgh, so I had lodged them in my mind as a rewarding challenge to track down the next time I was in Aberdeenshire. Why were these marvels created? According to Ewen Cameron, professor of Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, most were commissioned by Queen Victoria to commemorate significant events in the lives of her family, including the marriages of her nine children. The cairns commemorate Prince Albert Edward, Princess Alice, Prince Arthur and Princess Beatrice among others, forming a kind of family map across the forested hills. "Princess Louise's cairn has perhaps the most interesting backstory," said Cameron, whose research includes Scotland's post-union history from the 1700s onwards and the politics of Highlands' land ownership. "She was the sixth child and fourth daughter and married John Campbell, the 9th Duke of Argyll, and this helped strengthen the family's ties to the Highlands, which was so important to Queen Victoria. There's a certain irony that a descendant of the House of Hanover was in thrall to this romantic idea of Scotland too." Another marker came after the death of Prince Albert in December 1861. This saw the arrival of the estate's largest cairn, in the shape of a pyramid cut from granite, explained Gordon Casely, a respected heraldist and former journalist interested in the myths and legends of the north-east. Tucked away at the top of Craig an Lurachain hill with a stunning panorama of the surrounding Cairngorms National Park, it requires the most effort to reach and is now often dubbed "the Great Pyramid of Scotland". "The cairns are a fabulous, if unlikely, addition to the estate," Casely said. "They're absolutely intriguing, as each one has its own backstory and design, and I'm not surprised more visitors are seeking them out. Their legends are worth telling." Setting out from the Balmoral car park at Crathie, just east of the town of Braemar, I shouldered my backpack and entered the dark of the estate's woods to see all of these silvery-stone creations for myself. An ancestral path climbed high above the silvery River Dee then rollercoastered over thick roots and fell into a sharply cut glen. Every tree branch helped blot out the early summer Sun, and the only sound was birdsong. The first cairns I found were Princess Helena's, soon followed by Princess Louise's on a yawning gap atop a rocky outcrop. Next came the Purchase Cairn, built in October 1852 to commemorate the purchase of the Balmoral estate from members of Clan Farquharson by Prince Albert. That it was the first memorial erected still holds significance today: the twisted forest is a maze, and the cairn's lofty outlook on the summit of Craig Gowan makes it by far the easiest to track down. It also captures one of the finest views of Royal Deeside. What many don't realise is the cairns might well have ended up elsewhere. In the mid-1800s, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited a number of Highland estates before alighting on Balmoral. For a time, the royal couple even considered buying Ardverikie estate, which overlooks Loch Laggan on the far western side of the Cairngorms. For them, Cameron mused, it was perhaps too hard to get to, even for the Highlands. The alternative – Balmoral Castle – was leased in 1848, before the full estate was purchased four years later. "Balmoral… was out of the way, but not too much," Cameron explained. "It had everything. The rugged Highlands' scenery, the River Dee, the mountains, and the Queen had imbibed this increasingly romantic idea of what Scotland was. Balmoral also became very useful to her after Albert's death in 1861 – she was in a kind of purdah after he died, aged only 42. It provided her with a sanctuary from the world." Hunting down the cairns is a journey into that past – and into the very idea of Scotland as shaped by Victorian ideals. Queen Victoria was responsible for what has been labelled the "Balmoralisation" of the Highlands, and, as Cameron told me, the idea is still very alive in the minds of many of those who visit. More like this:• The mysterious circular symbols of Scotland• Freshwater pearl mussels: Scotland's little-known royal gems• A world-first in the Scottish Highlands "Scotland has long been pitched as an empty, wild, romantic place – even though we Scots know it's not," he said. "That idea has carried on through the centuries, whether through the influence of a writer like Sir Walter Scott or the art of Edward Landseer, a favourite painter of Queen Victoria, whose most celebrated work, The Monarch of the Glen, is a potent romanticisation of the deer-filled landscapes like Balmoral." Today, for interested visitors, that royal commission-turned-nation-defining painting is on display at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Back in the woods, my journey continued through this largely unchanged landscape, along six miles of meditative woodland trails in the company of red squirrels and an osprey, before, finally, the path began to climb steeply uphill. Then the trees opened onto a memorable scene: the near-11m-high Prince Albert pyramid overlooking all of Royal Deeside. The view was the archetype of beauty in nature: romantic and wild, just as it was when Queen Victoria first raised her royal banners there. The pyramid, stark and stony, is an unlikely version of the Highlands from the one that so many dream of. Even in a country home to a trove of ancient stones, Neolithic sites and mysterious histories, this Victorian cairn is still a marvel. Approaching it and the other cairns on foot, alone and in silence apart from droning insects and birdsong, has the effect of making them even more bewitching – especially when seen in brilliant sunlight, under an uncommonly saltire-blue Highland sky. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
