As Edward Prince of Wales, eldest son of Queen Victoria, approached the age of twenty Prince Albert began the search for a suitable country seat for his son. He had already been promised Marlborough House in London, but a country house was for his health and sanity, a refuge from the whirl of London life. A number of estates for sale were considered but, in the end, Sandringham was chosen, perhaps partly because it belonged, at the time, to the near-bankrupt step son of the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.
Sandringham could be easily reached by the new railway to King’s Lynn only eight miles away and eventually the line would be extended and a station built at Wolferton on the Sandringham estate.
The prince purchased the estate in 1862, the year after the premature death of his father. He paid £220,000 for a 29 bedroom mansion dating from the early 1770s and 5,500 acres of land. The Prince immediately started to improve the estate and, after his marriage to Princess Alexandra, started both to entertain there and enjoy the hunting and shooting. His architect was the now forgotten Albert Jenkins Humbert who started work on building new lodges, stables and cottages. It was not until 1868 that he was instructed to abandon plans to extend the old house and knock it down. Of the old house some chimneys were kept, the conservatory preserved and the Princesses sitting room retained. The rest was replaced in a building campaign lasting three years, the Prince taking up residence in time for Christmas 1870.
A visit to Sandringham House today conveys little of the opulence of the rooms as originally decorated because the high Victorian decoration was largely was deconstructed in the 1930s. The house had a long thin plan with a broad central corridor on each floor linking all the rooms. It was entered through a saloon and, from this southward, was a sequence of drawing and dining rooms leading to the billiard room and Edward’s American style bowling alley. Northwards were the business rooms and library. Above were bedrooms.
Although Sandringham was always a private residence (it is still the king’s personal property) it has always played host to large house parties and important visitors both domestic and foreign. One of the highlights of the Edwardian social round were the balls held, at first in the saloon, and then after 1884, in a new ballroom added by the architect Robert W. Edis. Three years later he added a large conservatory next to the ballroom. In 1891 there was a serious fire on the top floor and Edis repaired the damage adding a range of staff bedrooms.
Edward VII’s Sandringham served his successors well but early in the present reign it was decided that the house was too big for the needs of the royal family and in 1975 ninety one rooms service and domestic rooms were demolished.
The estate, which has continually been added to (it now covers 20,000 acres), contains a number of subsidiary houses used by the royal family, formal gardens and the royal stud. Since 1977 it has been open to the public.