In 1980 the Duchy of Cornwall purchased Highgrove House in Wiltshire as a private family home for the Prince and Princess of Wales (who married the following year). In the parish of Tetbury it is located close to the polo clubs where the 38-year-old Prince Charles liked to play and in an area of beautiful countryside.
The original house was built by a local mason Anthony Keck in the 1790s and was an austere, but elegant, Georgian box. Soon after purchasing it the Prince embellished the front with a new balustrade, pediment and Ionic pilasters, now somewhat subsumed in a mass of flowering climbers. The interiors were initially decorated by the South African Dudley Poplak who had known Princess Diana since she was a child. The rooms were a youthful variant of the chintzy country-house look that was seen everywhere in the early 1980s – a palette of clean, fresh colours — plenty of lime green and aquamarine.
Highgrove is not a large house, and it was reduced in 1966 when a Victorian servants wing was demolished. Entered through a spacious entrance hall there are two reception rooms either side. By the early 1990s the Prince felt he needed more space and the architect William Bertram of Bath designed an extension containing a larger reception room and an office for his private secretary. Unlike the main house the new single-story extension has a cottage feel of Cotswold stone with Bath stone dressings and a slate roof.
In the late 1990s Prince Charles commissioned Charles Morris to design the Orchard Room, a large hall in which he could hold events. The project was a celebration of traditional craftsmanship and design with its giant gables with oval windows, bath stone colonnade, carved wood and stone, and finely worked iron and plasterwork.
After the Prince and Princess of Wales divorced the decorator and antiques dealer Robert Kime redecorated the house with richly coloured fabrics and antiques giving it an easy comfortable grandeur.
The original estate was some 347 acres, but much new land has been acquired and Highgrove is now over 1,000 acres. Great interest has been taken in the farm buildings restoring the old and building new ones in traditional styles, meanwhile the farms have moved to an entirely organic basis.
In 1980 there were virtually no gardens but 40 years have seen the King design and plant some 15 acres of designed garden including the walled 0.73 acre kitchen garden, an arboretum, stumpery, cottage garden, the thyme walk and a wildflower meadow. Although the King is the presiding genius he has benefited from advice from the late Lady Salisbury, Russell Vernon-Smith, Sir Roy Strong, Julian and Isabel Bannerman and Rosemary Verey amongst others.