When Queen Victoria married in 1840, as well as St James’s and Buckingham Palace in London, and her country retreat at Windsor, she had the Prince Regent’s marine Pavilion in Brighton. She disliked the latter with all its quirks and bad associations and thought it completely unsuitable for a family. Interested in the possibility of acquiring an alternative retreat on the Isle of Wight, as a private family residence, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, helped them find the Osborne estate in 1844. There there was a Portland stone house built in the 1770s set in a large estate fronting the Solent. The queen thought the house cosy (her most important criterion) but too small. When she bought it in 1845 for £28,000 she engaged the property developer Thomas Cubitt to build her a new house to the precise specifications of herself and Prince Albert.
Cubitt was the developer of Belgravia and Pimlico and his stucco-faced Italian aesthetic is unmistakable both in London and at Osborne. The house is designed round a central pavilion in which the family rooms were planned round a central stair well like a Georgian townhouse. To the south of this was a large wing (completed 1847-51) that contained the household offices and an audience room and a council room. On the north, completed in 1890-91, after Albert’s, death is the durbar wing with a large banqueting hall in the Indian style and an apartment above for the queen’s youngest daughter.
There is no doubt that this was a family home and the queen made the four-hour train journey from London to the coast and the sea crossing four times a year – bringing Albert and her children with her. She also entertained relations. After Albert’s death in 1861 the queen’s pattern of visiting changed but was no less frequent (she stayed for around 100 days a year in the 1890s). From Osborne the queen undertook the enormous amount of work necessary to govern the British Empire, the Privy Council met in the council rooms and ministers were received in the audience room.
There were many Victorian innovations including a lift installed by Otis in 1893, a telephone that was demonstrated in 1878 and the Prince Consort’s sewage farm that converted raw sewage into farm manure.
Surrounded by her family the queen died at Osborne in January 1902. Edward VII did not want the house – he preferred Sandringham, and so it was opened to the public and, in the household wing a college for naval cadets was established. Queen Victoria’s bedroom, where she died, was only opened to the public in 1954. The house is now in the care of English Heritage.