A home fit to make Royal family history A similar situation animated Edward VII's acquisition of the Sandringham Estate in 1862. That again must have been purchased from Duchy of Cornwall revenues. Eight years later he was to rebuild the house using AJ Humbert, the architect of his parents" mausoleum, and the drear result speaks for itself. Although I recall Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother always sighing and saying "Dear old Sandringham," as a building it lacks any distinction, being dull and ponderous like some sanatorium or asylum. Today the sight of it seems to lower the spirits, but in its heyday it was the setting for huge shooting parties. Stuck in the remote fastnesses of east Norfolk, it was seen to insulate the future king from the corrupt influences of London society. But far from it, for he simply imported that world to Sandringham. It is fascinating that when it came to his heir, there was a repetition of today's arrangements for the Cambridges. The future George V and Queen Mary were given as a wedding present a perfectly awful house within distance of the "big" one. The Bachelors" Cottage, once used for the overflow of male guests, was relabelled York Cottage. It now houses estate offices, but George V and Queen Mary were to live there for 33 years until Queen Alexandra, with Sandringham crumbling around her like a royal Miss Havisham, died. Like his father, George V seems to have been devoid of aesthetic sensibility, but he loved York Cottage, an assemblage resembling three Merrie England pubs joined together. Longing to do the house up herself, poor Queen Mary had to put up with the ghastly Maples furniture he had purchased. Frances Donaldson wrote of it: "Too large and too full of footmen to be unremarkable in Surbiton or Upper Norwood, York Cottage in its own context is a monument to the eccentricity of the family who lived there." Edward VIII was 30 when he set his heart on Fort Belvedere, a "grace and favour" residence on the Windsor estate. This had started its life as a folly for the notorious "Butcher" Cumberland of Culloden, a toy castle later done over by Sir Jeffry Wyattville as though a chunk of his Windsor Castle had escaped up the hill. That there were only seven bedrooms is a reflection of the diminution in scale of royal entertaining since the Edwardian era. Both the alterations and the decoration were to owe much to Edward's mistresses, Mrs Dudley Ward, Lady Furness and Wallis Simpson. It was here that the final scenes leading to the Abdication were acted out, resulting in a pall descending over the place. But the future Duke of Windsor loved the Fort, and retained it as part of the settlement that led to his brother ascending the throne as George VI. He and his wife had made what was clearly a very different country retreat from what was left of George IV's Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. Everything one reads about life there when the future Queen and her sister were children makes it sound a joyous place. The arrival of the Cambridges at Anmer means that this delightful but minor Georgian manor house will suddenly find itself part of the history of the monarchy in the 21st century. We don't know whether Highgrove was a haven of happy memories for the Duke and his brother during the years when their parents" marriage was falling apart, but let's hope that Anmer proves a re-enactment of the halcyon days of Royal Lodge.