page_title: Royal Pavilion, Aldershot
section_title: Origins of the Royal Pavilion
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Pavilion, Aldershot / Origins of the Royal Pavilion
caption_attribution_description: Queen Victoria's boudoir in the Royal Pavilion in Aldershot
context_page_description: The Royal Pavilion, also known as the Queen's Pavilion, was a royal residence located at Aldershot in Hampshire. The most unpretentious of all royal residences, it was built by George Myers as a wooden structure in 1855 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert for use by members of the Royal Family when in Aldershot to attend military reviews and other occasions. Located off the Farnborough Road opposite the former West Cavalry Barracks, nearby are the Royal Garrison Church and the Wellington Statue. It was dismantled in the early 1960s. Today the site is the location of the Royal Pavilion Office Park.
context_section_description: Before the establishment of the 'Camp at Aldershot', the British Army did not have any single permanent camp for training troops on a large scale. Prince Albert realised that the training and resources of the British Army compared unfavourably with some European armies and lobbied for something to be done. In 1852, following the death of The Iron Duke, a group of reformers, which included Prince Albert, forged an alliance that would seek to improve the training of the Army. Consequently, in January 1854 some 25,000 acres of Aldershot Heath were purchased with the view to setting up a permanent military camp in the area.
  As Queen Victoria and Prince Albert showed a keen interest in the establishment and the development of Aldershot as a garrison town, on 2 April 1854 Prince Albert, accompanied by Lord Hardinge, Major General Sir Frederick Smith and a Lieutenant Nicholson inspected a number of sites in the Aldershot area before selecting a small hill overlooking the Long Valley and Caesar's Camp. Prince Albert instructed Lieutenant Nicholson to ride around the approved site dropping sticks from a bundle of pea sticks to mark the boundaries for the proposed Pavilion.
  In 1855 the Royal Pavilion was built by George Myers, one of the contractors involved in building the nearby Camp, as a temporary residence in the style of a wooden pavilion. Myers is best known as the builder employed by Augustus Pugin to execute the majority of his designs. One of the first buildings to be erected in the new Camp, the Pavilion is recorded as having had "graceful timberwork, looking oddly like C20 Scandinavian and an impressive testimony to Prince Albert's modernity". Victoria and Albert would often stay at the Pavilion when attending reviews of the Army on the nearby Long Valley.
caption: Queen Victoria's boudoir in the Pavilion in 1900
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