PRINCE OF WALES’S NEW HOME

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 84, 7 January 1928, Page 5

PRINCE OF WALES’S NEW HOME

MARLBOROUGH HOUSE • . -fa BUILDING OF HISTORIC INTEREST Dominion .Special Service. London, November 19, 1927. Marlborougn Mouse will soon be ready for the occupation of the Prince .of Wales. Tho site of the house was at one time a piece of ground attached to St. James’s Palace, and used lor keeping pheasants, partridges ' and other fowl, whence it was called the "Eiieasantry.” On part of this ground King Charles I erected a chapel, which was restored for Katherine ot Bragauza, wiio of King Charles 11. Katherine erected buildings on the I’heasanti-y to accommodate members of her religious establishment, and the sight came to be called tlie “Friary.” Sarah, Ductless of Marlborough, obtained a lease of the Friary and grounds in 1708, intending to demolish the buildings on the site and erect a new residence. The Duchess entrusted tho building of the house to Sir Christopher Wren. The foundation stone was laid in May (0.5.), 17V9, and the house, was finished, in 1711. As originally built it consisted of a rectangular block of two stories only, with wings at tho east and we«t ends slightly projecting to the north and south. On the north side was a courtyard flanked by lower two-storied wings on the east and west. It has been extended from time to time, a third story being added in tho eighteenth century by the third Duke, while the fourth Duke built a large riding school, which has now been converted into a motor garage. Tho ambitions of the Duchess to obtain a central entrance to the house from Pall Mall were thwarted by the unfriendliness of Sir Robert Walpole, who purchased the strip, of land along the front and built thereon. The front is therefore closed in, but the south side is distinctly more engaging. Here, enclosed by a high ivy-covered wall that screens it from the Mall, are' a' fine lawn with a number of elm frees, a surround of flower garden, and a shrubbery where, ouo can still see the tmy memorial stones which Queen Alexandra placed where her pet dogs were buried. The lawn has a bird bath in tho centre with a Cupid holding a fish in his arms. There are no other adornments. It was on this lawn that Queen Alexandra, then a bride, first mot a considerable company nf English folk, and it was here also'that she took part in the last public gathering—a distribution of war medals to women workers for the nation—of her career. The Prince will entertain in the state rooms on the ground floor, but he will live upstairs on the first floor Tie has chosen a suite of rooms at the west end of the building overlooking St. James’s Palace, leaving all the rooms with pleasanter outlook for tlie use of guests. Access to the first floor is by' way of a black marble staircase, whose, walls are painted with pictures of Marlborough ITouso. and the Prince for normal occasions will content himself with eight rooms. They will be decorated like everv other room in tho great building—in simple colour schemes of palest cream and satin white.