AIR FORCE LEAVES FUTURE HOME OF PRINCESS ELIZABETH

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 July 1947, Page 5

AIR FORCE LEAVES FUTURE HOME OF PRINCESS ELIZABETH

(Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON, July 11. The Royal Air Force maintenance unit, which has been based at Sunninghill Park, near Windsor, received unexpected orders two days ago to evacuate within 24 hours, says the Evening News. Sunninghill Park is 668 acres of beautiful wooded country with a fine mansion which is ekpected to become Princess Elizabeth’s future home. The Royal Air Force moved out before the engagement was announced, leaving the house empty, but the grounds are still dotted with corrugated iron and concrete huts, which the Air Force, during the war, used as storerooms.

Sunninghill Park only reverted to the Crown as recently as 1945, when the executors of the late Philip Hill sold it to the Commissioner of Lands. It had been Crown property before. Charles I in 1630 granted it to Thomas Carey in whose family it remained for several generations. The park adjoins the Ascot racecourse and Windsor’s Great Park. It is officially announced that Lieutenant Phillip Mountbatten will accompany the. Royal Family on its tour of Scotland.

The Royal Family will stay at the Palace of Holyrood House from July 15 to July 31. It will then go to Glascow to see the Home Fleet assemble in the Clyde, and later to the Isle of Arran. Their Majesties are arranging a family party at Buckingham Palace for the afternoon of July 29, primarily to enable close relatives of Lieutenant Mountbatten to meet the Royal Family. Official photographs of the engaged couple were taken at Buckingham Palace this morning. Lieutenant Mountbatten helped his fiancee on with her coat after still pictures had been taken, and the couple, m spite of a drizzle, walked laughing and talking together along . the Palace terrace while moving pictures wei e taken. Both looked radiantly happy. Communist Paper Strikes Only Discordant Note [N.Z.P.A. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT] LONDON, July 10. One discordant note in the general chorus of congratulation which greet--ed the announcement of the Royal engagement in Britain came from the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, which described Lieutenant Mountbatten in a heading as “an exGreek,” and in a leading article as a “German princeling belonging to one of the most notorious Royal families m The° P Daily Worker described Princess Elizabeth as “a P.leasaru and amiable person, who, unlike the imperious Victoria, is much more interested in riding horses than a P °lt tl coicluded’ with the observation: “In any case, a monarchical institttion is neither necessary nor . useful under the conditions of a modern democracy.” . _