York Cottage and Appleton House
The estate is also home to York Cottage, built by Edward VII soon after he moved in; York Cottage was also a favourite of George V. Anmer Hall on the grounds is a Georgian house that was at one point the country home of the Duke of Kent.
When Prince Carl, the future King Haakon VII of Norway, and Princess Maud were married in July 1896, Appleton House was a wedding gift to them from the bride’s parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales. The gift was intended to provide the newly married couple with a place to stay whenever they visited England. The Prince of Wales wrote to his Danish brother-in-law, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, “I have given Maud and Charles a small house, their own country retreat – about one mile from here – they will always have a pied-à-terre when they come over to England. I know they will appreciate this very much.”
A few months before the wedding the couple went to the adjacent Sandringham to view their wedding gift. “I saw my new house. It is quite lovely,” Prince Carl wrote in a letter.
Queen Maud came to love the house. In 1899 she wrote in a letter, "Our little house is a perfect paradise, it all seems like a dream, that we are here at last, that it is so beautiful and light, every single room is so clean and fresh." Their son, the future King Olav V of Norway, was born in 1903 at Sandringham.
Appleton House was on 2½ floors and was built of brick. It had four sitting rooms on the ground floor and the same on the first floor, together with rooms for servants, 20 rooms in total. The house had a conservatory and was centrally heated. The property stood alone, surrounded by forested parkland in Flitcham, Norfolk adjacent to Sandringham. The open, rolling character of the surrounding landscape inspired outdoor pursuits on horseback or by bicycle. It was also full of good subjects for Queen Maud, who was a keen amateur photographer.
Around the house the Prince of Wales had laid out a garden, designed in accordance with the tastes of the day. Here there were round, oval, triangular and square beds of roses and rhododendrons. There were extensive lawns and tall hedges of yew and box, with paths between them. Queen Maud enjoyed taking walks along these paths. “Her albums contain many photographs that show her wandering alone along these paths – clad in a full-length, white dress, her parasol lifted high.”
In 1938, two days after Queen Maud’s interment, her husband, King Haakon wrote to King George VI and informed him that the time had come to return Appleton House to the British Royal Family. The Queen had had the property as long as she had wanted, just as the Prince of Wales had said she could when she was given it in 1896.
Appleton House no longer exists. For many years the house stood unused. Its last known inhabitants were King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who lived in the house during a visit to Norfolk during World War II (1939–1945). A 1968 newspaper article with the headline “The Queen’s empty house” reported that a large anti-air raid structure had been constructed around the property during WWII and that this was unattractive and expensive to remove. Since it would have been costly to restore the property to a habitable state, Appleton House was torn down in July 1984.
Read more about this topic: Sandringham House
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