The monarch’s favoured architect, A.J Humbert–whose previous projects included the Osborne House and Frogmore House, did the initial redesigning of Sandringham from 1865 to 1870, transforming the white manor house to a red-brick facelift with limestone dressing that remains prominent to this day. 

Described as “frenetic Jacobean” by the Pevsner Architectural Guides, Sandringham was entered through a porte-cochère (an ornate front entrance doorway) into the saloon, leading to the drawing room, the dining room, the ballroom, three-storeys’ worth of sleeping accommodations, a billiard room, attics and a basement–all of which featured furniture and fittings by Holland and Sons, one of the most successful furniture manufacturers in the 19th century.

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While Sandringham has gone through an interior modernisation by Hugh Casson in the 1960s, before it was opened to the public the following decade, the principal rooms, which included the dining room kept their venerable designs. 

Spanish tapestries by Francisco Goya, Spanish romantic painter and printmaker of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, were on display in the dining room. Gifts from Alfonso XII of Spain, Edward VII’s nephew by marriage, they hung upon dark oak panelled walls initially. 

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It wasn’t until 1938, after a visit to Braemar Castle in Scotland near Balmoral, when Queen Mary commissioned the oak panelled walls to be painted in Braemar Green to not only highlight the tapestries on display and the marbled fireplace, but also give the room a brighter rejuvenation.

The dining room also features Queen Victoria’s mahogany dining table, which Edward VII brought over from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Expanded to seat 22, the Windsor family would enjoy a 12- to 14-course meal during Christmas, part of the tradition of celebrating Christmas in Sandringham, which the monarch kept up with till 2020.

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Believed to have been designed by architect Anthony Keck in the late 1700s, the rectangular Georgian detached house came into the ownership of Charles III (then Prince of Wales) in 1980.

Located southwest of Tetbury in Gloucestershire, some six miles away from his sister Princess Anne’s country home at Gatcombe Park, the three-storey building made of ashlar blocks served as Charles III’s family residence during his short-lived marriage with the late Diana, Princess of Wales. It was where Prince William and Prince Harry grew up, before it became the main residence now with Camilla, Queen Consort.

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The interiors of the four reception rooms, nine bedrooms and nursery wing were initially designed by Dudley Poplak, who stated his work at Highgrove as “a youthful variant of the chintzy country house look,” featuring “plenty of lime green and aquamarine.”

While Highgrove House was redecorated in 2003 by Robert Kime, it retained the wood pellet biomass heater, a reed bed wastewater filtration system that functioned on natural gravity with little power input, and a 20 ft by 20 ft steel-lined panic room that royal biographer Brian Hoey claimed “has been so built that even if the rest of the house is destroyed, it will drop intact to the ground floor.”

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Sustainable and functional as Highgrove House sounds, it is its 15-acre organic gardens that have been in the spotlight since they were opened to the public in 1996, attracting almost 40,000 visitors every year.

Charles III was first drawn to the 200-year-old Highgrove Cedar of Lebanon on the west of the house when he visited the grounds for viewing, but has since expanded the premises to include some seven main gardens–namely the Sundial Garden, the Kitchen Garden, the Cottage Garden and the Carpet Garden, with initial assistance in designing them from British naturalist Miriam Rothschild, and garden designers Lady Salisbury and Rosemary Verey.

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The Carpet Garden is named after two Turkish carpets found in Highgrove House, and was designed originally as a Show Garden at the 2011 Chelsea Flower Show. It won the Silver Gilt Award with its Moroccan-inspired fountain, inspired by a sketch done by Charles III.

Nestled in the shade of a mature cork oak tree, the fountain is surrounded by an array of rose species, such as The Highgrove Rose, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Jude the Obscure and Olivia Rose Austin that are at their highest bloom during summertime.

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Between 1825 and 1827, the Duke of Clarence, before he succeeded the throne in 1830 as William IV, commissioned architect John Nash to build a pale stucco mansion on the southwestern side of St James Palace, facing Stable Yard Road and The Mall. 

The classically proportioned building had a hipped slate roof above the three-storey and basement unit, which were accessible through a double portico, leading through the entrance hall down a long corridor that ran across the whole width of the house.

It goes without saying that the interior of Clarence House was plain, compared to Nash’s previous designs for Buckingham Palace, with ornamental plasterwork and crimson damask confined to only the three principal rooms on the first floor, above the breakfast room and the dining room.

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Clarence House is one of royal residences that went through numerous renovations and refurbishments, and today, serving as Charles III and Camilla’s London residence, it bears little resemblance to the one Nash designed.

One of the more significant changes made was in 1874, when Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son added a Russian Orthodox chapel on the first floor for his new wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. After the Second World War, when it was used as the Red Cross headquarters and the rooms altered to accommodate over 200 workers, Clarence House went through a reconstruction with the exterior completely redone, due to it being damaged severely during The Blitz.

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After a fourth level was added to the original structure, and the main entrance relocated to the south side of the building (the original entrance hall was converted into a library), the modern-day interior of Clarence House is more in tune with one of its more recent royal residents: the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

The Queen Mother had personalised Clarence House to her taste, when she moved in with her daughter, Princess Margaret in 1953, following Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne. She adorned the five bedrooms with artworks she collected over the 60 years as a collector and patron of artists, particularly those by John Piper, Graham Sutherland, W.S Sickert and Augustus John. Alongside the 20th century British art pieces were Fabergé, and English porcelain and silver relating to the Bowes-Lyon family.

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Her favourite was the Morning Room, what used to be the breakfast room, and once served as The Duke of Edinburgh's study between 1949 and 1952. The pale blue and white room features a Georgian marble chimneypiece, and a Chippendale gilded sofa, with matching Bergères chairs, commissioned by the Duke of Gloucester in 1773.

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