| Windlesham Moor | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Type | Country house |
| Location | Windlesham, Surrey |
| Country | England |
Windlesham Moor is a country house and, for a time in the 20th century a royal residence, at Windlesham in the English county of Surrey. In its capacity as a royal residence, it was, for nearly two years in the late 1940s, the home of Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth and her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Philip Hill bought the Victorian home and grounds in a state of disrepair in 1942 for £40,000 (equivalent to £1,980,000in 2021). Later the Royal Family bought the renovated Sunninghill Park house and park from Hill. He renovated the house in 1944. It was rented furnished from his widow, Mrs. Warwick Bryant, for Princess Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh between 1947 and 4 July 1949. [2]
The house has by design four reception rooms including a reception hall, dining room, a 50-foot (15 m) drawing room, and a Chinese room. Other room names during the royal tenure included a study, games room, and loggia and five main bedrooms. The nursery comprised two guest rooms joined.
The house bore with it 58 acres (0.23 km2), largely of light woodland in the acidic heath of Surrey Heath on the elevated Bagshot Formation (Bagshot sands).
To the north and west is (in Berkshire) part of Swinley Forest lying in the Crown Estate, separated by the Ascot to Guildford Line from its heart. To the south is Erl Wood Manor European research laboratory established in 1967 for Eli Lilly and Company, a USA-based pharmaceutical company. [3] To the south-west corner across the minor train line is a private racecourse and to the east are smallholdings and gardens of detached homes such as Windlesham Hill Farm which is divided into three. A 21st-century care home has been established on part of the former farm.
The house was acquired by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who carried out significant renovation and extensions, added a security gatehouse in 2002, and included the houses "Winklands" and "Rose Cottage" into the estate. From July to September) Al Maktoum, his family, and other Arab dignitaries live in the house. Occasionally the Sheikh's guests live there at other times. The property is maintained by property managers, gardeners and security personnel. [4]
A painting of the house and gardens circa 1934, attributed to Winston Churchill, was discovered and sold at auction in September 2008. [5]
Camberley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately 31 miles (50 km) south-west of Central London. The town is in the far west of the county, close to the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire. Once part of Windsor Forest, Camberley grew up around the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the associated Army Staff College. Known originally as "Cambridge Town", it was assigned its current name by the General Post Office in 1877.
Sunningdale is a large village with a retail area and a civil parish in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. It takes up the extreme south-east corner of Berkshire, England. It has a railway station on the (London) Waterloo to Reading Line and is adjoined by green buffers including Sunningdale Golf Club and Wentworth Golf Club. Its northern peripheral estates adjoin Virginia Water Lake.
Surrey Heath is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Camberley. Much of the area is within the Metropolitan Green Belt.
Bagshot is a town in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately 26 miles (42 km) southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton and the West Country, evidenced by the original coaching inns still present in the town today.
Surrey Heath is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Michael Gove, a Conservative who was the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities until July 2022, and returned to the office on October 25th 2022. The Home counties suburban constituency is in the London commuter belt, on the outskirts of Greater London. Surrey Heath is in the north west of Surrey and borders the counties of Berkshire and Hampshire.
Bagshot Park is a royal residence located near Bagshot, a village 11 miles (18 km) south of Windsor. It is on Bagshot Heath, a 50-square-mile (130 km2) tract of formerly open land in Surrey and Berkshire. Bagshot Park occupies 51 acres (21 ha) within the designated area of Windsor Great Park.
Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, is a village in England midway between the market towns of Reigate and Epsom. The village is a dispersed cluster on the North Downs centred less than one mile inside of the M25 motorway. The village hosts the Walton Heath Golf Club, whose former members include King Edward VIII, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George.
Windlesham is a village in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately 25 miles (40 km) south west of central London. Its name derives from the Windle Brook, which runs south of the village into Chobham, and the common suffix 'ham', the Old English word for 'homestead'. The civil parish of Windlesham has a population of 17,000 and includes the neighbouring villages of Bagshot and Lightwater.
Sunninghill Park was a country house and estate of about 665 acres directly north of Cheapside, in the civil parishes of Sunninghill and Ascot and Winkfield, adjoining Windsor Great Park in the English county of Berkshire.
South Ascot is a village just south of and down the hill from the small town of Ascot in the English county of Berkshire. It is bounded on the west by the Kingsride area of Swinley Woods, on the north by the Reading to Waterloo railway line and merges with Sunninghill to the east.
Sunninghill is a village in the civil parish of Sunninghill and Ascot in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the English county of Berkshire.
Farnham was a constituency covering the south-westernmost and various western parts of Surrey for the House of Commons of the UK Parliament, 1918—1983. Its main successor was South West Surrey. The seat was formed with north-eastern territory including Woking from Chertsey in 1918 and shed the Woking area to form its own seat in 1950. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP). During its 65-year span its voters elected three Conservatives successively.
Swinley Forest is a large expanse of Crown Estate woodland managed by Forestry England mainly within the civil parishes of Windlesham in Surrey and Winkfield and Crowthorne in Berkshire, England.
The River Bourne is the name given to a Thames tributary in northwest Surrey, England which has a longer tributary, the Windle Brook, that rises nears Bagshot Park in the south of Swinley Forest, Berkshire, merging with it while flowing through villages north of Woking; downstream the Bourne joins the Thames near Weybridge.
Updown Court is a Californian style residence situated in the village of Windlesham in Surrey, England. The 103-room mansion has 58 acres (230,000 m2) of landscaped gardens and private woodland. It was, in 2005, the most expensive private home on the market anywhere in the world, having been listed for sale with estate agencies Savills and Hamptons International for in excess of £70 million.
St Johns and Hook Heath is a suburban ward in Surrey consisting of two settlements founded in the 19th century in the medieval parish of Woking. The two 'villages' have residents' associations and are centred 2.5 km WSW and SW of Woking's town centre in the northwest of the English county – by including such suburbs, Woking is the largest town in the county. The ward in 2011 contained 1,888 homes across its 3.46 square kilometres (1.34 sq mi).
The Royal Berkshire Hotel is a country house hotel within a noteworthy example of a late Queen Anne mansion previously called The Oaks and located at Ascot in the English county of Berkshire.
The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London, is a bronze sculpture of the former British prime minister Winston Churchill, created by Ivor Roberts-Jones.
Coordinates: 51°22′48″N0°40′34″W / 51.380°N 0.676°W
