Royal Mausolea

There are a few things that can only be done at restricted times. One is visiting the Mansion House. I had hoped to advise you to turn up on any Tuesday afternoon for an hour long tour but these jaunts have now been cancelled until further notice.

Another is going to the royal mausolea (a word used by Pevsner) at Frogmore in Windsor Great Park. You can go in an organised group throughout August otherwise Froggers is only open three days a year and those days were Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. The price of admittance goes to a different charity each day. This year it was the National Garden Scheme, the Armed Forces charity SSAFA, (which my Jameson grandmother supported) and the Prisoners’ Education Trust that got the lolly when I went on Thursday.

I really didn’t know what to expect. I thought I knew the Great Park reasonably well having hunted there with the Eton beagles but the thirty-five acre Frogmore estate is tucked away rather discreetly just off the Long Walk. Visitors arriving by car are permitted to drive and park along the Long Walk which was an unexpected privelege.

The visit has three components. First two mausolea and some royal tombstones. Neither the Mausoleum of the Duchess of Kent, nor the Royal Mausoleum are open although the latter may re-open when repairs have been carried out. It contains monuments to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and much other funerary statuary to their families. “The style of the interior is a rich Italian High Renaissance, deliberately Raphaelesque … less at home in England than Germany … In Germany the style was handled most skilfully by Semper in Dresden, and the interior of the mausoleum was indeed designed by Grüner, who lived in Dresden.” (The Buildings of England, Berkshire by Nikolaus Pevsner.) Definitely worth seeing when it re-opens.

You may see the tombs behind the Royal Mausoleum from a respectful distance.

Secondly, there are the magnificently tended grounds with some superb specimen trees: a tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipfera) thought to have been planted by Queen Charlotte, a Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) a species I last saw six years ago in California, an Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) planted in 1857 by Prince Hohenlohe and many more.

The third component of a visit to Froggers is to see around the house, in use for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex last month. I was told with some authority by another visitor that it had been built for Charles II as a hunting lodge. Fortunately the BB fact-checkers have been busy and discovered that this is complete balderdash. It was built in the 1680s for Anne Aldworth and her husband Thomas May.

From 1709 to 1738 Frogmore House was leased by the Duke of Northumberland, son of Charles II by the Duchess of Cleveland. The House then had a succession of occupants, including Edward Walpole, second son of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. In 1792 George III bought Frogmore House for his wife Queen Charlotte, who used it for herself and her unmarried daughters as a country retreat. After the death of Queen Charlotte in 1818, Frogmore House passed to her eldest unmarried daughter, Princess Augusta. It was the house’s next occupant, the Duchess of Kent, who had been offered Frogmore as her country home by her daughter Queen Victoria in May 1841, who made many alterations however, substantially modernising and redecorating the house to suit her tastes. She used the house regularly until her death 20 years later. In 1867 Queen Victoria wrote, ‘this dear lovely garden…all is peace and quiet and you only hear the hum of the bees, the singing of the birds.’  (The Royal Collections Trust website.)

Now you can only hear the ‘planes landing and taking off from Heathrow.