The Royal Family are descending on Balmoral for their summer holiday, with King Charles expected to be joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales and their family, as well as the Edinburghs, Yorks, Tindalls and Phillips for the annual break. It's a particularly poignant trip for the family and follows a challenging year for the royal family; both the King and Kate Middleton have faced health battles, leaving others like the Queen and Sophie to pick up more responsibility in their absence. Elsewhere, Peter Phillips split from his longterm girlfriend, Princess Anne suffered a horse-related accident which left her with a concussion and the family remains at odds with Prince Harry.
And yet, Balmoral is known to be place where the royal family come together, in the happiest and saddest of times. The residence is a particularly special one, and holds a host of memories. It was at Balmoral that the late Queen Elizabeth II undertook her final engagements.
The last public photograph ever taken of the monarch was captured in the minutes following the meeting, showing the 96-year-old Queen smiling brightly. Two days later, Queen Elizabeth II passed peacefully, surrounded by her family. Described by her granddaughter, , as ‘the most beautiful place on earth’, Balmoral was apparently the late Queen Elizabeth II's favourite home.
An opinion shared by her grandfather, George V, who once said: ‘I am never so happy as when I am fishing the pools of the Dee.’ It therefore comes as no surprise that the late Queen would make the 516-mile journey from every summer to enjoy time off duty with her family at the rural retreat – one her descendants will make without her for the first time this year. The late Queen had no official duties to attend to when at the Scottish estate, meaning the residence was a place of great comfort and relaxation for her.
Shortly before her death, the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (now Prince and Princess of Wales) and their three children, , and , visited Her Majesty at the castle, spending some quality family time together before the children started school in . While at Balmoral, the Royal Family are reported to spend their time taking ‘long walks in the countryside, fishing, horseback riding, and cycling’. Barbecues also play an important role during their visits, as the late Prince Philip was said to enjoy cooking for his family al fresco using his own 'specially engineered mobile barbecue'.
Shooting and stalking and salmon fishing are also some of the traditional activities enjoyed by guests. Many happy memories have been made in the grounds and gardens of Balmoral, particularly between Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh. Typically, the couple used to spend the first week of their Balmoral summer at the much more private Craigowan Lodge, a seven-bedroom guesthouse about a mile from the castle.
Here they would enjoy views across Aberdeenshire, while walking through the neighbouring countryside. A great lover of the outdoors, the Queen was known to have spent long periods out and about on the moors with her corgis and driving through the 50,000-acre grounds. She was once spotted behind the wheel of a , driving the Duchess of Cambridge (now Princess of Wales) up to the grouse moor to join on a shoot.
The Queen maintained a strong relationship with the Balmoral staff throughout her reign, famously holding the annual Ghillies Ball in the Castle Ballroom, where her neighbours and castle staff would participate in Scottish dancing. Dating back to the time of Queen Victoria, it was dubbed the ‘Ghillies’ ball because that is the Gaelic word for groundskeepers, but fittingly, it’s also the name of the shoe worn during certain Scottish reels. Her late Majesty was also known to have encountered a number of members of the public whilst walking on the Scottish estate, once famously bumping into an American couple who mistook her for a fellow tourist.
After asking the Queen where she lived, the former monarch replied: ‘I live in London, but I have a holiday home, over the hill there’. She later replied to the question, ‘have you ever met the Queen?’, with the joke, ‘no, but he has a number of times’, pointing to her private protection officer. The history of the castle as a royal residence dates back to the reign of Queen Victoria after Prince Albert bought Balmoral for £32,000 in 1852 (roughly around £4 million today), as a gift for his wife.
The prince apparently felt a strong connection to the Highlands, as its landscape reminded him of his native Germany. The Castle is a rebuild of the original , which the prince considered too small for Victoria at the time. Architect William Smith helped redesign the Castle, whilst inside, Victoria indulged in her love of Scottish heraldry and tartan.
‘The curtains, the furniture, the carpets, the furniture are all of the different plaids,’ Secretary of State Lord Clarendon noted in 1856. ‘And the thistles are in such abundance that they would rejoice the heart of a donkey if they happened to look like his favourite repast, which they don’t.’ The estate became, for Queen Victoria, ‘my dear paradise in the Highlands.
’ The residence is therefore privately owned, like Sandringham, and not part of the Crown Estate. One tradition established by Queen Victoria that the late Queen reportedly enjoyed was having a bagpiper play for 15 minutes under her window at 9am every morning, something she is even said to have replicated at Buckingham Palace, to remind her of the Highlands..
