As we continue our series of Royal Residences, this post takes a look at another property on the Windsor Home Park estate; Adelaide Cottage – a pretty early 19th century home, close to Windsor Castle:

A stone’s throw from Frogmore House, and the closest royal residence to Windsor Castle (excluding the private apartments in the castle itself) is Adelaide Cottage. Though primarily known as Adelaide Cottage the property is actually made up of Adelaide Cottage and Adelaide Lodge, and is arguably one of the prettiest little residences on the royal estate. Constructed using building material from the handsome Royal Lodge, the cottage became its own residence when it was reconstructed in 1831 for King William IV’s wife; Queen Adelaide.

The plot comprises of the lodge; a red brick double-fronted build complete with towering chimney stacks and pitched second-storey dormer windows, and the original cottage construction; a picturesque stucco-fronted cottage, which started life as a small bungalow.

When the cottage was first built, The Mirror wrote an article about the property in it’s 20th August 1831 edition, detailing it’s appearance and purpose in uniquely early-19th century verbiage. The property was described as ‘chastely elegant’ in which ‘its locale affords a delightful shade at all hours of the day’.

According to the article, the property was built specially for then Queen Adelaide, who first occupied the retreat on her birthday in 1831, and was made up of only two principle rooms ‘besides a retiring-room for the queen and the pages’ room’. At the time, the property also came with a picturesque porch running along the front east-facing side of the home, which still stands today, as well as it’s lush, manicured gardens, which remain almost unchanged in nearly 200 years.

‘The interior has been fitted up with the furniture and decorations of the Royal Lodge’, the paper continued. ‘It has non of that obtrusive splendour which characterises palace-building, but much of the quaint elegance of the embellished order of domestic architecture in the Old English school.’

An enclosed brick-walled courtyard joins the cottage to the red brick lodge, while a further extension is believed to have been added to the rear of the cottage at a later date. Today, the home enjoys a meandering gravel in-and-out drive, reasonable sized gardens, a red brick outbuilding and gatehouse; perfect for a small security detail.

View archival images of Adelaide Cottage here at the Royal Collection Trust website, or take a look at our Adelaide Cottage Pinterest board for more.

images: google maps, Wikimedia commons