Osborne House

Queen Victoria’s overpowering personality still pervades Osborne. It was her favorite house, designed in the 1840s by Albert himself and Thomas Cubitt as a seaside retreat in the Italian manner. Here, where she reveled in domesticity, spent much of her widowhood and died, time seems to have stood still – especially in the private apartments, which were shut down undisturbed for 50 years after her death on the instructions of Edward VII. They are touchingly un-grand. The sitting room is quite small with modest chintz curtains, plain walls covered in family portraits, a curving balcony where Victoria and Albert used to stand admiring the view over the Solent and listening to the nightingales. The tables where they worked elbow to elbow on their state papers still stand side by side. Their children often in fancy dress, pout and smile in white marble, in photographs, and innumerable paintings – some very competent oils by the queen herself and their pudgy, disembodied marble limbs, carved when they were babies, lie about on cushions.

The state rooms downstairs are far more exotic and formal. In the queen’s presence no courtier was ever allowed to sit down on the uncomfortable looking chairs in the state drawing room. As well as some elaborately hideous furniture and a glaring colour scheme – Lord Rosebery said he had never seen such an ugly room till he went to Balmoral – there are charming details like the painted marbled columns and Albert’s fancy slate billiard table. The Durbar Room decorated in the Indian style with extremely elaborate white plaster-work is astonishing.

The grounds where Albert supervised the planting of rare trees are impressive. Don’t miss the delicious Swiss Cottage, about half a mile from the house (minibus takes you there), where the royal princesses learnt to cook in a blue and white tiled kitchen with miniature range and copper pots.