Charles and Camilla's Scottish Love Nest
They call it their “marital home,” and now Birkhall, on the edge of the 50,000-acre Balmoral estate, has become King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s official destination for post-Christmas relaxation. The cream-colored lodge in the Scottish Highlands is their most private residence. They cherish Birkhall for its old-fashioned charm and complete seclusion. Their decision to start the New Year there breaks a tradition set by his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who went to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk every year after her father died on February 6, 1952. She would arrive at Sandringham before Christmas and stay until early February to mark the anniversary of her father’s death at age fifty-six and her accession to the throne at age twenty-five.
Birkhall has a colorful history that I’d like to share, with fresh observations from its owners as well as visitors over the years. It first became a royal residence in 1932 for Bertie and Elizabeth, the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. As the Duke and Duchess of York, they ended up spending only five autumn holidays there before they became King and Queen on the abdication of Bertie’s brother, King Edward VIII in 1936. At that point they took up residence seven miles away at Balmoral Castle, traditionally occupied by the monarch. Various relatives came and went at Birkhall until Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip moved in after their marriage in November 1947. But their time at Birkhall was cut short, too—by the death of George VI. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother returned to the place she had long adored and proceeded to spend holidays at Birkhall for five decades until her death in 2002. Prince Charles followed his grandmother, and over the past twenty-one years he has balanced reverence for the Queen Mother’s deep imprint on Birkhall with his impulse to create something that he could uniquely share with Camilla.
“Everlasting & such a lovely colour”
Romance, rejuvenation, and comfort have always mingled with fun and laughter at Birkhall. In the summer of 1938, Bertie and Elizabeth retreated there after the funeral of her mother, Lady Strathmore. The Queen found solace in the hills “so nice & big & everlasting & such a lovely colour.” Birkhall served as a safe haven for Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister Princess Margaret in 1939 during the first four months of the Second World War. When Prince Charles needed to escape the strains of Gordonstoun, his Scottish boarding school, he fled to Birkhall to be cosseted by his grandmother. After badly fracturing his right arm while playing polo in 1990, he recuperated there with a physiotherapist for nearly two months.
He proposed to Camilla at Birkhall shortly before New Year’s Eve in 2004, and the following spring it was their honeymoon hideaway as it had been for his mother and father, who had stalked deer together, “armed to the teeth with rifles.” In September 2010, a month before Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton, he hosted her and her parents at a Birkhall house party weekend. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, Charles and Camilla chose to self-isolate there. Most recently, in September 2022 following the death of his mother at Balmoral Castle, Charles grieved with Camilla and Prince William at Birkhall.
A lively cocktail party
For more than nine decades, all sorts of luminaries turned up at Birkhall for luncheon, tea, drinks and dinner as well as shooting and stalking weekends with picnics on the moors—even in foul weather. American financier J.P. Morgan came to stay in 1935 with Bertie and Elizabeth. The Queen Mother treated President Eisenhower, his wife Mamie, and son John to a lively cocktail party at Birkhall in 1958. When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher—a special favorite of the Queen Mother—made her annual trek to visit Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at Balmoral, she routinely had tea at Birkhall.
The Queen Mother liked to call Birkhall “a small big house or a big small house.” Built in 1715, the property was bought in 1852 by Queen Victoria for her eldest son, the future King Edward VII, four years after she acquired Balmoral. Edward spurned his mother’s Highlands routines of “seclusion, silence, thirty-minute meals, nonsmoking, and open windows.” He liked Birkhall even less and visited only once. During subsequent decades it was used by courtiers and assorted family members.
“I already feel that I have lived here most of my life”
In 1929 Birkhall was temporarily vacant, so King George V let Bertie and Elizabeth stay there for several months in the late summer and autumn. In prior years during their annual Balmoral visits, Queen Mary had taken Elizabeth on expeditions to Birkhall, so she was familiar with its cozy appeal: Perched above the roaring River Muick—a tributary of the Dee—its interiors featured tartan carpets, wallpaper, and curtains, paintings of Highlands scenes by Sir Edwin Landseer, and cartoons of Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen by Spy and Ape that were stacked along the staircase and in the billiard room.
“I am sure that we are going to love it here,” Elizabeth wrote to King George V at the end of August 1929. “In fact, I already feel that I have lived here most of my life.”
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