At some point this month, King Charles and Queen Camilla will decamp to Scotland and they’ll likely spend two months or more at their Scottish residence, Birkhall. Charles has made it clear that he has no desire to give up Birkhall, which is supposedly more “homey” than Balmoral Castle. Still, Charles will spend some time in the main castle, and the rest of the family is still expected to trudge up to Balmoral for their annual summer visits too. This year, the family will have to dodge tourists within the castle though. For the first time ever, King Charles is opening up selected rooms within the castle for tourists. Roya Nikkhah at the Sunday Times was seemingly the only journalist to get an advance private tour of “seven of its more than 100 rooms.” After QEII died, Charles started redecorating right away and he began plotting a way to open up the castle to make money. Keep in mind, Balmoral IS private property (like Sandringham). This is not some kind of “public land.”
As the “heart of the castle”, where the royal family gather for pre-dinner drinks, the drawing room is also where the King has put his personal touches on a home associated for so long with his mother. He has changed the carpets back to “hunting Stewart tartan”: the green, blue, yellow and red check pattern that Victoria would have had fitted originally. He has also hung new chintz curtains with a light tartan stripe, with matching sofa covers.
From Monday until August 4, “golden ticket” holders can wander through the private quarters of Balmoral for the first time in groups of ten. All 3,400 tickets — priced at £100 — for the “bespoke” 45-minute tour sold out within two hours of going on sale on April 2. Some of the visitors will come from as far afield as the US, Australia and New Zealand. Previously, tourists were allowed to visit only the castle’s 55,000-acre grounds, for £17.50 a ticket, between April and July. The ballroom was the only interior space open for annual exhibitions.
James Hamilton-Goddard, Balmoral’s visitor enterprise manager, who has been working with the King for two years on the project, said: “When the family are here, they’re not here to sit in their castle. They’re here to enjoy the outdoors.”
A royal source told me [the king] wanted “to bring people in to connect with the institution. He recognises it needs to keep evolving, and in the modern era people want to be able to access their palaces. He embraces that and sees them as public places more than private spaces.”
Friends of his son have told me, however, that Prince William did not instantly warm to Charles’s vision of the public wandering through the rooms that his children, George, Charlotte and Louis, have the run of each summer. But the King has the final say.
A friend of Charles said he isn’t as sentimental as William: “With the exception of Birkhall [the home he shares with the Queen on the estate], he feels like everywhere is temporary accommodation, rather than his place of nurture. It is to do with his upbringing, I don’t think he ever stayed in one place for more than three months at a time, so he regards them more as lodgings than home. He by nature is someone who opens doors to people, not closes them.”
The King, who is currently at Birkhall with his wife before Holyrood Week in Edinburgh this week, has kept a close eye on the Balmoral project, visiting on Thursday to inspect the new signage in the gardens. He is expected to visit again in the coming days for a final check. Hamilton-Goddard says: “It’s a big deal. The King wanted it to happen; we’ve made it happen.” Proceeds from the tour will go back into the estate and after the castle closes to the public on August 5, the royal family will begin their summer break in mid-August until the end of September.
“He feels like everywhere is temporary accommodation, rather than his place of nurture…I don’t think he ever stayed in one place for more than three months at a time.” That made me so sad. That reveals more about Charles’s mindset and rolling-stone personality than anything else. Even before he inherited the vast real estate empire of the crown, he couldn’t stay in one home for longer than three months? Yikes. As for William’s chagrin at the tour scheme… William really wanted to dictate that no tours should be allowed because HIS children spend about four or five days at Balmoral every year? William and Kate barely spent any time on the Balmoral estate even when QEII was alive. They put in perfunctory appearances, usually only for a long weekend or something. Besides, I’m pretty sure they don’t stay in the main castle either.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.