dChan
Anonymous ID: b9823c Jan. 1, 2022, 2:13 a.m. No.15289584   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9598

The Queen was born on 21 April 1926 at 17, Bruton Street in Mayfair, London

 

The mystery of the home where the Queen was born

 

Published29 December 2021

 

Where exactly was the site of the house where the Queen was born? Have visitors been looking in the wrong place? And are the claims that the house was damaged in the Blitz correct?

The Queen was born on 21 April 1926 at 17, Bruton Street in Mayfair, London. Not a palace or a big estate or even a hospital, but a townhouse on a busy London street.

Her parents had moved into the house, belonging to her Scottish grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, only a few weeks before her birth.

"It's a reminder of how the royal family was not as flush in those days. Money was an issue," says royal historian Robert Lacey.

Bear in mind, the Queen was not born to be Queen - at this point, as the daughter of the King's younger son, she was not expected to take the throneThe Queen's first home no longer stands - and there are persistent claims online it was a casualty of air raids during World War Two.

"The house was damaged in the Blitz and later demolished," says Wikipedia, as one example of many.

But armfuls of documents in the British Library and other archives show that the 18th Century house was gone before the war had even started.

It was property developers - much more relentless than air raids - that finished off the Queen's first home.In 1937, a man in a top hat and frock coat had formally begun the demolition of 17, Bruton Street and many of its neighbouring buildings stretching around the corner into Berkeley Square.

There had been plans to build a hotel for the Canadian Pacific Railway, but the site was eventually cleared for a big office and retail complex.

These were unsentimental times about architectural heritage. Without a glimmer of regret, demolition gangs flattened what was described by one report at the time as "20 of the most historic houses in London".

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59553852