Sunninghill Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
51°25′33″N 0°38′59″W / 51.4258°N 0.6498°W Sunninghill Park was a country house and estate of about 665 acres (269 hectares) directly north of Cheapside, in the civil parishes of Sunninghill and Ascot and Winkfield, adjoining Windsor Great Park in the English county of Berkshire.
The early 19th-century house burned down in 1947 and a replacement was built in the grounds during the final years of the 1980s to be the official residence of the Duke of York from 1990 until 2004; it was sold in 2007 to Timur Kulibayev for £19.7 million which was £4 million more than the asking price.[1] The house fell into disrepair and was demolished in 2016.[2] A new house has since been built but not occupied.
Sunninghill Park was originally part of Windsor Forest. A royal house was built at Sunninghill in 1511, and in 1527, Galyon Hone was employed to repair the glazing, when it was intended Princess Mary would stay there.[3] In 1630, King Charles I granted it to Thomas Carey.[4] Around 1633, the estate was purchased by Sir Thomas Draper and sold in 1769 by his great-grandson, Thomas Draper Baber, to Jeremiah Crutchley, whose family owned it until it was sold in 1936 by Percy Edward Crutchley (whose maternal grandparents were the owners of Eldon House in London, Ontario).[5][6]
A new house was built on the estate in the late Georgian period in the early 19th century, being a stucco building of two stories with later additions.[7] It served as the headquarters of the American Ninth Air Force from November 1943 to September 1944.[citation needed] The Crown Estate Commissioners purchased the property from Philip Hill in 1945. The main house was to be occupied by Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her future husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, after their wedding in November 1947. However, the house burned down on 30 August 1947, so they rented Windlesham Moor instead.[8] In the mid-1960s, the site was considered for a new home for Princess Margaret.
