The mystery of the house where Queen Elizabeth 2nd was born

BBC News Brasil

Where exactly was the house where Queen Elizabeth II was born? Are tourists looking in the wrong place? And are the allegations that the house was damaged in the Blitz (Nazi Germany bombing campaign against the UK) correct?

Queen Elizabeth II was born on April 21, 1926 at 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair, an upscale neighborhood of London. The place was not a palace, a large estate or even a hospital, but just a house on a busy street in the British capital.

Her parents had moved into the estate, owned by her Scottish maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, just a few weeks before her birth.

“It’s a reminder of how the royal family wasn’t so rich back then. Money was an issue,” said royal historian Robert Lacey.

It’s worth remembering that Elizabeth 2nd wasn’t born to be queen—as the daughter of the King’s youngest son, there was no expectation that she would ascend to the throne.

Queen Elizabeth II’s first home no longer exists — and there are repeated allegations on the internet that it was destroyed by air raids during World War II.

“The house was damaged in the Blitz and then demolished,” says Wikipedia, for example. But many documents in the British Library and other archives show that the 18th-century house had disappeared even before the conflict began.

It was real estate developers—much more relentless than air raids—who wrecked the monarch’s first home.

In 1937, a man in a top hat and overcoat had formally started the demolition of 17 Bruton Street and many of its neighboring buildings, which stretched all the way to the corner of Berkeley Square.

There were plans to build a hotel there for the Canadian Pacific Railway, but the site eventually became a complex of shops and commercial offices.

It was a time when architectural heritage was not given much value. Without a flash of regret, developers destroyed what was described by a document at the time as “20 of London’s most historic houses”.

A moving drawing by the artist Muirhead Bone (1876-1953) depicted workers tearing down the facades of elegant old buildings.

If there was still any doubt, a May 1939 surveyor’s note documented in the London Metropolitan Archives confirmed that the old house at 17 Burton Street had been demolished and “on the same grounds the Berkeley Square House building was erected “.

Astrea, the company that currently runs the complex known as Berkeley Square House, says a building built on the site was occupied by the Ministry of Aeronautics in preparation for World War II.

CHINESE RESTAURANT?

But there is another statement often found on the internet about the house where Elizabeth II was born — that the place is now a Chinese restaurant. But that’s just part of the story.

The famous Hakkasan restaurant has the same address: 17 Bruton Street. But so does a building with offices surrounded by fences on the same block. A glass-fronted office building with a reception area next door also shares the same address.

This entire sprawling commercial block is built on what, in the 1920s, would have been a row of individual private homes.

It might not be such a romantic story, but it’s the rather anonymous entrance to the office building that looks like the closest spot to the home Elizabeth II was born in: a side access to some of the commercial offices at Berkeley Square House.

In the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell, there are a number of ancient archives and architectural plans, in art deco lettering, showing the layout of the original house.

These documents portray that the lost house would be around this entrance area, with the facade extending into what is now a showroom for luxury cars such as Bugattis and Bentleys.

This is confirmed by Westminster City Council. According to urban planners, one end of the restaurant would have overlapped the original house, and Hakkasan’s general manager, Sharon Wightman, says customers often ask her questions about the property where Elizabeth 2nd was born, sparking “brilliantly interesting conversations.” “, in his words.

But much of the queen’s old house has been replaced by the glass facade at the entrance to the commercial complex next door. There are two plaques on an adjacent wall marking the birthplace, including one for Westminster Town Hall.

But they were moved after the complex’s renovation and are therefore at one end of the original site.

NO CELEBRATION PLATE

There is also no blue plaque — a type of plaque that can be found on buildings all over London honoring the remarkable men and women who have lived in them.

According to English Heritage, the British Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, these plaques can only be placed on original properties. Also, they are not placed for living people.

Toby Cuthbertson of Westminster’s planning department says the property could have been considered a luxury property at the time — but that the very wealthy generally lived in houses identified by names rather than numbers.

When Princess Elizabeth was born there in 1926, her grandparents came to see her on the first day. Then-Queen Mary recorded in her diary that her granddaughter was “a darling, with lovely skin and very fair hair.”

The then interior secretary William Joynson-Hicks also stopped by, as the protocol of the time was that whoever held that position was present at royal births. Joynson-Hicks was seen as authoritarian and was even nicknamed “little Mussolini”, in allusion to the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945).

It was from the same house where Elizabeth II was born that her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, future “Queen Mother”, departed in April 1923 for marriage to her shy suitor, the then Duke of York. The birth of his eldest daughter would take place exactly three years later.

The house was also very close to Harley Street, site of the office of speech therapist Lionel Logue who, starting in 1926, helped the future King George 6th to overcome his stutter.

WITHOUT TOURISTS

The Mayfair of that time was home to upper-class parties and lively gatherings. But it was also a politically volatile and divided period. A general strike was called just weeks after Elizabeth 2nd’s birth and her grandfather, King George 5th, warned: “Try living on their wages before you judge them.”

Elizabeth II and her parents moved later that year to a larger house not far away, in Piccadilly. There were subsequent plans to convert the house on Bruton Street into commercial offices.

Drawings by contemporary architects show the rooms, including the one in which Elizabeth 2ª was born, divided and redesigned to accommodate commercial offices.

“The room on the first floor, where the little princess was born, is one of the least ornate of all the rooms, but also one of the sunniest,” said a newspaper report at the time.

But the house was later demolished — and remains a curiously low-key location for a place of such historical importance. There aren’t many private properties in London that were home to the family of a king and two queens (Elizabeth II and her mother).

Still, the house is barely portrayed on the London tourist trail. “I think it reflects the Queen’s general modesty,” argues historian Robert Lacey. “She’s not one for boasting.”

CURRENT VALUE

Coincidentally, the site is still in the hands of a royal family, that of the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (UAE) — part of a portfolio of properties in this part of London that analysts estimate is worth 5 billion pounds (BRL 40 billion) .

The original address — 17 Bruton Street — was managed in the early 1930s by Howard Frank, co-founder of the Knight Frank estate agency, one of the most famous in the UK.

Simon Burgoyne, a partner at Knight Frank, which operates in Mayfair, says that at the time, the area was where landlord families — with country properties — had their London homes.

“But after the war, no one had the money to maintain these big, old, uneven buildings, so a lot of them were turned into commercial real estate,” he says.