All about Sandringham House
They own dozens of estates and grand houses, but where do the Royals spend Christmas?
As they have for an entire generation, the Royal Family will make the trek 100 miles north of London to Sandringham for the upcoming holiday.
The Sandringham Estate (pronounced SAN-dring-um) covers 20,000 acres of land in Norfolk, just over 100 miles north of London. It includes farmland, woodland, orchards, and a sawmill. There are also smaller residential properties on the larger Sandringham Estate, including Amner Hall, the country residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, given to them as a wedding gift by Queen Elizabeth II.
Sandringham House first came into royal possession because of a different wedding gift. Queen Victoria bought the property in 1862, earmarking it for her eldest son Bertie, the future King Edward VII, to live in with his soon-to-be-wife, Alexandra of Denmark. As a result, it is privately owned and passes from monarch to monarch in a personal capacity.
Sandringham perfectly fits the bill of a “country residence”: a private house well away from London so that the Sovereign and their family could escape when duty permitted and enjoy the benefits of a healthy country life. In the 1860s, Sandringham House was a “plain Georgian structure with a white stucco exterior,” according to Historic Royal Palaces.
A fire in 1891 damaged the main house's roof and destroyed 13 bedrooms. In the process of restoring the main house, bedrooms were added over the bowling alley, converting it into a substantial additional wing.
In 1901, Edward VII, who loved royal shooting parties, ordered that the clocks at Sandringham be set half an hour earlier to increase the daylight for hunting. This came to be known as “Sandringham time” and was kept until 1936 when Edward VIII ordered the clocks be returned to normal time.
King George V described the sprawling property as “dear old Sandringham, the place I love better than anywhere else in the world." It was the place that he would pass away in 1936, as would his own son (and Queen Elizabeth's father), George VI, in 1952.
George VI once wrote of Sandringham: “I have always been happy here and I love the place.” Partially because of this association, I think, Elizabeth Il typically spent about two entire months each winter at Sandringham. She would arrive before Christmas, and stay through the date of her father’s death—and her own accession to the throne—in February.
Members of the Royal Family make the pilgrimage to Sandringham annually for Christmas celebrations. The festivities kick off on Christmas Eve when afternoon tea is served at 4 pm. Often held in the ornate saloon, with an exquisitely painted ceiling, this tea could include a ginger cake or honey and cream sponge, small cakes and scones, crustless sandwiches filled with ham and English mustard, Sage Derby cheese and Branston Pickle, or Coronation Chicken, accompanied by a pot of Earl Grey.
Since Victorian times, the Royals have followed the German tradition of Heiligabend Bescherung, literally ‘Christmas Eve time for exchanging gifts.’ The gifts that they swap on Christmas Eve are likely to be gag gifts and quite informal.
On Christmas Day, members of the Royal Family routinely walk to church at the nearby St. Mary Magdalene and then return to Sandringham House for a festive lunch. After church, pre-lunch drinks are served: Veuve Clicquot for the family, but The Queen used to have her favorite gin and Dubonnet cocktail.
Then, at 1 pm, members of the Royal Family will find their seats (which used to be completely unassigned, even for the Queen) and enjoy a very traditional lunch of turkey with mashed potatoes, chestnut or sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, and roast vegetables.
And when I say “members of the Royal Family,” I mean all of them. Even Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, still joins the festivities with her former husband, Prince Andrew. They have been reported to stay at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate for the Christmas visit, along with their daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie (and their own families). Wood Farm, a large farmhouse on the Sandringham Estate, is incidentally where Prince Philip spent much of his time after he retired from official duties in 2017 until his death in 2021.
A Christmas pudding, decorated with holly and doused in brandy, will be carried into the dining room precisely at 2 pm and lit. The fun doesn’t stop there, though; after the monarch’s Christmas address on TV, afternoon tea is served. Then, a dinner buffet is served at 8:15 pm.
It’s a good thing that Sandringham is a country estate with lots of room to walk off this rich food. A shooting party is formed on Boxing Day (December 26th), which I can imagine also helps get things moving.
King Charles has indicated that these Christmas traditions will continue through his reign, although with some changes. For one thing, the guest list. It has been reported that Queen Camilla's children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, and other family members will join the lunch for the first time this year.
Typically, this lunch has taken place in the dining room of Sandringham House. But the expanded guest list may mean the royals will sit down for Christmas Lunch in the large ballroom instead.
This venue change might be a welcome one for the royals. When Prince Harry wrote about Sandringham in his memoir, Spare, he remarked: "The dining room at Sandringham…was our version of Dante’s Inferno. Much of Sandringham was balmy, but the dining room was subtropical." Harry or his father, King Charles, would sometimes sneak a window open, but "the corgis always betrayed us. The cool air would make them whimper, and Granny would say: Is there a draft? And then a footman would promptly shut the window. (That loud thump, unavoidable because the windows were so old, always felt like the door of a jail cell being slammed.)"
In another break from tradition, Charles and Camilla will likely not spend the entire winter at Sandringham. Last year, he and Queen Camilla departed after Christmas to spend time at Birkhall, their private home on the Balmoral estate in Scotland.
With Camilla’s family being invited to the festivities, though, the King and Queen’s travel plans following the holiday may not be so hasty. In past years, Camilla would leave the royal family's Christmas gathering in order to spend time with her children and grandchildren.
Despite these and any additional changes that may come in the absence of Queen Elizabeth II, Sandringham will likely be known as the center of Royal Christmases for years to come. In 1957, Elizabeth II gave her first-ever televised Christmas message from Sandringham House. (This date coincided with the 25th anniversary of her grandfather George V’s first royal Christmas broadcast via radio). In her message, the first of many, the young Queen said, "I wish you all, young and old, wherever you may be, all the fun and enjoyment and the peace of a very happy Christmas.”
The televised Christmas message has been a British tradition ever since, and Charles has taken up the mantle. His 2022 Christmas broadcast wished the world “a Christmas of peace, happiness, and everlasting light.”
Although Sandringham is an estate owned by the British Monarch in a private capacity, you can still visit the grounds and gardens year-round. The house itself is open for tours from March to October. It was actually Queen Elizabeth Il who opened the house and grounds to the public for the first time in 1977.