Royal home King Charles wanted to live in – but it was given away before he could

King Charles has lived in many popular royal residences in London, but there is one longed-for property in the capital that the monarch never got the chance to call his home

King Charles already had access to many impressive homes around the UK – from Tamarisk House on the Isles to Scilly to The Castle of Mey in Northern Scotland – but this number increased even further following his accession in 2022.

While many of these official residences are controlled by The Crown Estate, there are some properties, such as Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, which are privately owned. Throughout his long tenure as Prince of Wales, The King called many properties home, including several residences in London. However, he reportedly always had his eye on one home in particular which is located just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace and has since been turned over for another purpose.

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The King’s apparent keenness to make the house his home was revealed by the late society diarist Kenneth Rose. A series of incredible stories from a range of sources and members of the Royal Family were revealed in the diaries of the late society columnist when they were published after his death.

One of the most interesting revelations came out about King Charles after he reportedly expressed a deep wish to live at Marlborough House on The Mall, but he was refused as it had already been leased to the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965. Extracts of Kenneth’s diary were published in The Daily Mail.

After meeting Charles in 1985, he recorded: “Prince Charles would love to live in Marlborough House. ‘I grit my teeth with rage whenever I go to some Commonwealth event there. But what can one do? Once the people get inside a building, it is impossible to throw them out.'”

Elsewhere in his diary entries, Kenneth shared an amazing story from Lady-in-Waiting, Prue Penn, that explained how the late monarch had hosted a religious sermon in a room at Sandringham House in Norfolk after staff felt that it was haunted. He wrote: “Prue Penn [the Queen Mother’s lady-in-waiting] tells me that at Sandringham in the summer, the Queen invited her to attend a little service in one of its rooms conducted by the local parson. The only other person present was the Queen Mother.

“Some of the servants had complained that the room was haunted and did not want to work in it. The parson walked from room to room and did indeed feel some sort of restlessness in one of them.

“This the Queen Mother identified as a ground-floor room which had been turned into a bedroom for George VI during his last months. So the parson held a service there, not exactly of exorcism, which is the driving out of an evil spirit, but of bringing tranquillity.

“The congregation of three took Holy Communion and special prayers were said, I think for the repose of the King’s soul in the room in which he died. The parson said that the oppressive or disturbing atmosphere may have been because of Princess Diana: he had known such things before when someone died a violent death.”

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