A Model Estate 1884
Queen Victoria bought The Sandringham Estate for her eldest son and heir ‘Bertie’ (then Prince of Wales later King Edward VII) for his twenty first birthday in November 1862. He married a few months later and, he and his new bride, the Danish Princess Alexandra took up residence the following March.
The Estate had been described by a newly arrived tenant farmer earlier in 1862 as “a place of dirt, ruin and destitution, with the labourers living in nothing more than hovels”. Not a good start for any new, young, landlord, especially so for The Prince of Wales. The Prince’s annual income was healthy, thanks to the astute investments made by his father, Prince Albert.
By standards of the day, it would have been not unusual for the young Prince to spend his money on enjoyment and lavish living. Which he did – he and his wife were great ‘socialites’ – but he also invested heavily in improving the Estate long before many other landowners gave much of a thought to the welfare and wellbeing of tenants and staff.
Still in his twenties, The Prince of Wales invested in creating a model Estate, with new and comfortable housing by standards of the day. Later, in 1884, he commenced a programme to open a social club in each of the Estate villages. At the opening ceremony of the first – in West Newton – on 8th November that year, he said “I hope now that all those who are labouring on the Estate are comfortably housed” and that “I have long felt that….there was a great want, a room or rooms where, after your day’s work, you might meet for the purpose of recreation and instruction”.
Each Club was to have a quiet room, stocked with books, so that those who could read and write could teach others. In this way he brought adult education to the Estate long before it was widely the norm across the country.
Sandringham also had an early health centre for the use of those working on the Estate and their families, and took other steps too in order to improve the health and wellbeing of his tenants, staff and labourers.
In 1892 he was a member of a Royal Commission which advocated the ending of the Poor Laws and Workhouses and their replacement with a state pension system for the over 70s. During his relatively short reign, the Old Aged Pension Act became law in 1908 and introduced in 1909.