Tag Archives: Osborne house

Osborne House Itself

I’ve posted a few times about our visit to Osborne House but I have not actually shown anything from inside the house in those previous posts.  Finally we have gone inside.  When it comes to visiting old houses, I often don’t bother with the inside but this one definitely seemed worth a look since we had come all that way.  It is definitely interesting but it is also quite bizarre in places.

Talking to some of the guides in the rooms, we discovered that the whole place was put together rather rapidly.  Things that look like marble columns are in fact plaster or concrete and painted to look like marble.  I think some of that speedy construction means that there is a lot to do in maintaining things.  When Victoria died, the house was handed over the country and was used as a place for sailors recovering – presumably from wounds sustained.  Bits of the house were locked off from them including her old bedroom which was treated like a shrine by the family.  Only in later years did the place start to get preserved and restored in parts.

There is plenty of art scattered around although I think quite a lot of it is replicas of originals which are elsewhere in the royal collection.  Grandiose displays abound but then other areas are a lot more practical.  The rooms for the kids (of which they had plenty) are very busy.  No individual rooms for the youngsters it seems.

The tour takes you on a route through the building and the final section includes the Durbar Room.  This is a seriously over the top space.  Decorated in styles reminiscent of India, it is an example of what Britain controlled at the time and could easily been considered gaudy.  I was both amazed at it and also rather put off.  If you give someone free rein to design something, don’t be surprised if they overdo it!

The house itself is Italianate in design but the interior is a combination of all sorts of things be it traditional English, Indian, Greek or anything else that came to mind.  It is an interesting thing to see but not a place that I could ever imagine spending a lot of time.

Osborne House Gardens

We made our visit to Osborne House in October of 2022 and the gardens have since made the news in the UK.  One of the older trees fell in some bad weather so, while I don’t know which tree it was, it is possible I got a photo of it shortly before it met its demise.  Always a shame when an old tree falls but such is the nature of things.  We wandered around the grounds prior to going into the house.  It wasn’t clear whether the weather was going to deteriorate so we figured we would do the outside stuff first while we knew it was okay.

It isn’t hard to see how Victoria liked the place.  The grounds run down to the sea and the views from the house are really nice.  There are trees and plants of all sorts of varieties so, if you know more about that sort of thing, I could quite imagine that you would have much to study.  I just like looking at them so a simpler proposition for me.

We took one of the trails down to Osborne Bay.  There was a little café down there so we could stop off and have a snack and some refreshments.  It wasn’t that warm, but you can always find time for an ice cream if you want to!  From the café, it was a straight walk back up to the house.  There are some large planters along the path.  Not sure how big something could be and survive in one of them, but I imagine a moderately sized tree would be fine!

Once you get close to the house itself, you get to the ornamental gardens.  These were actually quite nicely laid out.  That sort of thing doesn’t always do it for me, but I quite liked Osborne.  However, there were some really odd sculptures scattered around near the house.  Not sure what sort of imagery the sculptures of the day had in their heads but the hybrids of various animals and humans that they sculpted were very weird.  They also suffered from the same thing of a lot of sculptures of their day- they had never seen the animals that they were recreating.  There was a lion that looked more like a goofy character from a comedy based in a high school!  We might have laughed at that one for a while!

Swiss Cottage in Osborne’s Grounds

Some kids are lucky and get to have a tree house or something in the garden to play with.  If you are a member of the royal family and the child of Queen Victoria, things are a little bit more extreme.  The Swiss Cottage in the grounds of Osborne House is quite something.  Here the royal children got to play all sorts of pretend.  I’m sure they had plenty of staff to make sure things worked out the way they wanted.

The house itself is good enough for anyone to live in.  The interior is fitted out to provide any sort of entertainment you might want.  Now it is also a museum of various artifacts from the household.  Some of these are rather suspect items to a modern eye.  Things that were taken from conquered countries and clothing from someone killed in battle make for a slightly uncomfortable viewing.

The grounds around the cottage are also interesting.  There is a fort that was built by one of the princes.  I think by looking at it that the prince had no real effort in building it.  Some military staff were apparently roped in to this process.  This fort looks a lot more impressive than the average fort a kid might make.  This is not cardboard boxes and sofa cushions.

Osborne House

I was digging through images for something else and came across some aerial shots I took while flying around the Isle of Wight with my relative and fellow aviation nut, Pete.  We had been flying up to Cowes from the west end of the Island and then turned to go around East Cowes and off towards Ryde.  I grabbed a bunch of shots of Osborne House.  Now managed by English Heritage, it was one of the homes of Queen Victoria.  Not that this is a recommendation for holidaying on the Isle of Wight, but it is where she died.

I think I have shared some photos of it before but these don’t show up in my list of previously posted shots so I thought I would throw these on to the blog to provide some geographical variety and also to cover for the fact that I don’t have a huge amount to post at the moment!

How to View a Potential Property

C59F1307.jpgWhile Pete and I were flying over Cowes, we were keeping an eye on a helicopter that was orbiting not too far from our location. A short while later, we couldn’t see it anymore and were trying to find it. As it turned out, the helicopter had landed next to a property near Osborne House. Pete understood that the property was currently on the market. Therefore, we concluded that the people were visiting the house to check it out. I must confess, I have not previously inspected any properties by helicopter but, thinking about it, this seems to be the perfect way to make an entrance!