Osborne House

''Osborne House (front aspect facing sea)

Osborne House is a stately home in East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK.

The house was commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and was built on the site of a smaller house from 1845 - 1851. It was at Osborne House that Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone to Victoria, in 1878, and Marconi later transmitted radio messages to Victoria to keep her up to date about the state of health of her son, Edward. The architecture of the building is based on palaces of the Italian Renaissance

The house was a favourite of Victoria, who spent many summers there. Following Albert's death in 1861, she effectively made it her permanent residence.

The grounds include a Swiss Cottage with with what were full functioning rooms built on minature scale for use by the Queen's children.

Admirers of the building included Adolf Hitler who, being under the impression that the house could become one of his post war retreats, gave orders that the Osborne Estate should not be bombed during World War II

Table of contents

1 Naval College 1.1 The Windslow Boy 2 King Edward VII Retirement Home for Officers 3 English Heritage

Naval College

Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the house was donated by her son Edward to the nation (it is rumoured he did not like Osborne possibly because of its association with his father with who'm he had a difficult relationship)

Part of the estate became an officer training college for the Royal Navy before Dartmouth in 1921. Initial training began at the age of 13 and further studies we continued at Dartmouth. Former students included the Queen's great-grandsons, the future Edward VIII, George V and younger brother Georgie who as a boy ran away from the college.

Another noted cadet was Jack Llewelyn, one of the five Llewelyn Davies brothers (George, Jack, Peter, Michael and Nico) that inspired Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Jack described his 5 years at Osborne as horrendous -his brothers all went to Eton.

The Windslow Boy

A famous English play that was based on an actual incident at the college and later made into a movie was The Winslow Boy. The play is based on a father's fight to clear his son's name after the boy is expelled from Osborne Naval College for stealing a postal order.

Following the naval college, the house was ran as a museum, but a wing was also set aside until the late ninteen nineties for retired senior officers of the Britsh Armed Services and later included convalescents from a military and civil service background

English Heritage

The house is one of the major attractions now owned by English Heritage and is open to the public from spring through to autumn.