Balmoral

Cabinet 14

When Queen Victoria first visited Balmoral, Aberdeenshire, on 8 September 1848, she noted that the house was ‘small but pretty’, and while there ‘All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils’.

The ‘small’ house was demolished and the new Castle, designed by William Smith of Aberdeen, was completed in 1856.

The Castle has been a Royal family residence since 1852. In that year, the Queen invited diplomat, Champagne merchant, and painter William Wyld (1806-1889) to Balmoral to sketch the surroundings.

This lithograph of his original drawing was produced by Day and Son, granted status as ‘Lithographers to Queen Victoria and to the Queen Dowager, Queen Adelaide’ in 1837.

‘Balmoral’, Aberdeenshire. From John Parker Lawson’s Scotland Delineated. London: Day and Son, 1858.