Published in Windlesora 27 (2011)
© WLHG
2010 is the 250th anniversary of the accession of King George III (1760- 1829). He was a popular monarch in Windsor, from 1778 living for part of every week with his wife and three eldest daughters in Queen’s Lodge, a block built at the top of the Long Walk. The three youngest girls were housed in Lower Lodge, the former home of the Dukes of St Albans which the King bought from the 3rd Duke for £7000.
George III patronised local shops, gave £1000 for repaving Windsor’s streets, paid for an infirmary for the soldiery, and made valuable gifts to the parish church. He encouraged local children to fly kites in the park and to play cricket and football. He took a personal interest in Eton College, and to this day the school celebrates his birthday, 4 June.
He was nicknamed ‘The Squire of Windsor‘ because he lived more like a country gentleman than a monarch. He would spend part of every day in his stables at the junction of St Albans St and Park Street and was a passionate huntsman, not of the fox but stags (which weren’t killed but cornered, captured and taken away for another day). He was also called ‘Farmer George‘, because he kept three farms in the Great Park and was closely involved in their running, writing articles for agricultural publications using the pseudonym of Ralph Robinson, actually the name of his shepherd. He would visit the homes of his farm workers and always quietly leave a little money.
Every summer Sunday a band would play and the King and his family process around the South Terrace of the Castle. Anybody could go, and it gave the King another chance to chat to local people. Charles Knight called him the ‘gossiping and inquiring gentleman who lived on the hill’. He also noted that royalty ‘lived in a glasshouse’ since the public road to Datchet then ran right past Queen’s Lodge. Consequently, when the King suffered his period of ‘madness‘ in 1788 his doctors determined to remove him from the public gaze to Kew, though the King protested ‘Why do you take me from the place I like best in the world?’
He was to recover and resume his life, but in 1810, the year of his Golden Jubilee, his youngest and favourite daughter Princess Amelia died, and he lapsed into a permanent state of mental confusion. His eldest son became Prince Regent while he lived on, blind and deaf, in a suite of sunless rooms overlooking the North Terrace. Yet he was not forgotten. When he died in January 1820 his funeral in St George’s Chapel was attended by no fewer than 30,000 mourners.
Windsor Local History Group 