No Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace was originally a town house.
George III bought Buckingham House in 1762.
Suppose King George III did not buy Buckingham House. Thus there is no Buckingham Palace.
What castle/palace should then be the main residence of the British Royal Family? Or should an entirely new castle/palace be built?
 
Hampton Court would likely be maintained as a primary residence and the renovation work continued. I believe the plan called for the medieval portions to be slowly replaced by wings that more fit the 18th century aesthetics but it was abandoned when the focus shifted to Buckingham.
 
Buckingham Palace was originally a town house.
George III bought Buckingham House in 1762.
Suppose King George III did not buy Buckingham House. Thus there is no Buckingham Palace.
What castle/palace should then be the main residence of the British Royal Family? Or should an entirely new castle/palace be built?

St James's Palace remains at the disposal of the Monarch and would have remained the main official residence of the Monarch. The British royal court is still known as the Court of St James's and traditionally it is still at St James's Palace, not Buckingham Palace that new monarchs are proclaimed and where a new Monarch holds their Accession Council.

George III, George IV and Queen Victoria were all keen builders, they would likely have expanded/developed St James's or possibly built an alternative London palace. In terms of central London properties, they could have developed Kensington Palace or George IV could have expanded upon Carlton House.
 
Hampton Court would likely be maintained as a primary residence and the renovation work continued. I believe the plan called for the medieval portions to be slowly replaced by wings that more fit the 18th century aesthetics but it was abandoned when the focus shifted to Buckingham.

George III never had any interest in Hampton Court and never lived there.

He preferred Windsor and Kew. He built extensively at Kew, it is a great shame that the neo gothic castle he built there was destroyed just a decade after his death.

William_Westall._New_Palace_Kew_1823.jpg


He bought Buckingham House because it enabled him to create a comfortable and domestic home for himself and his family away from the formal Court at St James's and the government at Westminster but was quite literally only 10 minutes walking distance away.
 
There is also Eltham palace, close to chistelhurst where Queen Victoria had her own platform built so she could visit exiled former emperor Napoleon III so this could be an option.
 
There is also Eltham palace, close to chistelhurst where Queen Victoria had her own platform built so she could visit exiled former emperor Napoleon III so this could be an option.

Eltham is such a beautiful residence but was probably far too small, certainly for George III and his family and would lose its uniqueness if it was expanded/developed upon to make it a modern and major royal palace.
 
George III hated Hampton Court after an incident where George II boxed his ears in public there when he was a boy. AFAIR the reason had to do with George II's choice of bride for his grandson, one of his Wolfenbuttel cousins IIRC, leading George III to reply "I won't be bewolfenbutteled" and the boxing.

Eltham was in ruins since the Civil War.

By 1750, the only royal palaces still in any state of repair were:

St. James'
Hampton Court
Kew
Kensington

Although, Sir William Chambers (IIRC) drew up plans for a rebuilding and refurbishing of Richmond Palace.

Also, William IV hated Buckingham House (since Parliament had severely curtailed the amount of money they were willing to grant George IV to allow him to rebuild it completely) even suggesting alternately that it be used as a barracks for the Horse Guards or as a new residence for the recently destroyed Houses of Parliament.
 
The last monarchs to live at Hampton Court were George I and George II.
They contributed more redesigning of the Hampton Court Palace.
Some of the redesigns included the addition of the Queen's Staircase, the Cumberland Suite, and the Queen's Private Apartments.
 
King George III gave Buckingham House as a dowry gift to his new Queen Charlotte.
Buckingham House finally became a royal palace.
St. James's Palace and Kensington Palace were retained for ceremonial occasions.
 
I think Kensington Palace would have been the main Royal Palace in Central London in the absence of Buck House. St. James is on a relatively cramped site with St. James right behind so knocking it down and starting again isn't terribly attractive and all the other OTL Palace are too far away to take Buck Houses place. Kensington Palace back's onto the then relatively undeveloped Kensington meaning there is a lot of scope for various grand works. Of course there is always the third option of a completely different new build site. What about something further down the Thames in Pimlico? It would be convenient for Westminster and there was a long tradition of riverside Palaces.
 
It would have been interesting if the Georgians had erected the British alternative to Versailles. Whilst the conditions for the creation of Versialles aren't in place, perhaps a megalomaniac monarch with a penchant for interfering with politics is given enough money by Parliament to build a palace far away from London.
 
Can I present the Winchester Palace it was explicitly modelled on the Palace of Versailles right down to being built away from politically suspect London. Construction was started by Charles II during his period of Personal Rule after Parliament had been dissolved in the aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis, however first his death in 1685 and then James II being overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 meant that it was never finished.

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When Victoria was Queen, the state apartments of King George IV at Buckingham Palace were found to be too small to hold a court ball.
In 1847 to 1850, the London builder, Thomas Cubitt constructed a new wing along the east side of the palace courtyard.
If there was no Buckingham Palace, Thomas Cubitt may not have constructed the new wing.
 
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