What's it like to live at Sandringham? The Times Siddharth Deshmukh What's it like to live at Sandringham? new The refurbished water tower on the royal estate provides stories — and steps — aplenty From the top of the Sandringham Water Tower, 'Norfolk explodes around you' Siddharth Deshmukh Monday October 26 2026, 3.55am GMT , The Times Listen 0:00 / · 7:02 min Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save Puzzles Challenge yourself with today's puzzles. T here was an alarm going off when my daughter Avni and I arrived at the Sandringham Water Tower. It was dark. The windows glowed yellow against the Norfolk night and the tower loomed above us, looking both welcoming and vaguely haunted. I had, perhaps unwisely, been reading Sandringham's ghost stories on the way there. Apparently they had been expecting me. The alarm was swiftly silenced by the housekeeper, one of several extraordinarily kind and cheerful people I met on the estate, and we went inside. Most commented 1 Michael Carrick looks resigned to fate as United fans turn on owners Football 377 comments 2 Brazil election: Lula re-elected but Bolsonaro refuses to concede Latin America 153 comments 3 Two men killed by falling trees as Storm Boelo batters UK Weather 98 comments 4 Shabana Mahmood 'must quit if migration reforms are watered down' Politics 42 comments 5 Terrorist linked to Isis 'smuggled himself into UK on back of lorry' Crime 48 comments I had come to Sandringham with a fairly simple question. What does royalty look like when it goes home? Luxury newsletter The inside track on tech, travel, philanthropy and the hottest handbags, cars and spas. Sign up with one click You've successfully signed up to the Luxury newsletter Explore our newsletters An error occurred. Please use the link below. Luxury newsletter Explore our newsletters The Water Tower seemed an eccentric place to start looking. Built in 1877 and designed by the Victorian engineer James Mansergh, it once supplied fresh water to Sandringham House and the estate. Its cast-iron tank held 32,000 gallons. Nearly 150 years later someone has looked at this magnificent piece of Victorian plumbing and thought: romantic getaway. I approve. Top stories 1 How Meghan has struggled in private since her very public marriage Celebrity 2 At 39, I was married to a good man. So why did I end things? Sex & Relationships 3 Marcus Wareing: Why I pulled out of working with Gordon Ramsay (again) Celebrity 4 My family are finding it difficult to talk about my cancer diagnosis Health & Fitness The kitchen is on the ground floor. I imagined a royal guest returning from an unsuccessful day's shooting, mournfully eating crackers smeared with Sandringham honey or chutney. The estate makes both. It also makes chocolate. Sandringham, I discovered, is less a country estate than a small country with unusually good branding. Advertisement Twenty-three steps take you to the bedroom. Here our guest changes for dinner, admires himself in a rather fine mirror and, resisting an extremely inviting bed, continues upwards. Another 26 steps. The sitting room. Here, things become stranger. Cricketers stare down from the walls. One is Frederick Spofforth, the Australian fast bowler known as “the Demon”. The others refuse to introduce themselves. I found myself wondering whether Ranji might be among them. Had Maharajah Duleep Singh ever climbed these stairs? Had somebody once sat here with a post-prandial drink discussing a disastrous innings? The tower's narrow spiral staircase Sandringham is that sort of place. Stories occasionally arrive before the facts do. There are another 76 steps from the sitting room to the top. And then Norfolk explodes around you. Top stories 1 Bank shares are booming. Here's why I won't be buying any Saving & Investing The old 32,000-gallon water tank is now a rooftop terrace. At dawn, mist lies across the fields. Sheep become small white punctuation marks in the green. Woods stretch towards the horizon beneath a sky so enormous that the land appears almost incidental. Big sky country. My daughter sat wrapped in a blanket watching the sunrise while I contemplated the peculiar journey of a Victorian water tank from royal plumbing to luxurious accommodation. I felt very small. And, strangely, rather expansive. Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement Advertisement Sandringham, I soon discovered, once even had its own time. Edward VII had the estate clocks set half an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time to provide more daylight for winter shooting. The custom survived under George V until Edward VIII finally returned Sandringham to the same temporal universe as everybody else in 1936. This tells you quite a lot about the place. Most of us rearrange our day to suit the clock. Kings, apparently, rearrange the clock. Sandringham House itself provides the other half of the story. This is King Charles's private country home rather than a Crown-owned palace, and the new Royal Country Retreat Signature Tour takes visitors beyond the familiar public rooms and into spaces previously closed to the public, including guest bedrooms, the Billiards Room and Long Library. The sitting room While staying at the Water Tower doesn't automatically come with private access to the house, guests can separately book some rather unusual ways of getting behind the scenes. The tour, limited to 15 guests, ventures into parts of Sandringham House beyond the usual visitor route; there is also a Royal Working Estate Safari and a tour of the reimagined gardens. The effect of going behind the scenes is curious. The closer you get to royalty, the more domestic it becomes. The Long Library began life as an American-style bowling alley. In 1957 Queen Elizabeth delivered the first televised Christmas broadcast from here. Both are splendid facts. But I was more intrigued to discover that guests were allowed to borrow books, with strict instructions to return them. Clearly, somebody had form. Read more of the latest royal news and analysis Advertisement Sandringham has kept changing because it remains a home rather than a museum. In 1975 more than 100 rooms in the service wing were demolished as the house was modernised, including bringing the kitchens closer to the dining room. Even royalty eventually gets tired of waiting for dinner. Outside, the formality loosens again. The gardens cover 60 acres but don't behave as though they have been ordered to. There are grander stretches nearer the house, but elsewhere trees, paths and planting are allowed some English eccentricity. In autumn they feel less landscaped than enchanted. The bedroom Yet my favourite moment of the tour was much less grand. Somewhere along the way, looking at the dining table, I stopped seeing Sandringham as a collection of historic rooms and started imagining breakfast. That stopped me. Suddenly the furniture changed. These were no longer simply very fine chairs and sofas. People had sat in them. Kings, queens, princes, friends, relations. People had read books here, played billiards, eaten breakfast, celebrated Christmas and presumably occasionally wondered what was for lunch. History is considerably more entertaining when somebody has to eat breakfast in it. The tour ends with a Sandringham gin, almost as though one is not already slightly inebriated by the accumulated stories. Read more luxury reviews, advice and insights from our experts Advertisement And that, perhaps, is Sandringham's greatest trick. It doesn't really feel like a museum. It feels inhabited. The Water Tower is self-catering, although even that can be made effortless. Guests can arrange with the property manager to have the fridge stocked before arrival, paying according to what they order. My visit included excellent brunches at the estate café and dinner at the Rose & Crown in nearby Snettisham, where Prince William stopped for a cider in 2020 as pubs prepared to reopen after the first Covid lockdown. The ground-floor kitchen Later, back at the Water Tower, I began climbing again, towards that ridiculous Norfolk sky. I had arrived wondering what royalty looked like when it went home. It turns out that kings eat breakfast. Guests borrow books. People drink gin. Somebody forgets something downstairs and presumably regrets it 23 steps later. The ordinary things remain ordinary. Sandringham simply gives them better stories. And for two nights, I had somehow climbed into one. Advertisement From ￡1,095 to ￡2,395 for a week, sleeping two, oliverstravels.com Life & Style LUXX Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save