Royalty in residence

YOUR INTERESTING account of various royal visits to the Chichester/Bognor area covered the last 100 years.

A wider time scale would have let you include that Princess Charlotte (George IV’s only legitimate heir, who died in childbirth and so never became Queen) is believed to have stayed as a child or teenager with her governess in the domed building built by Sir Richard Hotham as part of a plan to make Bognor a fashionable resort like Brighton.

The building is now occupied by Chichester University.

Similarly, a widening of the royal definition could have included the Bowes-Lyon family of Glamis castle, who had a holiday home nicknamed by them ‘The Den’, at the north end of what is now Den Avenue, well before their daughter Elizabeth married the Duke of York who became George VI.

It is said that the house was damaged during WWI and Lyon Street and Glamis Street are built on the land it occupied.

Mrs LT Mulvany

Elmer Road, Elmer

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