For sale: Queen Victoria’s rebel royal yacht club
A YACHT club built by Queen Victoria after she was refused membership of an all male club has gone on sale for £700,000.
The Prince Consort was built in 1846, at a cost of £4,500, to host the club after she was barred from visiting the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes, Isle of Wight.
Determined to sail while at her retreat of Osborne House, in East Cowes, Queen Victoria set up her own Royal Victoria Yacht Club.
Her husband, Prince Albert, lay the foundation stone for the Prince Consort building, which was finished a year later.
Queen Victoria was a regular visitor until her husband’s death in 1871, when a hugely popular annual regatta was cancelled at short notice as a mark of respect.
Unhappy with the decision, she withdrew her patronage for the club. However, when she died in 1901, the club fired a 21-gun salute.
The four-storey former club – which has since been used as a restaurant and had the upper two floors converted into flats – is on the market with a guide price of £700,000.
It is among 180 lots being sold by regional land and property auctioneers Clive Emson next month.
Rob Marchant, Clive Emson’s auctioneer for the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, said: “The building is a testament to a strong-willed queen who rightly felt aggrieved that being a woman excluded her from the male preserve of the Royal Yacht Squadron.”
The building was “testament to a peeved Queen” who was “striking a blow for equality”, he added.
“She was basically sticking two very visible fingers up at her own establishment by constructing the yacht club,” he said.
The Royal Yacht Squadron, whose patron is the Queen, was founded in 1815.
Clive Emson’s auction will take place on Friday at 11am, at the Solent Hotel & Spa, Rookery Avenue, Whiteley, near Fareham. The firm raised £16 million from 155 lots at its September auction.