London, Aug 06: Prince Charles is letting the public tour his new digs at Clarence House - and fair enough, since taxpayers contributed 4.4 million pounds for work on the former home of his grandmother, the Queen Mother Elizabeth. The Prince dipped into his own pocket for much of the decoration of the four-story regency house - including some on accommodations for his longtime love, Camilla Parker Bowles.
Parts of Clarence House open to the public for the first time today, while the family is in Scotland for the annual summer holiday. Small tour groups will be guided around five rooms on the ground floor until October 17, when it becomes a private home again for Charles and his sons, Princes William and Harry. Parker Bowles will have a base there - a room and bath - as she did at their previous home in York House at St. James's palace.
The move on Monday couldn't have been much easier. The brick palace literally adjoins Clarence House, and the family wouldn't even have had to leave the grounds to get from one home to the next. Just yards from the bustling traffic that swirls around Buckingham Palace, the house has a tranquil air in its brick-walled setting of lush green lawn and flower borders. Huge plane trees rise beside the gravel drive.
Clarence House, though never a tourist attraction like Buckingham Palace, was a favorite gathering place of the legions of admirers of the Queen Mother, who died last year at 101. Bureau Report