Clarence House stands next to St James's Palace and was built
between 1825 and 1827 to the designs of John Nash for Prince
William Henry, Duke of Clarence.  He lived there as King
William IV from 1830 until 1837.  During the second world
war, the War Organisation of the British Red Cross and Order of
St. John of Jerusalem for the duration of the war. Two hundred
staff of the Foreign Relations Department maintained contact from
Clarence House with British prisoners-of-war abroad, and
administered the Red Cross Postal Message Scheme.  In 1949
Clarence House was returned to Royal use, when it became the
London home of Princess Elizabeth, elder daughter of George VI,
following her marriage to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten on 20
November 1947. The couple could not move in straight away since
the building needed complete refurbishment. Wartime restrictions
on building work made progress slow. The Duke and Duchess of
Edinburgh, as they were then known, moved to their new home in
June 1949.

It was the London home of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother from
1953 until 2002.  A story goes that she once (probably
often) rang down to the butlers after getting no response from
her bell pull and said in a very camp way: “I don't know
what you old queens are doing down there but this old queen up
here is dying for a glass of gin.” For a time Princess
Margaret lived there too.  After the death of the Queen
Mother, Clarence House became the official London residence of
The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall. It is open to
the public during the summer months each year.