Clarence House has been a Royal residence for over 170 years.

The house was built between 1825 and 1827 to the designs of John Nash for the third son of George III, Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and his wife Adelaide.

The new house incorporated the south-western corner of the Tudor buildings of St. James's Palace. The Duke of Clarence had been living in apartments at the western end of St. James's Palace, but following his marriage in 1818 they were no longer adequate.

The house created by Nash, who also played a significant part in the development of Buckingham Palace for George IV, was a bright, stuccoed, three-storey mansion of classical proportions. It was arranged to face west on to Stable Yard Road, at that time a public thoroughfare.

Unlike his elder brother George IV, the Duke of Clarence was not a connoisseur of art and fine furnishings. The interior of Clarence House was plainly decorated and furnished in comparison to Buckingham Palace and York House.

The final cost, after fitting-out was completed at the beginning of 1829, was calculated at £22,232.

After the death of George IV in 1830, the Duke of Clarence acceded to the Throne as William IV, but remained at Clarence House until his death in 1837. George IV had left the vastly extended Buckingham Palace far from complete, and the new king preferred his existing home.

In fact, when the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire in 1834, William IV offered the new Buckingham Palace as a ready-made replacement. William IV's main concession to his new role as Sovereign was the addition of a corridor at first-floor level in Clarence House to connect with the State Apartments of St. James's Palace.

After William IV's death in May 1837, Clarence House became the home of his unmarried sister, Princess Augusta, until her death in 1840.

The next occupant of Clarence House was Queen Victoria's mother, Victoria, Duchess of Kent, who lived there from 1841 to 1861, the year in which both she and Prince Albert died.  During the residency of the Duchess of Kent, her daughter and grandchildren would often visit from their nearby home in Buckingham Palace.

The house was left vacant for five years until 1866, when Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son, moved in. He was a career sailor, travelling all over the world over a 40-year period, as well as carrying out official Royal visits to Brazil, Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan and India.

After marrying the daughter of Tsar Alexander II, the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, in 1874 in St. Petersburg, Alfred began the enlargement and decoration of Clarence House.

As a younger son of the Sovereign, the Duke had to pay for most of the improvements himself, with only the eradication of rot and sanitary improvements being charged to the Office of Works. The house was reoriented towards the south, with a new entrance featuring cast iron Doric columns.

Another of his creations was a Russian Orthodox chapel on the first floor. The Duchess's household included a Russian priest and chanter who officiated daily. The chapel was dismantled after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.

The new rooms were fitted out in a mixture of 'Old English', with oak and plaster ornament, and more eclectic styles, including some of the exotic wares the Prince had collected on his travels. A catalogue of his possessions dating from the 1870s lists over 400 such pieces, including oriental porcelain, bronzes, lacquers and jades.
 
In 1893 Prince Alfred inherited the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from his uncle, Prince Albert's elder brother Duke Ernest, and moved with his family to Germany. He retained Clarence House as his London base, however, until his death in 1900.

After his death, Prince Alfred's younger brother, Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn occupied the house with his wife Louise, Duchess of Connaught until 1942. Prince Arthur was a soldier, serving for long periods overseas, including a period following his retirement as Governor-General of Canada, where he lived from 1911 to 1916.

When the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn died in 1942, Clarence House was made available for the use of 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.

The decoration was simple, and much of the furniture came in the form of wedding presents. Princess Anne was born at Clarence House in August 1950, and it was the home of The Prince of Wales between the ages of one and three.

The death of King George VI on 6 February 1952 led to the Duchess's accession as Queen. The Royal couple moved to Buckingham Palace, and Clarence House was prepared for the accommodation of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

It is with the late Queen Elizabeth that Clarence House is today most associated. She moved there with Princess Margaret in 1953, shortly before the Coronation.

From Clarence House Queen Elizabeth carried out many official duties. All foreign Heads of State called at Clarence House for tea in the afternoon of the first day of a State Visit.

Clarence House also became a venue for private entertaining. After Princess Margaret's marriage in 1960, Queen Elizabeth opened out two of the rooms on the ground floor to form the Garden Room, a large, sunlit room well suited to entertaining large groups of guests. These occasions, which continued into Queen Elizabeth's eleventh decade, were attended by an extraordinary cross-section of people.

The house contained much of Queen Elizabeth's art collection. Queen Elizabeth brought together a collection strong in 20th-century British art, embracing important works by John Piper, Graham Sutherland, WS Sickert and Augustus John. She also acquired superb examples of Fabergé, English porcelain and silver, particularly pieces relating to the Bowes-Lyon family.
 
From 1970, when Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 70th birthday, to 2001, the Royal Family assembled at Clarence House on 4 August each year for a traditional birthday appearance by The Queen Mother.

Well-wishers crowded into Stable Yard Road outside Clarence House to offer greetings and presents.

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002, The Queen Mother's grandson, The Prince of Wales, made Clarence House his official London residence.