On Tuesday 18th August, it emerged that a mansion in Kensington which was the former family home of Maharaja Duleep Singh’s son, Prince Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh, has gone on sale at £15.5mn.
Duleep Singh, youngest son of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, was the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire including Lahore in the Victorian era. He was exiled to England when his empire came under the British Raj.
His son, Prince Victor, was born in London in 1866 and was taken under the wing of Queen Victoria as his godmother. His mixed-race marriage to Lady Anne Coventry, the daughter of the 9th Earl of Coventry, had raised several eyebrows in the English society. This was the first time an Indian royal had married an English noblewoman. While the marriage was resisted by both families, the union was made possible by Prince Victor's friends in high places - most notably Edward, Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII. The married couple were later gifted their new marital home in Kensington by the British authorities who leased a “grace-and-favour" mansion in The Little Boltons area.
The mansion was purchased by the quasi-government owned East India Company (EIC) and registered as an investment property to be leased for rental income. The EIC governed India at the time and leased the property for a token peppercorn rent to the displaced Duleep Singh family. The displaced Indian royal family had other properties in Wimbledon and Roehampton, also leased at peppercorn rents, as well as the use of a 17,000-acre country house, Elveden Hall, in Suffolk, eastern England.
Maharaja Duleep Singh was removed from Punjab along with his title and power at the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849 and later sent into exile in London. Prince Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh was his eldest son with Maharani Bamba Müller, with whom he also had a daughter – Sophia Duleep Singh – a prominent suffragette and women’s rights activist in British history.
Victor Jay Duleep Singh was educated at Eton College and Cambridge University. Prince Victor is known to have loved the high-life, including gambling, horse racing and partying at Claridges Hotel in London’s Mayfair as a favourite haunt.
Jeremy Gee, managing director of Beauchamp Estates, said, “This substantial former 'grace-and-favour' home of the exiled Crown Prince of Lahore has been designed to provide excellent proportions and benefits from high ceilings, large living spaces and a 52 ft rear garden. It is located in one of south-west Kensington's most sought after residential addresses.”
