Buckenham Tofts

During a tour of Norfolk's Stanford Battle Area some years ago, laid on by the Army to demonstrate how well they were looking after this beautiful district - and not using tanks and shells simply to chew it to pieces - the official car pulled up in front of a grassy platform of raised ground and beside a short line of dilapidated stone steps. The raised ground made a sort of elevated lawn, large enough for a tennis court or two, and the steps went to the top of the platform, and then went nowhere. We clambered out of the vehicle and strolled around.
'Buckenham Tofts Hall, or all that remains of it,' said the Army officer by way of explanation. 'The Royal family nearly bought it. Instead of Sandringham, I mean.'
Now, I have no knowledge of whether he was correct about one-time Royalist interest in the place, but the notion raised some interesting points.
Buckenham Hall, before demolition, had presented a solid and respectable face to the world, and in the mid-19th century it sat squarely in a large park surrounded by about 650 acres of land. It was also only six miles from Brandon railway station.
Around 1860, Albert, the Prince Consort, was searching for a home, and some good shooting, for his eldest son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, wanting him settled and well away from the unhealthy atmosphere of London. The Prince of Wales was nearly 20, and presumably in favour of the plan, for it is said - with what accuracy I do not know - that the Royal family looked at and considered several places in Norfolk in order to choose the most suitable.
Norfolk, of course, was stuffed with enormous sporting estates, some of them in various degrees of financial plight, which makes it at least feasible that Royal visitors, or their representatives, descended on Buckenham Tofts (also known as Buckenham Parva) as one of the places on their list.
Matters took a huge turn in 1861, however, when the Prince Consort, ill with typhoid, died in December of that year. Albert Edward's response was rapid. With his mother, Queen Victoria, in deep mourning, he rushed off to Norfolk, took a look at the available Sandringham estate, and decided to buy it. Two months' later, in February, 1862, the deal was done.
There is no need to say much about Sandringham, of course, as it is so well known. But what would have happened, or not happened, had the Prince of Wales bought Buckenham Tofts instead?
In all probability there would have been no railway line from King's Lynn to the North Norfolk coast, and possibly no New Hunstanton. There would certainly have been no Battle Area. At least, not in the vicinity of Thetford or Brandon. And possibly no Forestry Commission forests in Breckland.
Whether you feel disappointed at this I do not know, but there is some consolation for Breck Royalists in the knowledge that Buckenham Tofts Hall was, in the dim and distant past, once called Buckingham House.
So close. Oh, so close.