Of all the addresses that contain a real secret, it is the least attractive. A brutal post-war apartment block built on the site of a V-2 bomb crater, it is an ugly oasis surrounded by the elegant Belgravia Regency roads.
But if the walls of Stack House could speak, what a delicious prank they could speak.
They can start with that late October night, almost half a century ago, when, after a night of dancing in the darkness and in the privacy of Annabel’s basement, the chi-chi Mayfair club, the 23-year-old Prince of Wales was nervous sipping a cup of coffee.
He was served by his dance partner that night, an attractive young woman for whom the expression “bubbly blonde” was, for once, an accurate description and in whose two-bedroom apartment the entertainment continued.
It was Camilla Shand, and she and Charles had just left on their first public meeting.
If entrepreneurs get what they want, there won’t be much left of the building where the Prince first laid eyes on the woman who would eventually become his second wife. In the photo: Charles and Camilla in the early days of their romance in 1975
The prince with romantic inclinations was already in love with this daughter of a hero of the Second World War. Camilla, while not conventionally beautiful, had something that men found powerful and sexy.
Here, then, was the beginning of the bumpy journey that would take Camilla from her debutante apartment to become the chatelaine of Clarence House, Highgrove and Birkhall in Aberdeenshire.
If it were anyone else, you can imagine one of those blue heritage-style plaques on the wall of Stack House discreetly watching their role in the confused love life of Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall.
But there is no such tribute – as is the real way – and soon, if the developers get what they want, there won’t be much left of the building where the Prince first laid eyes on the woman who would eventually become his second wife.
Plans were drawn up by the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate to raze the 1950s block in a £ 400 million redevelopment scheme.
The action to demolish what has been dubbed ‘aristo-flats’ sparked outrage among the local population, with more than 200,000 signing a petition opposing the plans.
Yesterday, the royal authorities struggled to insist that the Duchess had not – as reported – intervened in particular in the dispute between residents and the Duke, Britain’s wealthiest landowner.
No doubt she has sentimental affection for the house where she first lived as a city girl, but there are intractable links between the royal family and Hugh Grosvenor, 30, who inherited a £ 9 billion fortune in the sudden death of his father, the sixth Duke of Westminster, in 2016.
A brutal post-war apartment block built on the site of a V-2 bomb crater, it is an ugly oasis surrounded by the elegant Belgravia Regency roads. But if the walls of Stack House (in the photo) could speak, what a delicious prank they could speak
He is the godfather of Prince George, and his mother Natalia, the widowed duchess, is the godmother of Prince William. Charles is especially close to the family and used to shoot Westminster properties regularly.
However, his friends believe that the apartment, on the corner of Victoria Coach Station, plays an important role in Charles’ romantic memory and in a happier time, long before the domestic difficulties of his life with Diana.
It was no less complicated, however. Charles’s first visit to Stack House was in 1971 and the invitation came not from Camilla, but from another young and glamorous beauty, Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the then Chilean ambassador to London.
They met at Cambridge University in 1968, shortly after he started as a graduate student at Trinity College. Several years older than Charles, Lucia worked as a research assistant for Lord (Rab) Butler, the distinguished ex-Tory grandee who was then Master of the Trinity and wrote his memoirs.
During dinner in Mestre’s chambers, the Prince and the sophisticated Lucia became friends – but never lovers. In fact, years later, Charles was furious at reports from Rab’s wife, Lady (Mollie) Butler, that he had “cut his teeth” with Lucia.
When her parents returned to Chile, Lucia stayed in London, occupying an apartment on the first floor in Stack House, and her neighbor in the lower apartment was Camilla.
At that time, there was something strangely old-fashioned in the apartments that were a kind of gracious residence reserved by his landlord, the Duke of Westminster, for elderly relatives and other favored people.
Camilla qualified because her mother Rosalind was sister to Lord Ashcombe, whose grandfather, Thomas Cubitt, built the Grosvenor estate.
She rented the apartment from Lady Moyra Campbell, a bridesmaid in the Queen’s Coronation, and shared it with her friend, Exma. Virginia Carington, whose father was Mrs. Thatcher’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Carrington.
‘Camilla’s room always looked like a bomb had hit him,’ recalled an old friend. “Virginia was pretty neat, so Camilla went crazy. The bathroom was always in a state after she entered it.
Plans were drawn up by the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate to raze the 1950s block in a £ 400 million redevelopment scheme. In the photo: Hugh Grosvenor
The daughter of the South American envoy, Lucia and Camilla, whose father Bruce Shand won a double MC in World War II, became great friends. According to Camilla’s biographer Penny Junor: ‘They used to come in and out of each other’s apartments every day, borrow clothes, go to the same balls and parties – and on weekends Camilla took Lucia to her parents’ house. in rural East Sussex. ‘
Lúcia even spent Christmas with the Shands, where she was treated as just one of the family with a sock full of gifts on the end of the bed.
The complication of all this was the presence in Camilla’s life of Andrew Parker Bowles, a bold domestic cavalry officer she had met at her debutante ball in 1965 and with whom she had dated from time to time since.
Parker Bowles, however, was not a loyal boyfriend and saw several other women on Camilla’s back. Then Cupid enters, in the form of Miss Santa Cruz.
With Andrew posted abroad, Lucia planned to introduce Camilla to the Prince of Wales. A painful shyness, an innate caution against being caught by an adventurer, and a general lack of knowledge of women and their customs prevented him when it came to making advances to the opposite sex.
One night, when Lucia and the Prince agreed to leave, she asked him to pick her up early, saying that he had “the right girl for him”. The Camila she described had “enormous friendliness, warmth and natural character”.
The prince, who had a gift for Lucia, also brought another one for her friend.
Its introduction has already gone down in history.
It was on the night that Lucia told them that they had a “genetic background” – Alice Keppel, Camilla’s great-grandmother, had been the longtime lover of King Edward VII, Carlos’s great-great-grandfather. “Watch out, watch out,” Lucia told them. That night, in Lucia’s first-floor apartment, they got along immediately.
For Charles, it was a coup de grace; he fell in love almost immediately.
He thought Camila was deliciously natural, neither fawning nor fawning. She also had an earthly sensuality that he found irresistible.
Soon he was calling her and asking her out. There were weekends in Broadlands, home of his beloved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who encouraged him to ‘sow his wild oats’ and to have as many affairs as he could before he got married.
But if at that time he thought of Camilla as a bride, the Prince never said.
In any case, Andrew Parker Bowles was still on the scene, and it was the professional soldier, not the prince, whom Camilla was determined to marry. Some believe she seduced Charles just to make Andrew green with envy after he had a torrid relationship with Princess Anne.
Penny Junor believes there was an element of equals in Camilla’s adventure with Charles: “Her main motivation was to be a little excited and to make Andrew jealous.”
With Parker Bowles gone, the Prince and Camila met whenever an opportunity presented itself, including that night that started with a dance at Annabel’s and ended in intimacy over coffee cups.
Charles’s post in the Navy and Camilla’s subsequent engagement to Parker Bowles hastened the end of the romance – or at least that phase of it.
And how sad is that Stack House where it all started, in all likelihood, soon it will no longer be a witness to this unique and most enduring of all real love stories.