3-085-697 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Queen's Cottage, Kew Gardens, presented to the public by Her Majesty, 1898. 'With the graceful thought for her people which characterises all her royal bounty, the Queen has this New Year presented to her loyal subjects, the public...the quaint little tea-house of Queen Charlotte and its adjoining grounds upon the confines of Kew Gardens...Kew Palace, to the north of the Botanical Gardens, which is now to be made the setting for an extension of the Kew Gardens Museum, dates from the time of Charles I., when it belonged to the descendants of Sir Hugh Portman, a merchant knighted by Elizabeth. It was leased by Queen Caroline, wife of the second George, and subsequently bought by Queen Charlotte, who built the neighbouring tea-house, still known as "the Queen's Cottage," and now, with its Hogarth engravings and its old-world china, to be thrown open to Kew's innumerable visitors'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.