Lot Essay
Queen Charlotte's Cottage at Kew, is situated in the south-west corner of the gardens about six hundred yards west of the Great Pagoda. There are no building records for it and it was most probably paid for out of the Queen's private purse. It seems originally to have been a single-storey building incorporated in the New Menagerie, built in 1770 to hold the Princesses' pets, but was enlarged to its present form, with the addition of an upstairs drawing room, at the end of the 18th Century. The building is planned in the form of an elongated cross with a porch in each of the angles of the arms, and was given to the nation by Queen Victoria in 1898 to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee (1897).