Princess Elizabeth, aged about 10 at Praa Sands in Cornwall, covered a letter to Royal Lodge housemaid Beatrice Stillman with drawings of horses and highwaymen, and in February 2026 Hansons sold it for £25,000 against a £2,000 to £4,000 estimate

Hansons Auctioneers reported that a one-page letter written by Princess Elizabeth, aged around 10 and on holiday at Praa Sands in Cornwall, sold for £25,000 in February 2026, against a guide price of £2,000 to £4,000.

The sale was held at the firm’s Penshurst saleroom in Kent on 27 February 2026. The letter was addressed to Beatrice Stillman (1901-1993), head housemaid at Royal Lodge, Windsor, and its margins carry drawings of horses, dogs, children and highwaymen.

Charles Hanson, who was on the rostrum, said: “This is one of the most remarkable letters written by this country’s longest serving monarch and it was a privilege to sell it. Bidding was intense and I commend the buyer for keeping the letter in this country.”

“Sea Side, Sea Mead, Praa Sands”

The letter carries no date, only that address at the head of the page. It begins: “Dear Beatrice, I am sending you some primroses we picked, wild. There are some pale pink ones as well as the yellow. It is very lovely here. We can go down on to the beach from the garden.”

It goes on: “I hope the birds are well, and the gold-fish haven’t died.” The writer asks that the primroses be shared with two members of the Royal Lodge household, “Cootie (Miss Coote I mean)” and Mrs Wade, adds that “Jock is very well and happy here”, passes on love from “Nanny and Joanna”, and signs off “Love from Elizabeth.”

Hansons said Gyles Brandreth’s book Elizabeth refers to two of the princess’s ponies, Jock and Hans, and that her nanny at the time was Marion Crawford, known as Crawfie.

The drawings around the text include a pair of horses with highwaymen, a seated girl named Mary, a dog called Jim, a boy named John, a boy and pony jumping a five-bar gate, and a man patting a horse.

Justin Matthews, Hansons’ regional director for Kent and Sussex, dated the letter by the household calendar: Stillman was taken on as head housemaid at Royal Lodge in 1936, and in May 1940 the two princesses moved to Windsor Castle for their safety. The BBC reported that it was written at Praa Sands sometime between 1936 and 1940, when Elizabeth was between 10 and 12 years old.

“The letter speaks of an idyllic childhood holiday before the war when we know Cornwall was a popular destination for affluent and aristocratic families,” Matthews said. “In those days, it was very common for children to correspond with household staff they were fond of.”

A suitcase under a bed in Kent

Stillman joined the royal household in 1936, when Princess Elizabeth was 10 and Princess Margaret six. Royal Lodge, three miles south of Windsor Castle, had been given to the family by George V in 1931 as a weekend retreat; its grounds contain Y Bwthyn Bach, the miniature cottage presented to Princess Elizabeth by the people of Wales in 1932.

Stillman married Alfred Twyman, a gardener on the estate, in 1946, and corresponded with the Queen Mother for the rest of her life. When her brother-in-law John Dicker was killed in an air raid in 1940, the Queen Mother invited his widow, Stillman’s sister, and their daughters Rene and Jean to play with the princesses at Royal Lodge.

The papers passed to Jean, who became Jean Westacott, and were found in a suitcase under her bed after her death, about two years before the auction, by her son William Westacott, a farmer from Sevenoaks and Stillman’s great-nephew. “We knew the letters existed, but to read them in the flesh was a ‘wow’ moment,” he said.

Westacott said his aunt Rene, then 95, remembered being presented to George VI, the Queen and the two princesses, and playing in the large playhouse in the Royal Lodge garden.

£30,780 for the archive

The letter was sold in a lot that also contained an undated pencil note from Princess Margaret reading: “Beatrice! Please could you look after my bathing suit? Margaret.” Hansons said the letter drew an online contest between would-be buyers in America and the UK, with bids from as far as Hong Kong, before it was knocked down at £25,000.

The buyer was a father from Southend, Essex, who did not want to be named and who bought the letter for his six-year-old daughter. He told Hansons he was not a monarchist: “If I can encourage my daughter to be as respectful to everyone around her as the girl who wrote that letter, then it’s £25,000 well spent. In fact it would be the best investment in her education I could make.”

He said he had seen the letter on a news website and paid with money set aside for a new kitchen, adding that he might now be “cooking on a Bunsen burner”. He called the purchase “a moment of madness” that he did not regret, and said he planned to frame the letter and hang it in his daughter’s room.

Other material from the same family archive also sold above estimate. A lot of ration books and signed photographs guided at £50 to £80 made £3,600, and the cache of letters and photographs found in the suitcase made £30,780 in total, according to the auctioneer.

Documents in the late Queen’s hand have come to auction before, and a letter relaying a vet’s verdict on the foal of her horse Dove is on offer at Bonhams until 3 December 2026. Her later letters include the handwritten one she sent Winston Churchill on his retirement, a mark of her bond with her first prime minister. Matthews said of the Praa Sands letter: “In 37 years in the business I had never seen anything like it.”

Westacott attended the sale with his wife and daughter. “I am stunned and overjoyed by the result, and delighted to see how much excitement the letter evoked from so many people all over the world,” he said.