HRH The Princess Royal Visits D’Oyly Carte Island
If music be the food of love, play on!
HRH Princess Royal Visit
As Shakespeare declared in his play Twelfth Night…..If music be the food of love, play on! Welcome to D’Oyly Carte Island, an island built for music.
HRH The Princess Royal has visited D’Oyly Carte Island to support its restoration which brings together the house, gardens and community whilst simultaneously preserving a historic building with such a rich history of British music success and culture.
The visit was to celebrate bringing the island back to life having been empty for 12 years during which time negligence, squatters and vandals did their worst.
In the late 1800’s the most prominent music impresario of that century, Richard D’Oyly Carte, created a global business with his wife and partners WS Gilbert & Sir Athur Sullivan. They created their famous comic operas, the popular music of the time, and initially performed them at the Savoy Theatre.
To great acclaim, this phenomenal British success was exported around the world using the extraordinary business acumen of Helen D’Oyly Carte. This enabled the Carte’s to build and own the Savoy Hotel which was added to when they bought Clarridges, the Connaught and Simpsons.
The music mogul and five-star hotelier, also bought, owned and renamed a magical two-acre island, a short trip down the Thames from his London venues, at Weybridge. On D’Oyly Carte’s private island, he built a magnificent 13 x bedroom property with a spectacular ballroom for his famous and infamous celebrity guests to spend long weekends within the idyllic grounds that were designed and planted by Kew Gardens.
The building was supposed to be a stylish 5* boutique hotel where they would play music, relax and be entertained, away from the smog of central London. D’Oyly, as he was known, then encountered a problem with the local Council.
The Council refused D’Oyly an alcohol license so his entrepreneurial spirt took hold and he and Helen moved in a used the property as their home. This enabled them to entertain the very same guests and clients, as a private property, thereby circumventing the Council’s decision.
Regular visitors to the island included, Gilbert, Sullivan, JM Barry, Oscar Wilde and Whistler, to name a few.
D’Oyly’s son Rupert also lived in the property after Richard and Helen. This was followed by a variety of owners, one of which used it as a nightclub, another converted it into 11 x bedsits another couple bought it to run a mooring business before selling it to a Chinese businessman who closed the mooring business and left the property empty for 12 years. During this time the squatters and vandals took occupation and drove the house and island into ruin. In 2019 Andy and Sheila Hill, from nearby Richmond, saw the property and decided to restore it to its former glory with the help of their daughter and son-in-law, who are both architects.
Mr Hill comments: “We have two talented architects in the family, whose architecture practice PARTI and five start rental business ARC, find, buy, restore and rent similar properties to the one on D’Oyly Carte Island. This enabled Sheila and I to take a leap of faith and buy the island as our family home, not quite knowing what else we could do with it but in the knowledge we had access to the correct expertise at our fingertips. All we saw was an amazing property in a unique location and the challenge was seeing through a very sad building in a dreadful state of repair and taking the risk to do something about it.”
The challenge with large historic buildings full of history and culture, adored by the local community, is illustrated by the Kings project to renovate Dumfries House in the documentary A Royal Grand Design. In this documentary the King identified the need to link the gardens and the house with the local community thereby creating a business model that works for large historic buildings.
Whilst D’Oyly Carte Island is on a different scale to Dumfries House, Andy and Sheila have duplicated this template by creating a local community of Moorers, building D’Oyly’s, a delightful waterside café, bar, restaurant at one end of the island and holding three days of summer concerts as part of the annual Weybridge Festival.
Mr Hill comments: “The D’Oyly Carte Island Summer Concerts in 2024 were a huge success with 6,000 guests attending six events over 3 days providing another opportunity to bringing together the house, gardens and community.”
One of the Summer Concerts in 2024 was dedicated to Gilbert & Sullivan music with an opportunity to see the largest collection of Gilbert & Sullivan memorabilia displayed throughout the house, including Sullivans grand piano. The five other events being contemporary music, that would appeal to the wider community. A large stage was erected on the east patio with guests enjoying the performances from the gardens near the hog roast, Pimm’s tent and other hospitality choices.
Hill Continues: It’s extraordinary what happens when you have an amazing venue like D’Oyly Carte Island, and you decide to bring it back to life after years of neglect, vandals and squatters. One day you get a visit from the Weybridge Festival organisers and the next thing you know we are organising three days of summer concerts for 6,000 people from the local community. From this we are then put in touch with a young company called Folc, an award-winning and truly delicious English rosé from Surrey, and we then have a Floc tent at the Summer Concerts that the local community enjoyed a little bit too much! The benefits to the local community, the local finances and local employment from this one small event is quite extraordinary.”
On the back of the success of the 2024 the D’Oyly Carte Island Summer Concerts are scheduled for 4th, 5th and 6th July 2025. With one day dedicated to Gilbert & Sullivan with the others focused on outstanding musicians playing some of the best songs from the last 50 years. Tickets available at www.doylycarteisland.com
The activities at the island are entirely in keeping with what the island was intended for in 1890 and have resulted in a local community enjoying this jewel in Weybridge’s rich crown of history and culture. A further benefit comes when 30 plus people are directly or indirectly employed from the local community which was precisely what the King experienced at Dumfries House.
The plans for the island include an upgrade to D’Oyly’s to facilitate more private events for the local community and the creation of a Red Squirrel sanctuary on the island.
In the 1800’s it was fashionable to have exotic pets, and the D’Oyly Carte’s had a two-foot crocodile on the island, with its own private pond and beautifully crafted entry and exit points allowing the crocodile to effortlessly step into the deeper part of the pond. One of the D’Oyly Carte’ s good friends, and a client, was JM Barrie who wrote Peter Pan. The crocodile featured in Peter Pan was inspired by D’Oyly’s which used to escape from the island, no doubt tempted by the larger river Thames.
As the local paper, the St James Gazette, reported in 1897:
“A Crocodile In The Thames – About a month ago, a young crocodile, measuring about two feet, escaped from the grounds of Mr. D’Oyly Carte at Weybridge, and made its way to the river, where for some time it was sean disporting itself. Mr. D’Oyly Carte offered a small reward for the recovery of his strange pet; but the crocodile eluded the efforts of those who endeavoured to catch it. A day or two ago, the reward was increased, when some local watermen made a regular search for it. They managed to secure it in a net, and returned it to Mr. D’Oyly Carte, apparently none the worst for its months sojourn in the river.”
To remember the crocodile and its influence on JM Barrie and Peter Pan, a wooden crocodile was made a placed in the eves at the front of the house and remains there to this day.
Hill Explains: Having completely renovated the pond, with crocodile entry and exit points, we pondered another crocodile, but Health & Safety would have had kittens, so we had to find an equally exotic alternative to keep the islands traditions in place. Sheila casually suggested Red Squirrels and, after lots of research, we discovered they are a protected and the larger grey squirrels are moving them towards extinction. Because of this Red Squirrels need somewhere grey squirrels can’t infiltrate and a private island on the Thames is a perfect sanctuary. We are confident, with the help of our mooring community, the greys can be kept away.
Hill Concludes: During our research we made all the right connections with groups dedicated to preserving Red Squirrels and they have all been incredibly supportive. At one meeting we were informed that the Patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust was none other than the King. No pressure then!”
HRH spend time reviewing the progress to date, studying the plans for the future, meeting architects, renovators and supporters and enjoying a hilarious updated performance of Gilbert & Sullivans “A Little List” that can be viewed at www.doylycarteisland.com.
When the new owners bought the island and house, the magnificent cedar tree in the east garden, originally planted by Kew Gardens 130 years ago, had died and, amongst other things, HRH The Princess Royal planted another cedar tree to symbolise islands new lease of life.
In 2024 The Mayor unveiled a Blue Plaque to commemorate the life of Helen D’Oyly Carte who lived at the island and was a visionary, pioneering entrepreneur, superbly documented in the book “The Queen of the Savoy”. Whilst at the island, HRH unveiled a plaque alongside the blue plaque to commemorate the visit of HRH The Princess Royal.
Mrs. Hill concludes: “It was a privilege and honour to welcome HRH to D’Oyly Carte Island to join us in thanking all of the people that have contributed to bring this island and house back to life. With HRH as the first signature in the visitors book, the planting of a new cedar tree by HRH to replace the one planed by Kew Gardens 130 years ago, and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to record the visit by HRH will all be reminders to Andy, me, and all our guests, to double up on our efforts to restore this magical island and we would be delighted to welcome HRH back to review our progress and enjoy another updated version of “A Little List.”