PThe stunning Scottish country house where Edward VIII reputedly proposed to Wallis Simpson is on sale for £1.4m.
The King’s proposal to the American socialite sparked the abdication crisis of 1936 during which the elected government faced down the monarch.
Slogarie House in Mossdale, Dumfries and Galloway, features a secret garden and it was here, during a party, Edward is said to have asked the divorcee to marry him.
The King and Simpson are said to have travelled to Slogarie in early 1936 to attend a party thrown by the then owner Mary Ann Milner Gibson who was friends with Simpson.
Guests would have been enchanted then, as now, by the setting of the house amid the Galloway Forest Park, Laurieston Forest and the rolling countryside.
The house has no fewer than nine bedrooms, nine bathrooms and five reception rooms including an extensive games room.
But it is said to be the “secret garden” – just part of 78 acres of land in the sale – where the abdication crisis was sparked.
The present owner Nick Langford, 58, said: “The owner was Mary Anne Milner Gibson. Miss Gibson’s social circle included the American socialite Wallis Simpson.
“Edward VIII attended a party at the house early in 1936 and, at least according to local legend, proposed to Mrs Simpson in the ‘secret garden’.
He added: “We have been at Slogarie for 15 years – more than twice as long as we have ever stayed in one place before – but now that our seven children have all grown up and left home, it is too big for us.”
The future Edward VIII met Simpson, and her then husband, Ernest, at a party in January 1931.
Despite Simpson’s divorce, it was against convention for a King to marry a divorced commoner.
The government of the day insisted that the marriage could only go ahead if Edward VIII abdicated.
He signed the Instrument of Abdication on December 10, 1936, and broadcast his decision the following day, handing the crown to his brother George VI.
The couple married in 1937, moved to Paris, and stayed together until Edward’s death in 1972, aged 77. Simpson died in 1986, aged 89.
It was reported yesterday that Edward VIII, while Prince of Wales, penned racist letters in the 1920s about Aboriginal Australians calling them “revolting” and comparing them to monkeys.
The future King expressed his disdain for the indigenous population during a Royal tour in 1920, when he visited all six Australian states.
His opinions were revealed in letters to married English socialite, Freda Dudley Ward, with whom he had an affair between 1918 to 1923.
