Glamis Castle, which lies twelve miles north of Dundee next to the river Dean, has belonged to the Lyon family since the fourteenth century. The Castle became Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon’s home in 1904, when, on the death of her grandfather, her father became 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. During Lady Elizabeth’s childhood the family spent three months of each year at Glamis; the remainder of the year was spent in London or at St Paul’s Walden Bury in Hertfordshire.

The oldest surviving parts of the Castle date from 1372, when Sir John Lyon was granted the thanage of Strathmore by Robert II of Scotland. The red sandstone Castle was built on the site of a fortified royal hunting lodge where, according to legend, King Duncan was murdered by Macbeth in 1040. The Castle was remodelled in the seventeenth century by the 3rd Earl of Strathmore, who added the distinctive coned turrets.

During the First World War the Castle became a Red Cross hospital and was used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers; Lady Elizabeth helped to look after the men. It was at Glamis that the Duke of York’s courtship of Lady Elizabeth took place.

Beatrice Lawrence Smith exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1896 and 1904, and in 1911 held an exhibition of her topographical watercolours at Walker’s Galleries in London.


Signed lower right RB Lawrence-Smith

Catalogue entry adapted from Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, London, 2005