Crown estate is worth £2.5 billion

Imagine, if you will, the Queen enjoying a night out on the town. After cocktails at the Inn on the Park hotel - or perhaps a swift half in the Crown in Hackney, if she preferred - she could take in a play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket before dinner at the Athenaeum, winding up the evening with a nightcap at the Carlton Club. A little far-fetched? Perhaps. But it would have the advantage that she could spend the whole evening on her own land. From pubs to parks, office blocks to housing estates, the Crown Estate is one of the largest landlords in London.

Its properties in the capital are worth £2.5 billion, from golf clubs in the suburbs to shops and hotels on some of the most valuable land in London. It is dwarfed only by the massive Grosvenor Estate.

The Crown Estate owns freeholds on South Africa House and Canada House on Trafalgar Square, Millbank Tower, embassies in Kensington Palace Gardens and vast swathes of Regent Street, Park Lane and Piccadilly. (Where the Queen's childhood home, 145 Piccadilly, once stood are now the Four Seasons and Intercontinental hotels.)

Cricket fans attending the Oval should be aware they are treading on royal land - it is owned by Prince Charles's £321 million Duchy of Cornwall.

The Royal College of Surgeons and London Business School are on Crown Estate Land.

Going shopping? Austin Reed, Aquascutum, Hamleys, Jaeger, Mappin & Webb, Gap, Hackett, Karen Millen and Adolfo Dominguez are too.

Fancy a bite to eat? There's Momo, the Zinc Bar and Grill, The Avenue, Strawberry Moon ... the list is endless.

Or maybe a swift half ? Call in at the well-named Crown pub in south Hackney. Overlooking - equally appropriately - Victoria Park, it is leased to Geetie Singh and Esther Boulton by a private management company.

They turned it into the world's second official organic pub, selling organic-only food and beer to the sort of people who look as if they knit their own muesli. Ales include Singhboulton, the predictably named Eco Warrior, and Freedom Lager. As well as muesli, the menu includes dishes such as lemon polenta cake with cream.

"We think it's fantastic," said Geetie Singh. "Prince Charles is really into organic so he would probably think it's great that we have one of his mother's pubs."

Owning so much of London has its compensations: it makes it easier, for instance, to find a home for the staff. The Queen's private secretary Sir Robin Janvrin - a man who, it is fair to assume, has probably never seen the need to live in Hackney - lives in a four-storey terraced house in Gloucester Street, Pimlico, which was acquired by the Crown Estate in 1980.

That was a more recent purchase: the ownership of some Crown property can be traced back to Edward the Confessor, although officially the Crown Estate goes back to 1066.

After the Norman conquest all land in Britain belonged to William the Conqueror "in right of the Crown" because he was King. Over the centuries the estate fluctuated in size and value. By 1760, when George III acceded to the throne, the great landed asset had wasted away, mainly through the need to pay off various nobles for political and military favours.

George was strapped for cash, and cut a deal with Parliament in which he agreed to hand over the Crown Lands to be managed by the Government, with the profit going to the Exchequer, while the Government agreed to take responsibility for civil servants, judges, ambassadors and the armed forces. In return the King would get an annual payment known as the Civil List.

This agreement has, since then, been renewed at the start of each new monarch's reign, although the estate is still officially described as "part of the hereditary possessions of the Sovereign". The Government got a good deal. In 2001 the Crown Estate reported a profit of £147.7 million, while running the monarchy - including the Civil List - costs the taxpayer an estimated £37 million a year.

The undisputed jewels in the Crown Estate are Regent's Park and Regent Street. The park is surrounded by Nash Terraces, occupied on long lease, while in the park itself are some of London's dearest houses, such as St John's Lodge and the US Ambassador's residence, the priceless Wentworth House.

Regent Street turns in extremely healthy profits for the Crown Estate, which are about to get healthier as the leases run out and are renegotiated.

Kensington Palace Gardens is unarguably London's most expensive street. Lined with embassies, some former ones have been converted into private homes. Number 15a is now let out after the Crown Estate failed to find a buyer at the £35 million asking price. The Crown owns the freehold of the world's most expensive house, number 18/19, on sale at £85 million.

Then there is the Manor of Savoy, an investment portfolio taking in parts of the Strand and Embankment worth £72 million. All this without counting the royals' own palaces, including Buckingham, St James's, Kensington and Hampton Court.

And anyone wishing to query, respectfully, the extent of the Queen's property assets would do well to remember she also owns the Tower of London.