Love and security at family home

Ever since he was a boy the Prince of Wales has escaped to Birkhall during times of stress. The Queen Mother would be there to cover him in grandmotherly love, to be the rock in his emotionally turbulent world. There is nowhere more appropriate, therefore, for him to retreat to now - to wander through the rooms and beautiful gardens of this Highland hideaway that are a part of his map of happiness.

The past fortnight has stretched his self-control to breaking point and the searing sense of loss the Queen Mother's death has caused him is obvious for all to see. At Birkhall, he will find the peace and solitude he is in such desperate need of.

He will not be alone. For there, at his side, will be the woman who is his constant companion and comfort. This is not Camilla Parker Bowles's first stay at Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate. She went there when she was married to her husband, Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, who was the Queen Mother's godson.

She has been there since with Charles - but then only when the Queen Mother was not in residence. Royal decorum simply would not allow it. But now the house belongs to the Prince. He is at liberty to invite whom he pleases. And the first person he has asked is Camilla.

Although the Queen Mother is no more, the house she described as "a small, big house" is laden with her memory and it will be some time before Charles will change it - if that is, he ever does.

It derives its name from "birk ha", the Celtic description of the silver birch trees that grow all around, and stands on its own plateau south-east of Balmoral Castle on the banks of the River Muick. The views from the house stretch across flower gardens, which the Queen Mother created herself, to the distant heather-clad hills rising above pine forests and waterfalls.

She first went there shortly after her marriage to the Duke of York in 1923 when King George V suggested they use it as their Scottish home. By tradition it is now given to the heir to the throne on marriage. King George VI gave it to Princess Elizabeth - and it was there that she and the Duke of Edinburgh spent part of their honeymoon.

When the Queen as Princess Elizabeth used the house in the summer of 1949, the maids' bedrooms were above the royal apartments - a closeness which caused certain problems as John Gibson, a former footman, once recalled.

"There was only one staircase in Birkhall and it was used by the royals and staff alike. When we came back in the early hours after a night out, there was only one way up to the attics. We'd let ourselves into the house by the kitchen door and once inside take off our shoes. Then clutching their shoes, the girls would creep up the staircase, tiptoe past the royal bedroom door and up the attic stairs." When the Queen Mother was widowed in 1952, the Queen bequeathed Birkhall back to her so she could continue the work on the house and garden she had started 30 years before.

One of the first things she did was add a new L-shaped wing to the house which provided the extra guest bedrooms necessary to allow her to have numerous friends to stay in comfort.

She also changed the staircase so that when Prince Charles retires to bed this evening, he can be certain he will not be disturbed or noticed by prying eyes.

But some things remain very much as they were in Queen Victoria's day. The old bathrooms, for instance, have large, deep bathtubs with chrome taps and an unusual trio of original washbasins situated in a line against the wall and marked in Gothic script, "teeth", "hands" and "face". The main decorations, too, belong to an era that has now past. They echo what the Royal Family regards as the spirit of Scotland. There are stags' heads over doorways and on walls, and pictures by Landseer hang in the corridors on dark-green wallpaper embellished with Queen Victoria's gold cypher.

As at Balmoral Castle, most of the floors are carpeted with Hunting Stewart tartan, and the same tartan covers the walls of the entrance halls, where the Queen Mother's blue outdoor coats still hang.

When Prince Charles was a schoolboy at Gordonstoun he came to regard Birkhall as what he called, "a unique haven of cosiness and character" and much preferred its homely comforts to the grander setting of Balmoral itself.

He had learned to fish in the whisky-brown water of the Muick, which flows at the bottom of the sloping garden, and looked upon it as a sanctuary from the stress of a school where he was never going to be happy.

"I am happier at home than anywhere else," he once remarked and Birkhall, where the tea table always groaned with freshly baked scones and cakes, the garden was heavy with fruit and blooms and organically grown vegetables and log fires kept everyone cosy even in the summer, was the perfect repose. It provided him with what he desperately needed: as he put it: "Fun, laughter, warmth, infinite security."

The Queen Mother was delighted to have her grandson to join her there for weekends when she came north for the fishing. What she would not do, however, was intervene on his behalf, as he pleaded with her to do, to try to persuade his father to take him away from Gordonstoun. He was there and there he was going to stay.

The bond between the Prince and the house had been forged, however, and after he left school he visited Birkhall at every opportunity - and most especially when his life was in crisis. It was there that he sought refuge in 1987 when his marriage to Princess Diana began to unravel. For three weeks, comforted by his grandmother, he found the emotional insulation he so needed.

In recent years Charles has used Birkhall as a holiday home for himself and his children during the school holidays. This coincided with the time the Queen Mother had her sojourns and suited them both.

The house, which Prince Charles and the Queen Mother both regarded as "shared" and loved so much, has a character all of its own. It is neither as grand as Highgrove nor as elegant as Clarence House but by leaving it with much of its original character the Queen Mother has created a family home with a very special atmosphere.

Prince Charles drew much of his inspiration for Highgrove from Birkhall's gardens and spent many hours with his grandmother and the head gardener, James Kerr, and his one full-time helper, Mr Murray, discussing what flowers and plants would grow best in the different soils. It is from them that the Prince became convinced to stop using chemical fertilisers and to rely on farmyard manure and organic fertiliser.

Naturally, the emphasis at Birkhall is very much on outdoor living. Picnics are an almost daily part of the routine of the house during the summer months. Neither the rain nor the swarms of summer midges ever prevented the Prince and his grandmother from enjoying their alfresco meals of poached salmon, meat pie and lobster croquettes.

Not everyone was quite as taken with Birkhall as the Prince, however. Princess Diana was invited there before her marriage but soon came to detest the place and all it represented - just as she came to resent everything else about the Royal Family's Scottish estate.

Charles's affection for the house and its grounds has never wavered, however. And now once again, in a time of need, he is drawing on its magical atmosphere - and sharing its precious restorative qualities with a companion who will enjoy them, too.