Place Name
Originally just Albany Park. This led to the Albany Club a gabled boathouse with the Royal Crest built in 1893. It was owned by the Turk family who constructed light river craft. Later they hired out pleasure boats but went out of business in the 1970s. The building was restored and is now home to local businesses. The Skiff Club was initially based at the Albany Club in Kingston and in 1897 took over Turk’s Albany Boathouse which had been vacated by the Royal Canoe Club that year. Albany was a popular road name from the late Victorian period. It was in memory of Leopold George Duncan Albert (April 7, 1853 – March 28, 1884), the Duke of Albany (derived from the Gaelic name for Scotland), who was the eighth child and youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was later created Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence, and Baron Arklow. Intellectually gifted his life was stifled because of his haemophilia, which led to his death at the age of 30. As his mother’s favourite child she did all she could to protect him, unable to join the military he instead served as her secretary. For his part he did all he could to escape from her well-meaning but smothering clutches. He was a devoted Freemason and a patron of the arts. Hoping marriage might be a way out, he scoured the UK and Europe for a suitable bride but because of his condition he struggled to find a suitable partner until he met Princess Helen Frederica, the daughter of George Victor, reigning Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont. The couple wed at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on April 27, 1882. They enjoyed a happy, albeit brief marriage. In 1883, Leopold became a father when Helen gave birth to a daughter, Alice. However, he did not live to see the birth of his son, Charles Edward, because he died, apparently from a cerebral haemorrhage, after falling and hitting his head at his Cannes residence. His son inherited his titles but in 1919 he was stripped of his British peerages, his title of Prince and Royal Highness, and his British honours for having fought in the German Army (having reached the rank of General) during the First World War; he was labelled a “traitor peer”. He later joined the Nazi Party as well as the Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts), where he reached the position of Obergruppenführer. After surviving the Second World War he was heavily fined by the denazification courts and had his lands taken by the Soviet army. He died of lung cancer in 1954.
