White Lodge Museum and Ballet Resource Centre
- Performing arts enthusiasts
- Specialist researchers
What Visitors Say
This is truly a wonderful place, a medieval castle. It used to be a hunting residence of the English kings. It is very impressive to imagine the English kings and nobility riding out from here on horseback to hunt. I highly recommend it to everyone.
Excellent school compound, professional, polite, friendly atmosphere and relaxing place.
This is an amazing mansion in Richmond Park which has been occupied by English Kings and Queens. Now the Royal Ballet School. Very impressive building and location. And park deer roaming free. They can be well camouflaged as seen in the photos 😊
Seems better now , but not many one star reviews because the parents are too scared to say how bad this school is. Under C Powney & Hope K , this school was the worse! The list of failures under there administration is too many to post here. Shameful
Infamous King Edward VIII (Queen's uncle) was born here in 1894. His mother Queen Mary and grandmother lived here as well as Queen Elizabeth's parents. Queen Victoria and Albert lived in White Lodge in their last year together in 1861 after death of Queen's mother. But the first owner of the house was King George II, his wife Caroline and first UK Prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. It was royal property until 1955.
Highlights
Margot Fonteyn’s pointe shoes
Iconic footwear from Britain’s best-known ballerina connects technique, repertoire and star persona.Look for wear patterns that reveal rehearsal grind versus performance polish.
Main display cases
Anna Pavlova’s death mask
A rare, sober memorial to the dancer who brought classical ballet to mass audiences worldwide.Pairs mythic image with the reality of an artist’s early death—and the legend that followed.
Biographical objects section
Oliver Messel’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ costume (1946)
A touchstone of post-war ballet style from the production that helped define the Royal Ballet look.See how fabric, silhouette and embellishment read from the stalls under stage light.
Stage & costume design
Letters about Lydia Lopokova
Correspondence (including by John Maynard Keynes) shows how ballet intersected with Bloomsbury-era culture and patronage.Art, finance and love affairs braided into the institution’s early growth.
Archive highlights / resource centre
Opening Hours
Fun Facts
When it opened, White Lodge Museum was billed as Britain’s first purpose-built museum dedicated to classical ballet.
The museum sits inside White Lodge, a Palladian hunting lodge begun in the late 1720s and historically associated with George II; scholarship links its design to architect Roger Morris.
