A Princess Owned This Crown Then It Disappeared Forever

As the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret could have had any crown in the kingdom. So why did she walk into an auction house and buy a stranger’s crown instead? This single decision would follow her for the rest of her life and long after she was gone 

You see, Margaret, the Countess of Snowdon, was a jewellery connoisseur, and she knew her jewellery. And as Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister, she had more than enough right to borrow from the royal vault, but she did the exact opposite. 

Was it because nothing in the royal vault suited her taste? Maybe, and honestly, we may never really know. But what we do know is that she wanted a tiara that was hers, not something loaned from her family’s vault.

So in January 1959, when the Poltimore Tiara, which was inspired by the Victorian era, came up for auction, she went all in and paid £5,500 for it on the advice of a royal courtier, Lord Plunket.

Now this was no ordinary crown. It could be unscrewed and worn as a necklace, or broken apart into eleven separate brooches. As if the designer wanted her to get every possible use out of it, they even included a tiny screwdriver and a fitted blue leather case so it would be easy to dissemble it. 

And if you’ve seen Princess Margaret in the photos, you know she was a tiny princess, standing at only 5’1”. The towering crown, with a hidden strip of ribbon cloth inside it that could sink in her hair, leaving the dazzling diamonds in full display, made her stand taller. 

When Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, she walked down the aisle wearing the same tiara she had bought herself. From that day and for the next forty years, it became her signature. She wore it to galas, state visits, and banquets, from the Shah of Iran’s visit all the way into the 1990s.

But then a tragedy struck. When Margaret passed away on 9 February 2002, she left behind more than just her tiara; she also left a tax bill. Her estate was worth around £7.6 million, and the taxman wanted 40% of it that’s more than three million pounds. The only way her son and daughter, David and Lady Sarah, could clear this bill was to sell the things she loved most, including the tiara.

Her former husband was heartbroken. He reportedly wrote begging them to stop the sale, but even that made no difference.

On 13 June 2006, Christie’s in London auctioned 800 of Margaret’s belongings with the Poltimore Tiara as the star of the night. Its asking price started at around £150,000, but when the hammer finally fell, it sold for £926,400.

That was the last time the crown she’d bought for a few thousand pounds was seen in public. It is reported that it was bought by an anonymous buyer, but no one really knows where it ended up.