Treetops Hotel
Treetops Hotel is a hotel in Aberdare National Park in Kenya, 6,450 feet above sea level and in sight of Mount Kenya. First opened in 1932 by Eric Sherbrooke Walker, it is literally built into the tops of the trees of the Aberdares National Park, offering the guests a close view of the local wildlife in complete safety. From the original modest two room tree house, it has grown into 50 rooms (the original was burned down by African guerrillas during 1954 but the hotel was rebuilt near the same watering hole) and has become a fashionably exotic adventure for many of the rich and famous. It includes observation lounges and ground level photographic hides from which guests can observe the local wildlife.
It is best known for being the place where Princess Elizabeth learned of the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952. It was there that, uniquely, she “went up a princess and came down a Queen”. She was the first British monarch since the Act of Union in 1801 to be outside the country at the moment of succession, and also the first in modern times not to know the exact time of her accession (because her father, George VI had died in his sleep at an unknown time). On the night her father died, Sir Horace Hearne, then Chief Justice of Kenya, escorted The Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, to a state dinner at the Treetops Hotel. She returned immediately to England. The hotel, along with this event was immortalised in Jim Corbett's story Treetops.
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