REVEALED: The Queen’s weekly visits to dying courtier... to walk his beloved dogs
WHEN a widowed gamekeeper got too sick to look after his beloved dogs, he hoped a caring family friend might take them for out for a weekly walk.
'Queen at 90': Her love of corgis
But the corgi and the Bichon Frise would have had little idea that the kindly woman at the end of the lead was Her Majesty The Queen.
She looked after the dogs for former Sandringham gamekeeper Bill Fenwick and now, after his death, is considering taking them in.
Mr Fenwick died a week ago aged 95 at his grace-and-favour home near Windsor Castle, two years after his wife Nancy, who was known as the Keeper of the Queen’s Corgis. For two years Her Majesty has taken Bill and Nancy’s dogs for walks in an extraordinary reversal of roles.
And although she has vowed not to breed any more of her favourite pets, she may take back the Fenwicks’ corgi that she bred and gave to them as a gift.
A royal insider said: “The Queen was very fond of Nancy and Bill and they became close friends.
Nancy died in 2015 aged 85 and the Queen even went to her funeral, where she comforted Bill and his two sons. “Bill was not in the best of health and was unable to exercise the dogs much.
“As well as the corgi he also had a Bichon Frise.
“So most Sundays after lunch the Queen would visit him and take the pair out in the park. It was her way of saying thank you for being such loyal friends over the years and for looking after her dogs all that time.
“She was very upset to hear about Bill’s death and she is considering taking the dogs if his family can’t look after them.
“Bill was yet another close friend that she has lost in recent years and it must be very hard.” In a photograph to mark her 90th birthday last year, the Queen posed with her two corgis, Holly and Willow, and two dorgis (corgi-dachshund crosses) Vulcan and Candy.
But in October it was revealed that 13-year-old Holly, who starred in the iconic James Bond sketch for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, had been put down at Balmoral because of illness and old age.
Three years ago the Queen decided not to breed any more of the Pembroke Welsh corgis because of fears that she would trip over younger dogs.
Monty Roberts, the Californian cowboy known as the Horse Whisperer who had advised her on her horses and dogs, disclosed that she did not want any of her pets left behind after she died. But the insider said:
“It’s true the Queen didn’t want any more young dogs but Bill’s pair are getting on and she is very fond of them, so it’s quite possible that she will take them in.”
Bill was renowned as the country’s leading expert on mole-catching and began working for the Queen more than 30 years ago as her gamekeeper at Sandringham. The Queen quickly became “besotted” with his wife Nancy, who started to look after her numerous dogs.
She would train them from a young age and look after them when the Queen was abroad, knowing all their individual diets and needs. Bill and Nancy were given a two-storey house at Windsor so Nancy could train the dogs to walk up and down stairs, handy when they walked up and down aircraft steps or in palaces.
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Nancy was one of the few people with 24-hour access to the Queen, and every year she would buy her boss a Welsh Corgi League pictorial calendar. Breeder Maureen Johnston once told a magazine how Nancy asked her to Windsor Castle so that one of the Queen’s bitches could mate.
“I asked Nancy where the outhouse was and she told me ‘Oh no, we do it in the kitchen. We don’t go into a shed’.”
Since 1945 the Queen has had more than 30 corgis, all descended from Susan, given to her on her 18th birthday.
At one stage she had a pack of 13, and said:
“My corgis are family.”