This 1955 Royal Caravan Is a Fully-Functional Toy RV, Shows How the Other Half Lives

It goes without saying, but we're saying it either way: when you're part of the Royal Family, you get to enjoy perks like no other human being. This is especially true for children of senior Royals who represent a direct line to the throne, as was the case with Prince Charles and Princess Ann, two of the children of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Case in point: when they were kids, their version of a dollhouse/tree house was far better than anything we got to play with because it was a real caravan but scaled down to fit them. Though simpler and less expensive than either of the gilded coaches King Charles got to ride in at the Coronation Ceremony earlier this month, this child-sized caravan is somehow more outrageous because it shows how the other half lives.

This is the 1955 Royal Caravan, a name that might get you thinking it's a real RV. In a sense, it is a real RV because it has caravan functionality and can be towed legally on any public road. But it would only do for kids since it's incredibly small and has certain features designed only for playing. Still, it's a piece of caravaning history, and it's treated as one, having already gone through two very rigorous and challenging restorations and been on display in museums.

In 1952, the Duke of Edinburgh, the late husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II, became patron of The Caravan Club. As a thank-you for his service, the Club decided on a custom gift for his children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, in the form of a custom but appropriately-sized caravan. Rollalong Limited from Ringwood, a veteran in the caravaning industry, was tasked with the build.

Us normies know that kids will play with anything and everything, from the most expensive toys to the cheapest stuff they find outside, be they rocks, sticks, or mud. We might even make a case about how the latter option is preferable, more fun, and way more convenient for the parents because it doesn't cost a dime. Royal kids probably don't play with mud and sticks.

Prince Charles and Princess Ann got to play with this, a caravan sat on a single-axle trailer with an insulated and lined ash frame, functional brakes and road-legal lights, leaf suspension, a jockey wheel, and operational hitch. They could have someone tow it with any of the cars in the Royal Fleet since it came with a 2-inch hitch that their father, the Duke, personally tested upon delivery, using a Hillman Husky specially fitted with a towing hitch so he could pull them around the gardens at Buckingham Palace.

Inside, the caravan offered a private playtime space for the kids, shaped like a real-life RV. The small kitchen at the front featured an aluminum sink with a functional hand pump and a mock two-burner stove with integrated storage. A custom wood cabinet occupied most of the central area and held a bookcase and a custom miniature porcelain Poole Pottery tea service, which has since been removed and placed in the Royal collection.

Also there was a set of Beatrix Potter books and a fold-down desk with a small integrated chair where one kid at a time could write letters or do homework. Dual couches facing each other took up the rear and provided a place to read or chit-chat. It doesn't seem like they could join together to form a bed, as is customary with RVs of this type. Then again, it's not like the kids ever got to spend the night here.

As it happens with non-Royal kids, the Prince and Princess forgot about their toy caravan once they outgrew it, so it ended up in a barn, abandoned and unloved. The Caravan Club tracked it down and restored it in 1982, just in time for their 75th anniversary, when they re-gifted it to Princess Anne. By this time, of course, she had no more use for it, so it ended up in Windsor, where it was placed in another barn until 2006.

The second restoration was more challenging and thorough because of a leak that had damaged the interior completely. The Caravan Club handled this one as well, getting the last member from the original Rollalong team to contribute so as to render every one of the original details impeccably. In 2014, the Royal Caravan returned to Buckingham for a temporary display inside one of the reception halls, which required hoisting it up by crane and through a window – perhaps this RV's most adventurous outing ever.

The 1955 Royal Caravan has been included in other Royal-themed displays since, but most of the time, it sits on permanent display at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire. Today, it remains in impeccable condition and is considered a national treasure and a piece of caravaning history – not because it did much caravaning in its long life (it didn't, at all), but because the now-King Charles and his sister play-pretended with it.