Buckingham Palace will be a focal point in the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, 250 years after work started to make it into a royal residence. The house had many owners and tenants until, in 1698, it was let to the man who gave the house its nameJohn Sheffield, later the Duke o… It has been so since 1837 when Queen Victoria acceded to the throne. No problem. }).render().setUser('SocStudies4Kids').start(); Buckingham Palace gets its name from John Sheffield, the 1st Duke of Buckingham, who built one of the early versions of the famous palace in the early 18th Century. Buckingham Palace was originally called Buckingham House, and is still affectionately known as Buck House by some, and was owned by the Duke of Buckingham after whom it was named. But John Sheffield's son, Charles, sold the house to King George III in 1761 for £21,000 - the equivalent of £3,570,000 today - who declared it a royal residence , although he had bought it as a private residence for his wife Queen Charlotte. The fourth King George wanted to expand Buckingham House into a royal palace and hired architect John Nash to do just that. Find out more about visiting the palace on the Royal Collection Trust website . Buckingham Palace, palace and London residence of the British sovereign. Her Majesty has lived in the palace for most of her life and raised all four of her children within its walls. } David White. His successor, William IV, hired another architect, Edward Blore, to carry on the work. In the Middle Ages, the site of the future palace formed part of the Manor of Ebury (also called Eia). GA_googleFillSlot("socialstudiesforkids-DLB");