Where was the Queen Mother born

A. A house called The Bury in the village of St Paul's Walden in North Hertfordshire.

Q. Surely it was Scotland
A. No. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was generally regarded as a Scot. Indeed, in 1937 her heritage was honoured in coin of the realm when a Scottish shilling was introduced. But she was born in England and her mother was English.

Q. But she was brought up in Scotland
A. A bit of both. Her childhood was split between St Paul's Walden, London, and Glamis Castle in Angus which had belonged to the Lyon (later Bowes-Lyon) family since the 15th Century. Her father was the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Princess Margaret, was born at Glamis in 1930 - the first royal birth in Scotland since the union of the crowns.

Q. Let's hear a bit more about her birthplace.
A. The Bury is near the 12th-Century church of All Saints and is now owned by her nephew Simon Bowes-Lyon, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. Elizabeth Angela Margueritte Bowes-Lyon was born there on 4 August 1900. Or so her birth certificate says.

Q. There's some confusion
A. Yes. About the time of her 80th birthday celebrations, evidence unearthed by biographers seemed to suggest that she was born at her parents' London home, 20 St James's Square, and taken back to Hertfordshire 10 days later.

Q. It's on the birth certificate -why don't they believe it
A. It's rumoured that her father - then called Lord Glamis - forgot to register the birth in London and faced a fine for failing to do so. He then registered her in St Paul's Walden so he wouldn't have to go back to London. The people of St Paul's Walden, naturally, are having none of this - and want to claim the famous royal as forever their own.

Q. It was a place she loved
A. Oh yes. Young Elizabeth spent much of her childhood at The Bury, playing with her nine brothers and sisters in the house and in the grounds that surround it. It was also a place for romance.

Q. How
A. It was at The Bury that, after a number of refusals, she accepted the hand of Prince Albert - the future King George VI. Lady Elizabeth first met her future husband at a party when they were small children. She gave him the crystallised fruit from her slice of cake 'because he looked sad'.

In the 1930s, she often brought her daughters Elizabeth and Margaret Rose to watch cricket on a nearby meadow. Even into her 80s, the Queen Mother could remember the names of the local cricketers she had watched.

Q. Is The Bury open to the public
A. Yes, it's possible to visit the gardens, although you'd better check on the opening days. The garden is laid out in magnificent 17th-Century style with birch hedge alleys, statues and fountains. As a child, Elizabeth wrote extensively about the village's beauty. An essay has recently been discovered among family papers there.

She wrote:

The spring begins in April at St Paul's Walden, Welwyn, Herts. The wood is always full of flowers then - anenomies, hyacinths, forget-me-nots, creeping Jenny, rhododendrons, cowslips, oxslips and we paddle in the Zambesi.

The sort of things we play and do are rowing, footer, cricket, hockey, hunting, catching rabbits, eating fruit, making faggots and paths by the foot and lessons.

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Steve Cunningham