[1] By the time the Prince of Wales and Henry Holland parted company in 1802, Carlton House was a spacious and opulent residence, which would have been designated a palace in many countries.

On 19 June 1811 the Regent hosted a grand reception ostensibly to honour Louis XVIII and the exiled French royal family, but largely to celebrate the establishment of his own Regency.

[citation needed] When the Prince of Wales took possession in August 1783, Sir William Chambers was appointed as architect, but after a first survey, he was quickly replaced by Henry Holland.

Construction commenced in 1784; when these rooms were visited in September 1785 by the usually critical Horace Walpole, he was impressed, writing that when completed, Carlton House would be "the most perfect in Europe".

[6] Construction at Carlton House came to a halt at the end of 1785 due to the Prince of Wales's mounting debts, with his unpaid bills following his secret morganatic marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert amounting to £250,000.

[7] Parliament appointed a commission to investigate the huge cost overruns at Carlton House, and to draw up estimates on how much would be needed to complete the project.

In May 1787, the Prince of Wales contritely approached his father, King George III, and persuaded him to provide the money to finish the house.

From the foyer, visitors would enter the two-story top-lit entrance hall, decorated with Ionic columns of yellow marble scagliola.

The ground floor rooms gave directly onto the garden facing the Mall, which had a landscaping scheme by the fashionable designer Humphry Repton.

With the Third Marquess of Hertford and Sir Charles Long acting as his art advisors, the Prince also bought Old Master paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Cuyp and Jan Steen.

Carlton House is referenced in the first episode of the 1979 television miniseries Prince Regent, in which George IV, then-Prince of Wales (portrayed by Peter Egan), commissions Henry Holland to refurbish it.

When King George III refuses to allow the Prince to go to Germany for his desired military education, he demands Holland refurbish Carlton House with lavish extravagance with neither regard of cost nor his father's wishes.