Possibly the first house erected within the site of Buckingham Palace was that of a Sir William Blake, around 1624.
The next owner was Lord Goring, who from 1633 extended Blake's house and developed much of today's garden, then known as Goring Great Garden.
He did not, however, manage to obtain freehold interest in the mulberry garden.
Unbeknown to Goring, in 1640 the document "failed to pass the Great Seal before King Charles I fled London, which it needed to do for legal execution". (Wright, Patricia (1999; first published 1996). The Strange History of Buckingham Palace.Stroud, Gloucs.: Sutton Publishing Ltd) (It was this critical omission that will help the British royal family regain the freehold under King George III.)
The improvident Goring had defaulted on his rents; Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, had obtained the mansion and was occupying it, now known as Goring House, when it burned down in 1674.
Arlington House rose on the site—the southern wing of today's palace—the next year, and its freehold was bought in 1702.
The house which forms the architectural core of the present palace had been built for the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby in 1703 to the design of William Winde.
The style chosen was of a large, three-floored central block with two smaller flanking service wings.
