Buckingham at 2 King Street visually dominates the view of the State House from King’s Square, preempting the ancient building with its size. When the land on which Buckingham stands was granted to Thomas Brooke, the collector of customs, in 1713 the site was vacant. This seems odd given its proximity to the State House, suggesting that it had probably been part of the yard surrounding that building in the early 17th century. Brooke’s grant did not include a clause requiring him to build a stone house, so he left the lot vacant. He already possessed a fine house with an extensive library near today’s Somers Supermart, a house which has long since vanished. Brooke died about 1727 and his widow married Jonathan Burchall. In 1745 she sold the property to Samuel Mills for £5, a sum which strongly suggests there was still no building on the lot.

Mills probably built Buckingham soon after he acquired the property and certainly before 1768. In that year he made his will leaving his dwelling house to his wife for her life and then to his son Samuel, on the condition that he paid each of his sisters £5. They could live in the house until he paid them. Samuel Jr and his wife Sarah were modest residents in St George’s. Samuel, a mariner, was away at sea for long stretches, leaving Sarah to raise their two sons, Samuel and Thomas Burt Mills. The house was assessed at an average of £150, considerably less than its grander neighbours Bridge House (£950) and Reeve Court (£600). Samuel died in 1795 and his widow a year later, leaving the property to their sons. Samuel III apparently died or sold his share to his brother Thomas by 1803. In that year, Thomas, a huckster by profession, was in sole possession of the house when he mortgaged it to neighbours William and Henry Todd for £64. Three years later, Mills defaulted on business debts amounting to over £315 and the house was seized and auctioned.

The winning bid of £415 was placed by Anthony Atwood in trust for Miss Martha Wright. She married Joseph Hayward in 1810 but when she died just five years later Buckingham went first to her brother Richard and then to her mother, the widow Sarah Wright. Sarah rented the property to another widow, Anna McDonald, who was living there in January 1823 when Wright made her will. She directed that her executors continue to rent the property, with the proceeds going to support her sister Jane Ming and her nephew, seven year old Joseph Glegg Ming, until he died or reached the age of 21, after which the house was to be sold. Sarah Wright died a few weeks later and the young Joseph Ming likewise perished in November of the same year (see Ming House,chapter 5). For a decade one of Wright’s executors, Anthony Atwood Jr, occupied Buckingham but in 1833 the house was sold at public auction to William Hayward Fox for £600.

Fox, a newly married 25 year old when he purchased the house, was a victualler by trade and operated a dry goods store out of the cellar of Buckingham. One can still make out the blocked-up doors to his shop at street level. The Fox family lived there until 1864 but moved after William bought a house worth £1,000 near St Peter’s Church. The timing of the move coincided with the addition of a kitchen wing to the north side of Buckingham, reflected in a £140 increase in the building’s assessment. By the time of his death in 1867, William Fox had acquired a number of houses and a waterfront property. He gave life tenure of all his real estate to his wife Susan, who died in 1891 and ownership passed to his four children.

Fox’s two sons, William Davenport Fox and Joseph Fox, followed in their father’s footsteps and operated dry goods and grocery stores in the town. In 1879 William bought his sisters’ quarter shares of the property. He had presumably obtained the other quarter from his brother and thus was the sole owner of Buckingham. He became the US vice commercial agent in 1890, an important post since much of Bermuda’s produce went to that country. He was a member of the parish vestry and Masonic Lodge 200 next door until his death in 1907.

In 1901 William Davenport Fox belatedly settled his father’s estate. At the time, Thomas Spicer operated Buckingham as a boarding house with rooms on the upper floors. Samuel Crofts Rankin, who had grown up in nearby Bridge House, purchased the building for £300 and he and his heirs continued to lease it to tenants until 1951. After Rankin acquired the property, the building was christened Buckingham. Perhaps it complemented Windsor, a house that Rankin owned at Turkey Hill.

The Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust purchased the building to preserve the architectural integrity of the neighbourhood surrounding the State House. This rather plain Georgian structure remains essentially unchanged since Samuel Mills built it about 1750. The present entrance steps to the first floor were added after 1876, replacing an earlier staircase built flush against the front of the building, a form that still survives in our next house.