In 2022, Prince William and Kate Middleton moved their family from Anmer Hall in Norfolk into Adelaide Cottage, a four-bedroom house in the grounds of Windsor Castle. They are now preparing to make the move to their new home Forest Lodge, a historic Georgian mansion tucked away in a private part of Windsor Great Park, with their three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. And rumour has it that Sarah Ferguson (the former Duchess of York) might be the next inhabitant as she and Prince Andrew have reportedly agreed to vacate Royal Lodge if they can move to Adelaide Cottage and Frogmore Cottage, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex used to be based.
The 19th-century cottage – though we might question how many bedrooms a building needs before it can no longer be described as such – was previously believed to be a possible weekend getaway for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, though that is of course no longer an option after the Sussexes stepped back from royal duties and settled in an £11m house in Montecito, California.
Instead, William, Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis have taken up residence at Adelaide, with reports suggesting that they moved to be closer to Windsor Castle, a major royal residence in Berkshire. Windsor is also closer to the Middleton family’s home in Bucklebury, Berkshire. The family still use their current apartment at Kensington Palace as their main London home, and they still own Anmer Hall in Norfolk, too. Anmer, a house on Sandringham Estate, was bequeathed by Queen Elizabeth II to the couple on the occasion of their wedding in 2011.
Adelaide Cottage was first built in 1831 and named for William IV’s wife, Queen Adelaide. A cottage orné, or “decorated cottage”, it has a pinkish-white stucco exterior and ornamental roof trimmings. Historic England reports that the master bedroom features gilded dolphins and rope ornament originally used on the royal yacht, HMY Royal George, as well as a marble Greco-Egyptian fireplace. It was renovated in 2016, so the royal couple may not do any work to it now. Anmer Hall was reportedly worked on by Ben Pentreath, and it is unclear who renovated the current iteration of Adelaide Cottage.
The cottage’s most famous past resident is Peter Townsend, the equerry to George VI and the man who Princess Margaret wanted to marry in the 1950s, contrary to the social norms of the time that forbade divorcees from remarrying in the Church of England if their spouse was still alive. Townsend and Princess Margaret’s romance was shown in the first season of The Crown.
