Prince William and Kate recently moved their family to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Estate
(Picture: ES Composite)The new Prince and Princess of Wales recently relocated to the Windsor Estate to be nearer the Queen and their children’s new school, Lambrook.
Parents to Prince George (8), Princess Charlotte (6) and Prince Louis (3), Prince William and Catherine are understood to have preferred the idea of living in a private property rather than an official royal mansion – such as Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge, or Fort Belvedere which used to be home to King Edward VIII.
The family’s new home, the Grade II-listed four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage, dates to 1831 but underwent major renovations in 2015. It retains many of its original features.
It was originally built as a retreat for William IV’s wife Queen Adelaide, and Queen Victoria later took her breakfast at the cottage.
After the Second World War Group Captain Peter Townsend lived in the grace and favour lodging. He would later be at the heart of a royal scandal when he became the lover of Princess Margaret. Their relationship was scuppered by the Royal Marriages Act, which stipulated that no member of the Royal Family was permitted to marry a divorcee whose spouse was still living.
It was previously rumoured that the Cambridges were considering the 10-bedroom Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor Estate which is the UK home of Prince Harry and Meghan. Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank have also spent time there in recent years, although the couple are now thought to be splitting their time between the UK and Portugal.
The new Windsor address is Catherine’s fifth home in her 11-year marriage to Prince William and her ninth home over the course of her life.
West View, Cock Lane, Bradfield Southend, Berkshire
Kate lived at West View for the first 13 years of her life. Her parents Carole and Michael bought the then three-bedroom home, opposite the village green, for £34,700 in 1979.
A young Kate went to the local toddler group, pre-school and Brownies in the village and attended Bradfield Church of England primary school.
Michael Middleton converted one of the bedrooms into an additional bathroom and put two more bedrooms in the attic.
The family outgrew it and sold it for £158,000 in 1995, when Kate was 13.
Oak Acre, Bucklebury, Berkshire
The Middleton family then moved to the nearby village of Bucklebury, also in west Berkshire, and nestled in the countryside between the M4 and the A4.
Oak Acre was a more glamorous property than West View – a red brick detached house in one and a half acres of gardens.
Kate attended Marlborough college with her younger siblings Pippa and James Middleton.
St. Salvator’s Hall, University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland
Following a gap year in Italy, Kate enrolled in St. Andrew’s University and spent her first year living in St. Salvator’s Hall. The halls of residence, which housed 196 students, was often referred to as Sallies and split into male and female quarters.
Architecturally it has been described as a rambling Gothic dormitory and downstairs there is a common room with a grand piano.
Kate and William were not the only people of note to live in the halls. Famous former residents include, Sir James W Black, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988, and Darwin Medal winner and biologist Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson.
Kate and William met here and then moved to a mutual friend’s apartment in the centre of town.
Old Church Street, Chelsea, London
Old Church Street runs from the Thames across the Kings Road to the Fulham Road in the heart of Chelsea. This was once Kate Middleton’s stamping ground and where she lived with the her sister Pippa in their twenties.
Their bachelorette pad, owned by their parents, had three bedrooms and two bathrooms and went on the market in December 2018 for £1.95 million.
The Middletons had reportedly bought the 1,260 sq ft maisonette for £780,000 in 2002. It finally sold for £1.88 million in September 2019.
Bodorgan Home Farm, Anglesey, Wales
In 2011 Prince William and Kate moved to the island of Anglesey, off the north west coast of Wales, while William served there as an RAF Valley search and rescue pilot.
The newlyweds rented a four-bedroom farmhouse on Bodorgan Home Farm, which gave them access to a private beach and had views of Newborough Forest.
Bucklebury Manor, Bucklebury, Berkshire
Designer village Bucklebury has been home to many a celebrity, from Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s Chris Tarrant to singer Kate Bush and TV personality Melinda Messenger.
The Middletons sold Oak Acre for £2.3 million and moved into Bucklebury Manor in 2012, long after Kate and the other children had flown the nest.
However, Kate and William stayed there for a few months after Prince George was born in 2013. They shared their first official family portrait from the gardens.
The 18-acre estate has seven bedrooms, a tennis court and a swimming pool.
Amner Hall, Amner, Norfolk
About 12 miles north east of King’s Lynn and two miles east of Sandringham House sits the Georgian country house, Amner Hall.
On the Sandringham Estate, Queen Elizabeth II gave it to her eldest grandson and his wife as a belated wedding present in 2013. The first members of the royal family to live in the 10-bedroom rural pile were the Duke and Duchess of Kent (the Duke being the Queen’s cousin).
The property was extensively renovated by Kate — eager to put her own stamp on the place — to include a new roof, a new kitchen, a conservatory and the redecoration of the rooms. This purportedly cost £1.5 million.
They lived full-time in the home from 2013 to 2017 to be close to William’s job as a pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance Service.
In 2017 the family moved back to Kensington Palace ahead of George starting school. They still retreat to Anmer in the school holidays and spent the first lockdown there.
1A Kensington Palace, central London
Apartment 1A Kensington Palace is no average London flat. It has 20 rooms, including five reception rooms, three main bedrooms, dressing rooms, a night and day nursery and staff quarters.
Based in Kensington Palace Gardens and not far from the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, it was originally built in 1605 as a small two-storey suburban villa. In 1689, King William III and Queen Mary II purchased the property and transformed it into a palace.
In 2011, Queen Elizabeth II handed the keys of the apartment to Kate and William. It has since been their main home and where they have hosted dignitaries such as the Obamas.
