The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge may currently reside at sprawling Norfolk estate Amner Hall, but they were once destined to up sticks and move just outside of the West Country, to the rural county of Herefordshire. Prince Charles, who lives around 40 minutes away from Bristol at Highgrove House near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, was set to build a grand country house for his eldest son and daughter-in-law in the West Midlands county of Herefordshire.
Prince Charles knocked the plans on the head just last year, Gloucestershire Live reports, nearly two decades after he started drawing them up. The heir to the throne hoped to boast a triumphal arch at the magnificent mansion, where proposed residents Kate and William would be able to raise their family in the countryside, between the city of Hereford and the town of Ross-on-Wye.
Last year, Prince Charles' Duchy of Cornwall confirmed that work at the 900-acre Harewood End Estate had finished, despite the fact that the mansion had not been rebuilt. The Duchy acquired the run down estate 22 years ago, and began working determinedly on renovating the farmhouses, cottages and other agricultural buildings in 2003.
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One of the first jobs undertaken during the big renovation project was the removal of barbed wire fences, which were erected to prevent protesters from entering an area once used for animal testing; before the Duchy acquired the estate, it was owned by Guy's Hospital. Despite a new access route being created, and many of the buildings being restored, work never began on the recreation of the former grand mansion, which was demolished by the SAS in the 1950s.
When the Prince of Wales purchased the estate, William was just starting university up in Scotland. By the time the young prince had just graduated, the plans drawn up by architect Craig Hamilton to replace a bungalow with a Georgian-style mansion were approved by Herefordshire Council.
Royal reporters alleged that they had been informed Prince Charles was building the perfect future home for Prince William in the borderlands of England and Wales, and within an hour's drive of his own Gloucestershire estate. Once it was confirmed by a ski trip photograph in 2004 that William was in a serious romantic relationship with his university beau Kate Middleton, rumours that they were going to marry and settle down in the Herefordshire countryside reached fever pitch.
In 2007, the young couple endured a brief break, which was the same year Prince Charles successfully submitted plans for a much smaller six-bedroom home in the centre of the estate. Despite the new design promising a traditional exterior, there were plans to fill it with environmentally friendly features on the inside.
The Duchy informed planners that renting out the large, high-quality home that was initially planned for Harewood End Estate would not receive the returns it needed to justify the outlay. Inside, the new design featured an entrance hall, dining room, drawing room, sitting room, kitchen, library/study, and orangery.
The smaller, more sustainable house, would enable the home to have 'sufficient architectural presence' to simultaneously justify the countryside site and be eco-friendly. The application concluded: "The house is the symbolic heart of the estate and its construction will give meaning to the whole project.
"The complete restoration of the devastated Harewood Park by the Duchy of Cornwall is possibly the first total restoration of an entire estate in in Herefordshire. The construction of the house will form the final phase of the project and it will be a triumph if this can be achieved; hence the 'triumphal arch' theme of the proposed house is not only important architecturally but symbolically."
When William and Kate announced their engagement in November 2010, work was still being carried out at the Herefordshire estate. Even after their wedding had taken place in April 2011, when the couple went to live in Anglesey whilst William completed his helicopter pilot training, it was widely reported that they would live in Herefordshire when the house was finished.
But these plans seemed to have been put on the backburner when Her Majesty gifted William and Kate Amner Hall on the Sandringham Estate as a wedding present, which, at that point, was already undergoing a £1.5million transformation so that the couple could move in. Two years after welcoming their first child, Prince George, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge eventually moved to Amner Hall in 2015.
Any remaining hope of the couple setting up a court at a house yet to be built in Herefordshire have now been dashed by reported reports of Prince Charles earmarking Windsor Castle to be their future home. David Curtis, who was responsible for delivering the Herefordshire project, retired last year and the Duchy finally confirmed that the house straddling the border between England and Wales will not be built.
"Although planning consent for a statement house was granted some time ago, the Duchy never took it forward", said the Duchy spokesman. "The regeneration project at Harewood Park is now complete and the estate comprises a number of let residential and office units in converted barns, together with farmland."
Those living locally to Harewood End Estate are unlikely to be surprised that they are not going to be neighbours with the future king, who will be taking on the Duchy estate once his father becomes the monarch. Prince Charles is currently devising plans for a 'slimmed down monarchy', which will involve re-evaluating the property owned by the Royal Family.
Despite Prince Charles' inability to build the new house, the Duchy claims that he has brought jobs and investment to the little corner of the county. It claims that he did this by restoring an abandoned group of farmsteads, a ruined chapel, stables, a lake, and other buildings.
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