Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were evicted from their U.K. home, Frogmore Cottage, earlier this year, with the couple said to be able to use the home until early summer. Harry is apparently pushing that up to time, as Frogmore is where he reportedly stayed while in his home country for a court case against Mirror Group Newspapers this past week.
Per People, Harry is now back home in California after testifying for two days in a phone hacking lawsuit leveled against the company. The Duke of Sussex alleged that Mirror Group Newspapers took part in unlawful information gathering, including the hacking of his phone voicemails. Mirror Group Newspapers is the publisher of The Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, The Daily Express, and more, and Harry appeared in court on Tuesday and Wednesday before flying home Thursday to wife Meghan Markle and children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
In a witness statement released Tuesday, Harry said that “tabloids would routinely publish articles about me that were often wrong but interspersed with snippets of truth, which I now think were most likely gleaned from voicemail interception and/or unlawful information gathering.” It continued “I genuinely feel that in every relationship that I’ve ever had—be that with friends, girlfriends, with family or with the Army, there’s always been a third party involved, namely the tabloid press. Having seen me grow up from a baby (being born into this ‘contractual relationship’ without any choice) and scrutinized my every move, the tabloids have known the challenges and mental health struggles that I have had to deal with throughout my childhood and adult life and for them to then play on that and use it to their own advantage I think is, well, criminal.”
Frogmore is the former home of Harry and Meghan, given as a gift from Her late Majesty to the couple upon their 2018 wedding. The Windsor home is not far from Adelaide Cottage, where Prince William lives with wife Kate and their three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. Harry and Meghan moved out of Frogmore and eventually settled in the U.S. following their step back as working members of the royal family in early 2020.
Back in March, a spokesperson for the Sussexes confirmed that Harry and Meghan “have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage.” The public got a glimpse inside Frogmore in their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, when the couple shared intimate photos from inside the residence. The family stayed at Frogmore in June 2022, when all four were in the U.K. for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and Harry is believed to have stayed there when he was in the U.K. for his father King Charles’ Coronation last month.
Harry and Meghan, prior to their step back, saw Frogmore as their permanent home: “We always saw Archie running around the garden at Frogmore Cottage, and maybe jumping in the Queen’s pond,” Harry said. “That was all part of our future, and everything changed really, really quickly. We knew we were going to get some breathing space from this very painful experience that we’d been stuck in, but also, at the same time, it was really sad.”
