Historically, the Queen has spent her weeks at Buckingham Palace before retiring to Windsor Castle on the weekends, but from March 2022, Her Majesty made the 11th-century site her permanent home and official residence. Now, the Cambridges are following suit, moving out of their Kensington Palace apartment and into Adelaide Cottage in Berkshire.
A 10-minute stroll from Windsor Castle – and a stone’s throw from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s former home of Frogmore Cottage – the four-bedroom residence is a “grace and favour” property, meaning the Queen is free to bestow it on whom she wishes. (One notable previous inhabitant? King George VI’s equerry, Peter Townsend, who had an ill-fated relationship with Princess Margaret in the ’40s and ’50s.) First built in 1831 as “a cottage orné” for Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, Queen Victoria enjoyed going there for tea throughout her reign, and the spot has been frequented by Queen Elizabeth II since her childhood.
“Daddy and I walked across the Home Park to tea at Adelaide Cottage, which the Queen [The Queen Mother] has lent Jackie and Joan Philipps for the duration of the war,” Alathea Fitzalan Howard, a close friend of Princess Elizabeth and Margaret as girls, recalls in her diaries. “I was charmed with it. It typically represents that idea of a little world within a world of its own, which is so characteristic of Windsor Castle and its surroundings.” Alathea would return to Adelaide Cottage several times before the war ended, attending tea parties with Elizabeth and Margaret “in the garden, which was a mass of rambler roses”.
Beyond loving the more tranquil atmosphere in Windsor, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are reportedly keen to be nearer to the Queen, as well as the Duchess’s parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, who are based at the nearby Grade II-listed Bucklebury Manor. Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are all expected to go to local schools from September, with George and Charlotte having left Thomas’s Battersea Prep School at the end of the most recent term. Renovations on Adelaide Cottage are expected to be minimal, with the Cambridges hoping to move in before the summer ends – while still retaining Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace and their Norfolk retreat of Anmer Hall on the Queen’s Sandringham Estate.
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