Reports are emerging that, as they prepared to wed, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to live in Windsor Castle, but were turned down by Her late Majesty. She instead gave the newlyweds Frogmore Cottage (located on the Windsor estate) as a wedding present; Harry and Meghan kept Frogmore as their U.K. home base even after relocating to the U.S. in early 2020, until King Charles took the property back to the Crown over the summer.
Before they stepped back as working members of the royal family, Harry and Meghan extensively renovated and upgraded Frogmore, eventually moving in around April 2019, just weeks before their first child, Prince Archie, was born that May 6. After Harry and Meghan moved to Montecito, California, Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, moved into the home for a time; the Brooksbanks now split their time between Ivy Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace and Portugal, where they live part-time for Jack’s work.
The Times reports that Harry and Meghan asked, in regards to Windsor Castle, if “the living quarters could be made available after their marriage.” OK reports that Queen Elizabeth felt it would be “inappropriate” for the Sussexes to reside in Windsor Castle, and she “politely but firmly suggested” that they take over Frogmore instead.
“The cottage was a big deal,” said Lady Elizabeth Anson, who royal expert Katie Nicholl spoke to for her book The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy and the Future of the Crown. (Lady Anson died in 2020.) “The Queen’s entrance into the gardens is right next to their cottage. It is essentially her backyard, her solitude, and her privacy. She was giving that up in gifting Harry and Meghan Frogmore Cottage. We all thought it was very big of her. She said, ‘I hope they’ll respect it.’”
The Prince and Princess of Wales now live on the Windsor estate themselves, relocating from Kensington Palace in London to Adelaide Cottage in early September 2022, shortly before the late Queen died on September 8. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, though divorced for 27 years, both live together in Royal Lodge, which is also on the Windsor estate.
Princess Diana also lived at Kensington Palace (often called “KP” for short) for most of her life post-marriage to the then Prince Charles, and Harry and Meghan lived in Nottingham Cottage on KP’s grounds before moving to Frogmore. “Kensington Palace sounds very regal, of course it does,” Meghan said in the couple’s six-part Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan. “It says ‘palace’ in the name. But Nottingham Cottage was so small.” Harry agreed: “The whole thing is on a slight lean, [with] really low ceilings,” he said. “So, I don’t know who was there before, but they must have been very short.”
Harry and Meghan moved into their current home, a $14.65 million estate in Montecito, in July 2020. The property, per Variety, sits on a private, gated street and is nestled on 7.4 acres. The home is about 100 miles away from Los Angeles, and, while the Sussexes could have asked Charles for financial help, Harry and Meghan were intent on purchasing their new home independently. “Harry could’ve asked Charles to contribute toward the cost of the house, but he chose not to,” Us Weekly reports. “Getting his dad financially involved would result in the royals having control over him. It would mean going backwards.”
