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Once again, Frogmore Cottage is at the center of new royal revelations. Today, Hello! reported that once upon a time, the property was offered to Kate Middleton and Prince William. However, as one of the smaller homes in the royal portfolio, the now-Prince and Princess of Wales passed on the chance to call it home (it was “too small”) and instead opted for Adelaide Cottage, which is nearby and has room for their family of five—though it famously only has room for the family and not any live-in help.
Adelaide Cottage has four bedrooms, but the Waleses also spend time at their other home, Anmer Hall in Sandringham. That house has 10 bedrooms, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.
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Of course, Frogmore Cottage went on to host a different royal couple: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex lived at Frogmore after they got married in 2018 and the late Queen Elizabeth II gifted them the home. While Hello! notes that the home was one of the “smaller royal properties on the Windsor Home Park estate,” Harry waxed poetic about how much he loved the home in his memoir, Spare.
“Frogmore was ready. We loved that place,” he wrote. “From the first minute. It felt as if we were destined to live there.”
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Frogmore was built in 1801 and, originally, it had 10 bedrooms. However, when Harry and Meghan moved in, it had been remodeled and had five, but also included an orangery and vegetable garden.
“We couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning, go for a long walk in the gardens, check in with the swans. Especially grumpy Steve,” Harry explained in Spare. “We met the queen’s gardeners, got to know their names, and the names of all the flowers. They were thrilled at how much we appreciated and praised their artistry.”
Harry and Meghan eventually left Frogmore when they stepped away from their positions as senior royals and in 2023, confirmed that King Charles had evicted them, saying that they were requested to “vacate their resident at Frogmore Cottage,” according to ABC News.
Royal expert Omid Scobie wrote about the situation in his book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival. He noted that the decision to force Harry and Markle from their home was “a cheap shot from a wounded father bound by an institutional system that is often intolerant of human emotion.”
