How Prince William and Kate’s Windsor home was once lived in by Princess Margaret’s chaperone-turned-lover: Inside Adelaide Cottage’s connection to royal scandal

It’s the modest four-bedroom property in Windsor that has been the house of Prince William and Kate and their younger household since 2022.

The Prince and Princess of Wales are mentioned to be very comfortable at Adelaide Cottage – though Prince Andrew’s dwelling Royal Lodge is believed to have been earmarked for them.

However Adelaide Cottage has a much more intriguing previous than its quaint pink partitions recommend – for it was as soon as the house of the person Princess Margaret was not allowed to marry.

Group Captain Peter Townsend lived there together with his spouse Rosemary and kids within the Forties, when he served as equerry to King George VI.

Teenage princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and their mom Queen Elizabeth used to take tea within the gardens of the cottage with the Townsends and their younger sons.

Townsend and Margaret grew to become romantically concerned earlier than his break up from his spouse in 1952 – however they deterred from marrying due to his standing as a divorced man. 

He later wrote in his autobiography: ‘If her extravagant vivacity generally outraged the elder members of the family and of London society, it was contagious to those that nonetheless felt younger – whether or not they have been or not.’

‘She was a woman of bizarre, intense magnificence, confined because it was in her brief, slender determine and centred about massive purple-blue eyes, beneficiant, delicate lips and a complexion as easy as a peach.

‘She was succesful, in her face and in her entire being, of an astonishing energy of expression. 

‘It may change instantly from saintly, virtually melancholic, composure to hilarious, uncontrollable pleasure.’

Nestled on the coronary heart of the Crown Property’s non-public 655-acre royal park, Adelaide Cottage was in-built 1831 as a retreat for William IV’s spouse Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. 

It was later identified to be a favorite dwelling of Queen Victoria, as she steadily loved taking her breakfast there. 

The Wales household moved from Kensington Palace to Adelaide Cottage, positioned inside Windsor Nice Park, in the summertime of 2022.  

The cottage underwent main renovations in 2015, which meant that Prince William and Kate didn’t must shell out thousands and thousands in remodelling the home. 

Moreover, 4 bedrooms have been deemed ample since there are not any live-in employees members. As an alternative, aides commute to the property as and when their providers are wanted.

The property is probably going the place Kate is spending a lot of her time as she continues most cancers remedy.  

Nevertheless, it is potential that Prince William, Kate and their three youngsters may at some point relocate to Royal Lodge – if Prince Andrew agrees to maneuver out.

The duke, who now not has official duties after being pressured to give up as a working royal following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, shares the 30-room, £30million mansion together with his ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York.

King Charles is alleged to be making an attempt to get his brother to depart the property and transfer in to Frogmore Cottage – the previous dwelling of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Battle of Britain pilot Townsend had a toddler son, Giles, and one other on the way in which when he was made the King’s equerry in February 1944.

Adelaide cottage grew to become the Townsends’ first correct marital dwelling after three years of marriage amidst the chaos of the Second World Battle.

Regardless of its proximity to the monarch’s residence, the residing situations within the cottage have been in stark distinction to its mightier neighbour.

Electrical energy was delivered to it through cables from Windsor Citadel, however the present was so poor that solely a vacuum cleaner and a small electrical heater may very well be used directly.

The cottage’s inside was allegedly ‘gloomy’, with Victorian wallpaper and heavy furnishings. A commentator within the Nineteen Fifties described it as ‘pokey and unattractive’.

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret visited when Townsend’s second son was born and King George VI was named because the kid’s godfather. Within the backyard, they loved a tea to mark the boy’s christening.

A 1958 report from the Every day Mail that recounted the event mentioned: ‘It was the primary of many Sunday visits. Princess Elizabeth preferred to speak with Rosemary, whereas Princess Margaret performed with the kids on the garden and Peter Townsend, off responsibility, sat again in a deckchair.

‘Typically the King and Queen arrived to gather their daughters, extra typically Peter ran them dwelling himself. Princess Margaret by no means got here to Adelaide Cottage except she was accompanied by Princess Elizabeth or the Queen.’

Margaret was aged simply 13 on the time of Townsend’s appointment however later admitted: ‘When he first appeared, I had a terrific crush on him.’

Though it stays unclear when the pair’s romance started, the affair grew to become public information in 1953, when Margaret was seen tenderly eradicating a chunk of fluff from Townsend’s lapel in the course of the Queen’s Coronation. 

The earlier 12 months, the Townsends had divorced. It’s broadly believed that Margaret started her dalliance with Townsend years earlier than the Queen’s Coronation.

The pair have been in near-constant firm throughout a three-month State tour of South Africa, which started in February 1947. Townsend would then have been aged 32, while Margaret was 17.

A part of the equerry’s function was to chaperone the younger princess.

Margaret later advised a confidante: ‘We rode collectively each morning in that great nation, in marvellous climate. That’s once I actually fell in love with him.’

Townsend and his household left Adelaide Cottage in 1952, after they divorced.

Nevertheless, his romance with Margaret finally by no means resulted within the marriage that they each desperately sought.  

Her sister the Queen needed to consent to her marriage to a divorced man, however the monarch’s standing as Head of the Church of England sophisticated issues. 

With each the royal household and the British authorities nonetheless recovering from Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936 so he may marry divorcee Wallis Simpson, Queen Elizabeth was suggested it will be unconstitutional for her to approve the match. 

It was determined that Townsend can be despatched away to work as an air attaché for the British Embassy in Brussels for a 12 months, after which, the couple was requested to attend one other 12 months.

Though Margaret had now turned 25, they have been nonetheless denied the appropriate to wed, and the federal government – led by Prime Minister Anthony Eden – said that if she married her love then she can be stripped of her royal privileges in addition to her earnings. 

Margaret introduced in late  1955 that she and Townsend wouldn’t marry. 

An announcement drafted in Princess Margaret’s identify learn: ‘I would love it to be identified that I’ve determined to not marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.

‘I’ve been conscious that, topic to my renouncing my rights of succession, it may need been potential for me to contract a civil marriage. 

‘However, conscious of the Church’s instructing that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and aware of my responsibility to the Commonwealth, I’ve determined to place these concerns earlier than any others.’

Having returned to Belgium heartbroken after Margaret’s determination, Townsend went on to marry a 20-year-old heiress named Marie-Luce Jamagne in 1959 and the couple went on to have two daughters and one son.

Writing in his autobiography, Tim and Probability, Townsend described how he and Margaret grew to become romantically shut.

‘Throughout 1952, Princess Margaret and I discovered rising solace in each other’s firm,’ he mentioned. 

‘The 12 months started with the Princess’s grief, brought on by the sudden loss of life of her father; it continued with the change in her family state of affairs – residing alone together with her mom (whom she adored) – and the regular deterioration in mine; it ended within the break-up of my household. 

‘If on the fabric airplane, in addition to temperamentally, the Princess and I have been worlds aside, we responded, in our emotions and feelings, as one.’

Earlier than the Wales’ moved in, Adelaide Cottage was dwelling to Simon Rhodes, the son of the Queen’s cousin and good friend Margaret Rhodes.

A supply claiming that Harry and Meghan had been supplied Adelaide Cottage by the Queen mentioned in 2018: ‘There are seven gated entrances and exits to Windsor Citadel so the newlyweds may come and go with out worrying about being photographed.’

Adelaide Cottage was constructed on the location of the previous head keeper’s lodge on the north slopes of Dwelling Park.

In response to Historic England, the general public physique which cares for England’s historic buildings and locations, Adelaide Cottage is a ‘picturesque’ two-storey stucco-faced dwelling with casement home windows, and elaborate pierced bargeboards edging the roof.

The principal bed room has a coved ceiling embellished with gilded dolphins and twine decoration reused from the nineteenth century royal yacht Royal George, and an excellent marble Graeco-Egyptian fire.

The south entrance is flanked by paired diagonally set chimneys with stepped bases, and the home has a porte-cochere, a canopied entrance to supply shelter.

There’s a verandah with bargeboard eaves on the east aspect.

Its entrance bears the initials AR (Adelaide Regina) and the date of 1831.

It sits subsequent to a different property known as Adelaide Lodge, which is empty and inhabitable on account of issues with it not being underpinned.

Queen Victoria typically visited the cottage for breakfast or tea, in line with the Royal Assortment Belief.

Her beloved King Charles spaniel Sprint, whom she would costume in a scarlet jacket and blue trousers, was buried there after his loss of life in 1840.

He was honoured with an effusive inscription on his grave studying: ‘Right here lies Sprint, The favorite spaniel of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, In his tenth 12 months, His attachment was with out selfishness, His playfulness with out malice, His constancy with out deceit, Reader, In the event you can be beloved and die regretted, Revenue by the instance of Sprint.’

Adelaide Cottage’s 4 bedrooms imply that William and Kate’s full-time nanny, Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, lives elsewhere, as do different employees together with the housekeeper and the chef, giving the Wales extra privateness.

The placement presents the household quick access to the non-public 655-acre Dwelling Park and the historic royal property’s community of drives, gardens, farms, close by trout stream, Frogmore Home and Royal Mausoleum.

Different advantages embrace neighbouring Windsor Nice Park, which spans greater than 5,000 acres, with its Lengthy Stroll main as much as Windsor Citadel, deer park and woodland trails within the Valley Gardens.