Kate Middleton and Prince William Relocate to Windsor Great Park | Vanity Fair

Three years after Kate Middleton and Prince William swapped their Kensington Palace residence for a main home on the Windsor Home Park estate, the family is moving again. Along with children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, the Prince and Princess of Wales will soon leave their current abode of Adelaide Cottage for the nearby Forest Lodge, located in the Windsor Great Park.

The couple moved to Adelaide Cottage in 2022, motivated by a desire to escape the spotlight of Kensington Palace and to be closer to Queen Elizabeth’s Windsor Castle home.

“William and Kate have been talking to their close friends about leaving Kensington Palace, where they feel very overlooked,” a source told Vanity Fair nearly a year before the couple’s move. “It will remain their official London base, but they prefer being in the countryside and the commute to London would be very easy.”

While the four-bedroom cottage the couple settled on reportedly wasn’t their dream home, it appeared to be the best option at the time. “Finding a way to make Adelaide Cottage work seems to be the best and only option,” a source said at the time of their move. 'There are issues with all the other houses, so Adelaide will be the favorite.”

Prince William, Prince of Wales, Prince Louis of Wales, Catherine, Princess of Wales, Princess Charlotte of Wales, and Prince George of Wales on the Buckingham Palace balcony during Trooping the Colour on June 17, 2023 in London, England, UK.

But soon after the family started to unpack, things changed again. Queen Elizabeth died, just as Kate Middleton and Prince William landed in the dwelling. “It was not exactly the settling-in period they had hoped for,” a source said of that period in the Waleses’ lives.

Instead, that move preceded a few years of unexpected struggle. After the obligations of the Queen’s funeral, the young family was thrust into preparations for the coronation of King Charles III. Less than a year later, the king went public with his diagnosis of cancer, while unbeknownst to the world until a bombshell announcement in March 2024, Kate Middleton was also undergoing treatment for an undisclosed form of the disease.

Middleton announced that she was officially in remission earlier this year, while the king’s treatments are reportedly ongoing, both factors that likely impacted the Walses’ latest decision to move. (Less of a factor, it seems, is a recent security breach near their current home, nor a similar incursion the year before.)

Their home-to-be, the 328-year-old Forest Lodge, is currently undergoing minor renovations, the Independent reports, noting that “the royal couple are understood to be paying for the move and renovations themselves, avoiding any extra cost to the taxpayer.” According to planning applications filed in June with the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, changes to the eight-bedroom structure include “new doors and windows, stripping out internal walls, renovated ceilings and new floors.”

The residence, which the king owns as part of the Crown Estate, was last renovated in 2001, records show, after which it was available to rent for £15,000 per month. The family plans to move into their new home in the near future, a Kensington Palace spokesperson confirms, saying “The Wales family will move house later this year.”

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