Nearly three decades after Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew divorced, housing the pair is causing the royals a headache
How to deal with a problem like Prince Andrew is consuming a fair amount of the Royal Household’s time and energy.
But another issue is coming to the fore: how to deal with a problem like Sarah Ferguson.
The King’s efforts to persuade Prince Andrew to quit Royal Lodge may be running into trouble partly because of pressure to find Sarah Ferguson, who also lives in the Windsor mansion, a home.
But Buckingham Palace may soon feel increasing pressure to justify why it still allows Sarah to live in a Royal Household.
It has been 29 years since she received a £3m divorce settlement at the end of a troubled 10-year marriage to Andrew, and more recently she became embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal after it was revealed she wrote him a grovelling apology and called him a “supreme friend”.
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The monarch is under no legal obligation to house the former duchess.
But the question he and his advisers may be considering is whether it is better to keep her inside the tent or leave her outside with the risk that she might write a damaging new memoir – she has already written two autobiographies in 1996 and 2011 – or seek other ways to earn money that would embarrass the Crown.
Andrew, 65, has been offered a number of properties, including the five-bedroom Frogmore Cottage, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But if he is forced to downsize from 30-room Royal Lodge, there have been claims that Sarah would need her own place and has nowhere else to go.
A source close to Sarah, however, has insisted she has not demanded her own home. “Everyone is just looking for a solution. No demands have been made,” they told The i Paper.
In an arrangement that has caused widespread fury, it has been revealed that Royal Lodge has been leased to the Prince on a peppercorn rent until 2078 by the Crown Estate, an arms-length government property company created to maximise revenue for the Treasury.
With the spotlight increasingly turning to the wider royal finances and the hidden cost of the monarchy amid politicians’ concerns about deals subsidising royal housing, Charles wants to take the heat out of the debate, according to insiders.
The decision for his disgraced brother to stop using his Duke of York title and various honours in the wake of the Epstein crisis has done little to alleviate the pressure.
The Royal Lodge – the 30-room home of Andrew and Sarah, for now (Photo: Reuters)
Andrew’s long-term lodger
Sarah has been Andrew’s lodger at his official residences for all but a couple of the years since the pair divorced in May 1996.
The former duchess, who has run up considerable debts in the past, has been found space by Andrew down the years. The late Queen bought Sarah and daughters Beatrice and Eugenie a seven-bedroom Georgian house in Windlesham, Surrey, after the Yorks’ divorce but it stayed empty for two years before being sold for £1.5m in 1999 because Sarah reportedly said she could not afford its running costs.
She moved into Royal Lodge in 2008 after her rented home in Englefield Green, Surrey, was badly damaged by fire reportedly blamed on a scented candle in the bathroom. She lives at the opposite end of the house to Andrew and works out of the mansion.
Her relationship with the Royal Family following the divorce has had its ups and downs.
Prince Philip refused to be in the same room as her for years but Queen Elizabeth kept in contact, keen not to make it too awkward for Beatrice and Eugenie. That link was cherished by Sarah and since the Queen’s death she has looked after two of her former mother-in-law’s Corgis, Sandy and Muick, sharing news about them and suggesting that Elizabeth II communicates with her from beyond the grave through the dogs.
The King has always appeared personally fond of her but is now believed to have vowed to exclude her and Andrew from family events such as Christmas at Sandringham because of the embarrassment they have heaped on the monarchy.
King Charles is thought to be fond of Sarah Ferguson (Photo: Karwai Tang/WireImage)
Friends of the former duchess, who has just sold a Belgravia townhouse for £3.8m but insisted that is a nest egg for her daughters, have claimed that one option offered was that Andrew move into Frogmore Cottage while she takes the four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage. The Prince and Princess of Wales and their children are about to vacate the cottage to move into Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
But in a case of claim and counterclaim, others close to the negotiations insist Adelaide Cottage has not been offered to Sarah and have also played down suggestions that Frogmore Cottage is a done deal, insisting that work done on the house in the last few days has been routine maintenance unconnected to the current talks.
Frogmore and Adelaide cottages are both in the taxpayer-funded Home Park, part of the Windsor Castle estate and so within the royal residence’s security cordon.
Andrew would have to pay rent to the King but would no longer have to worry about coming up with an estimated £3m per year to pay for his own security three miles down the road outside the police perimeter. The Prince, who used to have security paid for by the taxpayer when he was a working royal, has previously turned down the offer of Frogmore Cottage.
Keeping Andrew and Sarah hidden away in Windsor would suit everyone but moving them away from their new neighbours across the Great Park would also placate William and Kate, according to the royal biographer Tina Brown.
In a Substack column earlier this month Brown questioned what could be done about Andrew’s living arrangements, given he “has an iron-clad contract to live in the Queen Mother’s former mansion, a short neigh from Windsor Castle and just four miles from the new ‘forever’ home of Prince William and Kate, who can’t abide him?”
Other options for Andrew and Sarah
But it is by no means the only option for the pair. Windsor Castle and its grounds are part of the taxpayer-funded Occupied Royal Palace Estate, which comprises 360 properties mainly in London and Windsor and includes Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, St James’s Palace, Clarence House, and many other apartments and houses.
There are a similar number of properties on the monarch’s privately-owned 20,000-acre Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Balmoral, too, has numerous homes on its 50,000 acres in the Highlands.
At Kensington Palace, once called the “Aunt Heap” by Edward VII, vacant properties include Apartment 7, where Prince Philip spent his last night as a bachelor, and the 20-room Apartment 1, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.
But Andrew and Sarah are thought to want to stay in Windsor, where he is close to a golf course and their daughters can join them for family weekends in the country with their husbands and children.
It is thought that Andrew and Sarah are keen to stay in Windsor (Photo: Jordan Pettitt/AFP)
Other potential homes on the castle estate include Slopes Cottage, where Queen Elizabeth’s dresser and confidante Angela Kelly lived until the change of reign, or Victoria House, the former head gardener’s residence which Donald and Melania Trump went to when they arrived in Windsor for their state visit in September.
Some royal commentators doubt the public will wear the disgraced pair being given grace-and-favour homes though. They wonder what will happen to Royal Lodge, which was given to Andrew after the Queen Mother’s death on the grounds that it could not be offered to non-royals because its 98-acre grounds contained All Saints Chapel, where the Queen and her family worshipped when they were staying at Windsor Castle.
“I think that’s nonsense and it could be offered to someone else who isn’t royal,” Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, said.
The bigger problem is that getting him out of Royal Lodge is unlikely to end calls for a public or parliamentary inquiry into the scandals that surround Andrew and the furore over his and Sarah’s friendship with the late convicted paedophile Epstein, Little and others suggested.
Marlene Koenig, an American royal historian, agreed. She suggested the King could introduce Letters Patent – a legal document authorised by the King -demoting Andrew from a Prince to Lord. But she added: “Charles is stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
