Farewell, Adelaide Cottage: Why Prince William and Kate Middleton will be heartbroken to leave their family home – a place of major milestones and private pain

When William and Kate relocated there four years ago, Adelaide Cottage was the perfect location for their growing family. ‘The move, which a Palace source said has been driven by their desire to have as normal a family life as possible, allows William and Kate the opportunity to offer their children a more rural upbringing away from central London and the hustle and bustle of Kensington Palace,’ wrote royal reporter Victoria Murphy for Town & Country at the time.

Indeed, it has been made apparent ever since that the Prince and Princess of Wales are determined to raise their children in as normal a way as possible, given their circumstances. Laying the table, cooking dinners and doing the dishes might be the kind of mundane chores that would have been unimaginable for royal heirs in days gone by, but at Adelaide Cottage, William and Kate have done away with private chefs and live-in nannies to maintain some semblance of normality for their very unique young family.

The family will soon be moving to Forest Lodge, pictured in 2018, a much larger property on the Windsor Estate

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‘The couple did not seek to boost the staff numbers at Adelaide Cottage, not least because there would be little room to do so,’ royal expert Robert Hardman revealed in his book, New King, New Court, adding that there was ‘certainly no butler – it’s very much them at home with the kids’. In the past, Kate has let slip that she likes to do the cooking herself, making curries for the family and cakes for her children on their birthdays. ‘I love making the cake,’ told Mary Berry on A Berry Royal Christmas in 2019. ‘It’s become a bit of a tradition that I stay up ‘til midnight with ridiculous amounts of cake mix and icing, and I make far too much. But I love it.’

Although the family have enjoyed many happy times in their modest, four-bedroom home, Adelaide Cottage has been the site of some upheaval over the last few years, from Kate Middleton’s battle with cancer to the death of Queen Elizabeth. ‘Windsor has become their home,’ an insider revealed to the BBC earlier this year. ‘However, over the last few years, while they have lived at Adelaide Cottage, there have been some really difficult times. Moving gives them an opportunity for a fresh start and a new chapter; an opportunity to leave some of the more unhappy memories behind.’