With the news Prince Andrew is expected to vacate his long-time home Royal Lodge as the fallout continues over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and alleged victim Virginia Giuffre, attention turns to where he will live next.
Frogmore Cottage, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their time as working royals and for a short time after they left England for a new life in the US, has emerged as the top contender for the former Duke of York’s new home.
The heritage listed-property not only has great historical importance but also has a place in the heart of the British royal family.
Frogmore Cottage has a colourful past. (PA Images via Getty Images)
In recent years, Frogmore Cottage was home to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, but well before they took up residence there it hosted other senior royals, including a queen.
A long history
The residence was built in 1801 on the orders of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. It is located within Frogmore estate, a 13-hectare landholding managed by the Crown Estate.
The Crown Estate is a collection of lands belonging to the British monarch but is not part of the monarch’s private estate. Any money raised through rent goes back to the Estate and helps fund the monarchy.
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Prince Andrew and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson have lived in the Windsor property for many years. (Getty)
Anyone who lives in a home on the Crown Estate, royal or otherwise, is expected to pay rent unless they are offered it by a monarch as a ‘grace-and-favour-home’.
Frogmore Cottage is within Home Park, a 2.65 square-kilometre royal park that forms the private grounds of Windsor Castle, and is close to the much larger and grander Frogmore House – a royal retreat that dates back to the 1500s.
The name ‘Frogmore’ comes from the large amount of frogs that have always lived in the low-lying and marshy area.
According to the Royal Family’s official website, Queen Charlotte purchased the lease for Frogmore estate in 1792 as she needed a country retreat for herself and two of her unmarried daughters, Princess Sophia and Princess Amelia.
Queen Charlotte employed the architect James Wyatt to enlarge and modernise the house in the 1790s, before deciding to add the cottage.
Frogmore Cottage was built on the orders of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. (Getty)
Records show she paid a Mr Bowen £450 in 1801 to build the cottage, which was first known as Double Garden Cottage.
According to a National Heritage Listing from 1975, the cottage is a plain two-storey house with parapet” and features a “centre break with porch, glazing bar sashes and stucco” facing.
Secluded life
Princesses Sophia and Amelia were among 15 children of Queen Charlotte and King George III, and were said to have lived a secluded life within the estate and cottage itself.
Amelia was six years younger than her sister, but the two were close.
Their parents’ declining health, including her father’s ‘madness’, was said to be the reason why Queen Charlotte kept them close, but the isolation of living in Frogmore prevented them from meeting eligible suitors.
They reportedly referred to the estate and cottage as “the nunnery” in reference to the fact neither of them married, which was very unusual for the times.
Princess Amelia was sickly as a teen, and developed tuberculosis at 15.
She was sent to the seaside to recover, where she reportedly fell in love with an equerry 21 years her senior.
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The Gothic Ruin on the Frogmore estate was built by architect James Wyatt, who also designed the cottage. The ruin dates back to 1793. (Getty)
Further bouts of ill health followed, before she succumbed to a skin infection in 1810 when she was just 27.
Secret love child
Like her younger sister, Princess Sophia was forced to live her life as a companion of her mother and reportedly fell for a royal equerry who was 33 years her senior.
There are rumours that the affair resulted in the princess becoming pregnant with a secret love child and some historians believe she gave birth to a child in about 1800.
It is further thought the child was raised by his father and Sophia would visit occasionally, while a further rumour suggests she in fact gave birth to a child fathered by her own brother, the Duke of Cumberland. 
Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones pictured in the grounds of Royal Lodge after their engagement, (Getty)
After the Queen’s death in 1818, the Frogmore estate passed to her eldest unmarried daughter, Princess Augusta.
After Princess Augusta died in 1840, Frogmore estate reportedly passed back to Princess Sophia, who died in 1848.
Other residents
It is thought the estate then passed to her niece, Queen Victoria, who gave the estate to her mother, the Duchess of Kent.
She lived in the larger Frogmore House, while theologian Henry James Sr and his family took up residency in the cottage in the 1840s.
Queen Victoria’s tearoom within the Frogmore estate. (Getty)
Queen Victoria reportedly visited Frogmore Cottage on June 28, 1875, for breakfast.
She wrote in her diary that she saw an “immense number of little frogs” during her visit, which she found “quite disgusting”.
Abdul Karim
In 1893, Queen Victoria offered the home to her personal secretary Abdul Karim, who lived there with his family.
His relationship with the Queen was depicted in the film Victoria & Abdul.
Queen Victoria during her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. (Historic Royal Palaces/Instagram)
The Indian-born Karim served the widowed queen for the last 14 years of her reign until her death in 1901.
She reportedly called him her “Munshi”, which means teacher, and signed off letters to him “your loving mother”.
Their unusually close relationship raised eyebrows, with the royal household said to resent their bond.
After her death, her son King Edward VII immediately dismissed Karim and his family, and ordered them to return to India. He also had all of their letters destroyed.
Exiled royal
Russia’s Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, pictured in 1897, lived in the property during the 1920s. (Getty)
Yet another Frogmore Cottage resident who raised eyebrows was Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, the sister of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II.
She fled with her family from Crimea in 1919 aboard a British warship sent by her cousin, King George V, and settled in the United Kingdom.
The exiled duchess lived in the cottage in the 1920s.
Some time after that, the cottage was divided into five separate units housing staff on the Windsor estate.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex offered several glimpes inside the home in their series Harry & Meghan. (Netflix)
Soon after Prince Harry married Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018, Kensington Palace announced in October that year that they were expecting their first child.
Until then, the couple had lived in Nottingham Cottage, in the grounds of Kensington Palace, but wanted a larger home to accommodate their growing family, so the late Queen Elizabeth II offered them Frogmore Cottage. 
The Palace first released a statement about the move on November 24, 2018, in which it said, “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will move to Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor Estate early next year as they prepare for the arrival of their first child.
“The couple have lived at Nottingham Cottage since their engagement last year.
“Windsor is a very special place for Their Royal Highnesses and they are grateful that their official residence will be on the estate.”
In fact, the couple had posed for their engagement photos at the grander Frogmore House and held their second of two wedding receptions in the grounds.
In the lead-up to their move, the house was converted from five apartments to one larger home reportedly featuring four bedrooms and a nursery.
A Sovereign Grant was used to fund the $4.8 million cost, while the royal couple was said to foot the bill for the internal fit-out.
The work was completed, allowing them to move in prior to the birth of their son, Archie, who is now styled Prince Archie, on May 6, 2019.
But just months after moving in came the dramatic announcement in January 2020 that they would be stepping down as senior working members of the royal family.
Prince Harry and Meghan inside Frogmore Cottage, which served as their UK residence. (Netflix)
They later fled Canada, where they had been staying since December 2019, for a new life in the US.
The couple said at the time they would retain Frogmore Cottage as their British base, but in the aftermath of their decision, a furore erupted over the cost of the renovations, and they announced they would pay back the cost.
Princess Eugenie moves in
Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, took up residence in the cottage in November 2020, even though the Duke and Duchess of Sussex still held the licence to occupy the property until March 2022.
At the time, they released a statement saying that while it remained their UK base, they were happy for Harry’s cousin to use the home in their absence. They moved out in May 2022.
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank took up residence in the cottage in November 2020. (Getty)Harry and Meghan’s return – and eviction
The family returned to the UK in May 2022 ahead of celebrations to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June.
While they were in town, they held a first birthday party at Frogmore Cottage for Princess Lilibet, although no senior members of the royal family were present.
At the time, the house remained their UK base, but Meghan later revealed in New York Magazine in August 2022, she used the trip to remove the last of their belongings from the home.
“You go back and you open drawers and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is what I was writing in my journal there? And here’s all my socks from this time’,” she wrote, adding it was surreal to return and see the life they had been building there.
The Sussexes returned to Frogmore Cottage in 2022 ahead of the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. (Netflix)
In January 2023, just months after the Queen’s death and King Charles accession to the throne, the Duke and Duchess were reportedly evicted from the cottage, just one day after Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir Spare hit shelves.
The news was confirmed two months later when a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess told US media outlet Bazaar that they “have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage”.
Now, it seems another royal in exile, Prince Andrew, will be the next royal outcast to take up residence in the cottage with the decidedly chequered past.
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