William, Kate and their three children mainly live in Windsor nowadays but the couple have retained their Kensington Palace home for central London visits. A floor plan of the property reveals a different bedroom set up
The Prince and Princess of Wales have an usual set-up when it comes to bedtime.
The family’s official residence is Apartment 1A Kensington Palace, part of the famous London building built around three courtyards. Despite its name, the property has four floors. “All of these royal residences at Kensington Palace are called apartments,” explained the late Royal author Christopher Warwick on True Royalty’s Royal Beat. “Which of course makes people immediately think they are flats like the American term for an apartment. They are not.
“If you think of Kensington Palace in a way, it is built around three courtyards. If you kind of think of them as being these wonderful red brick terrace houses. Because they are all joined, but separate houses.”
Kate and William share few details about their home life but an official floor plan of the apartment they moved into in 2017 revealed where the bedrooms are located and unusually, the royal sleeping quarters are downstairs. The pad, which was once home to Princess Margaret, has 20 rooms with its own lift, gym and nine rooms for staff.
Apartment 1A is long and narrow and one of the most notable homes in the royal compound. The front door can be reached by driving under the Clock Tower into a secluded courtyard.
Princess Margaret moved in in 1963, three years after marrying Antony Armstrong-Jones. Her servants were tasked with emptying her ashtrays when they were filled with three cigarette butts and making sure her scotch had ice at all times.
“The best way to describe it, it was like walking into an English country house,” said author Christopher, who enjoyed many visits when writing the late Princess’s autobiography. “It was very elegant, it had an 18th-century quality about it and it was furnished with lovely antiques.”
Despite their official residence remaining at Kensington, in reality the family moved ten minutes down the road to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Estate back in September 2022 for a quieter life. Built in 1831 for King William IV’s wife Queen Adelaide, the Grade II-listed four bedroom home sits in the Crown Estate’s private Royal park.
Group Captain Peter Townsend, who had an relationship with Princess Margaret, used to live in the pretty pad, where Queen Victoria liked to have her breakfast. Adelaide Cottage had a makeover in 2015 and when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wed it was rumoured they could be moving in.
Kate and William also spend time at Anmer Hall, on the royal family’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The ten-bedroom Georgian manor was a wedding gift from the late Queen Elizabeth, with the family spending £2m on renovating it when they moved in. The changes including making the kitchen the centre of the home, which according to royal author Sally Bedell Smith was a move the Queen could not get her head around.
There are 120 “grace and favour” royal residences, which are bestowed on qualifying individuals by the head-of-state. The other most notable home at Kensington Palace was the combined Apartments Eight and Nine, which were home to Princess Diana. The late royal moved in after her 1981 wedding to King Charles, raising her boys William and Harry there and continuing to reside there after her divorce.
A version of this story was first published on October 14, 2021.
