Last year, the Prince and Princess of Wales moved into Forest Lodge, their billionth “forever home,” which is a large mansion on the Windsor estate. Will and Kate paid for extensive renovations and they decorated the place using royal-owned homeware. Bizarrely, they purposefully chose a place which needed extensive security upgrades, including shutting down 150 acres of public parkland, closing down a well-trafficked entrance to Windsor Great Park and causing chaos for peasants who simply wanted to buy Christmas trees. People in the Windsor area pay a small annual fee to access the park and they were absolutely furious with Will and Kate’s asinine land-grab. And don’t even get me started on the Waleses evicting long-time residents of cottages close to Forest Lodge. Well, for some reason, William and Kate want to remind people of their terrible behavior. What’s funny is that W&K probably think the reaction to this news will be “thank god they’re paying their fair share in rent!”
The Prince of Wales is paying £307,500 a year to rent his family home of Forest Lodge in Windsor, The Times can reveal. Official documents registered this week show that the Waleses are now the official owners of the lease on the grade II listed mansion, paying nearly £100,000 more than the previous tenants.
While William and Kate signed a 20-year lease on Forest Lodge in July last year, the rent was until now unknown. However, in registering the official documents for their home, it is understood that the prince and princess have agreed to make the figure public. It comes after The Times revealed that William’s uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, had only been paying a peppercorn rent on his home at Royal Lodge for two decades after a £8 million payment for refurbishment.
Documents filed at the Land Registry on Thursday show that the Prince and Princess of Wales are both listed as the proprietors of the lease on Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park. The rental agreement covers the main mansion plus two cottages within the grounds, which are used for staff.
Paperwork shows that Forest Lodge was previously let for £216,000-a-year to Alexander Fitzgibbons, chair of the party planning business Fait Accompli that organised the wedding receptions for both the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011 and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.
Fitzgibbons and Cristina Stenbeck, a Swedish businesswoman, signed a joint tenancy deal in 2019 but six years later the property was let to the Waleses after rates were raised by nearly 50 per cent.
The new figure is understood to have been reached after three separate valuations carried out into market rates by Hamptons and Savills acting for the Crown Estate and Knight Frank acting for the Waleses. Having described it as their “forever home”, it is understood that the Waleses hope to extend the lease when it expires.
William’s rent is paid from the private income he receives after tax from the profits of the Duchy of Cornwall estate. While he does not officially release the amount of tax he pays on his income, Kensington Palace has said that he pays the highest rate. A recent investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that this figure was likely to be between £5 million and £7 million a year.
This story is a lot like the story about William’s taxes. Someone has convinced William that his obsessive secrecy is bad for business, so this is William being dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of financial transparency. Either that, or someone convinced William that it will be good for his image if people know that he pays a “fair” rent. Give him an award for paying more than the previous tenants, amirite?? The thing is, all of those valuations of Forest Lodge were done before Will and Kate hijacked 150 acres of public parkland just so they could have an “uninterrupted view.” The acreage wasn’t factored into the rental agreement. The Waleses evicting cottage-residents wasn’t factored into the rental agreement. All of the taxpayer-funded “security upgrades” were not factored into the rental agreement. All William is doing is reminding people that he and his wife planted themselves in the middle of a public park, banned the peasants from getting too close, and are now hiding away in their makeshift country estate instead of working. I find it especially crazy because… there were tons of available royal residences which would not have involved all of this.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace’s social media, screencaps courtesy of AppleTV+.
