A wedding present from the late Queen, a £2.4m refit the Sussexes repaid, a Grade II-listed cottage on the Windsor estate, and a family back in England this autumn without a key to it.
The Sussexes are back in England, and the address most people still attach to them is a house they handed back three years ago. Hello! reports that the family touched down on 26 August with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5. The King was reportedly told of the move on 16 August. Woman & Home understood that the family would live in a private home outside London rather than at a royal residence. Neither the couple nor Buckingham Palace has confirmed the arrangement.
Two stories have been circulating together this autumn. One concerns Christmas and who will or will not be at Sandringham. The other concerns a Grade II-listed cottage near Windsor Castle, which an updated Yahoo explainer described on 13 October as standing empty.
Is Frogmore Cottage the same as Frogmore House?
It is not, and the shared name causes half the confusion. Frogmore House lies about half a mile south of Windsor Castle in Home Park and has been a Royal Residence since 1792. It is the grander building, the one with the gardens, and it hosted the couple’s evening wedding party in May 2018.
Frogmore Cottage is a separate and smaller building on the same Windsor estate. Queen Elizabeth II gave it to Harry and Meghan as a wedding present that year. In November 2018 officials announced that the couple would move there from Kensington Palace “early next year”. To the newspapers it was a move to the suburbs. To anyone who has walked Home Park on a wet morning, it was a move to the quietest corner of the most heavily guarded garden in Berkshire.
Who actually owns it?
The Crown Estate owns it. Michael Stevens, Keeper of the Privy Purse and the monarch’s treasurer, has described the cottage as belonging to the Crown Estate. That body is an independent commercial business. The King does not own it, and its profits go to the Treasury.
The phrase “wedding present” was therefore courtly shorthand. What the couple received was the use of a house on terms, and terms can be withdrawn by the people who set them. At Windsor, even a wedding present has a landlord.
What did the £2.4m pay for, and who paid it?
The 2018–19 Sovereign Grant report recorded about £2.4m spent on the move from Kensington Palace to Frogmore Cottage. HuffPost’s reading of that report put total spending on occupied palaces at roughly £82m that year. GB News later listed the works: a yoga studio, replacement ceiling beams and floor joists, full rewiring, and new gas and water supplies, all of which took nearly twelve months. The yoga studio made the headlines. The joists and the rewiring did not, which is what usually happens to the structural work.
The Sovereign Grant paid at first, and Harry repaid the cost. The £2.4m went back in September 2020, eight months after the couple announced they were stepping back as senior royals. Their spokesperson said at the time that the payment covered the renovation in full. NBC put the Sovereign Grant at roughly $100m a year and noted that the couple no longer receive it.
The money then took a turn. A later Sovereign Grant report showed that the same £2.4m payment also covered rent for 2020–21 and 2021–22, but the report did not say how much went on each. A palace source quoted by Reuters had earlier said rent was set at a “commercial rate”. No serious outlet has put a figure on that rent, or on what the cottage would fetch on the open market. The accurate summary is plain enough: public money paid for the works first, Harry paid it back, and the cheque covered the rent as well.
Why did the Sussexes have to leave?
The family stayed at the cottage in June 2022 for the Platinum Jubilee. The Met Police’s Royalty and Specialist Protection unit covers the property, a detail that matters a great deal to a family whose security has been a running argument. Spare was published on 10 January 2023, and according to reports the King began the process of reclaiming the cottage the following day.
The newspapers called it an eviction. The couple’s own words were more careful, and their spokesperson confirmed the news on 1 March 2023:
“We can confirm The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage.” Statement reported by NBC News
Buckingham Palace offered no comment at the time. Harry reportedly stayed at the cottage once more during a London court visit later that month and flew back to California on 30 March. The formal end came at the palace’s annual Sovereign Grant briefing in 2023, when Stevens confirmed that the couple had vacated the cottage. An official told Town & Country they had “only just left”. The exact date of that briefing has never been firmly pinned down.
Who has lived there since?
Fewer people than you might expect. Princess Eugenie and her husband were given use of the cottage after the Sussexes left for North America. According to The Sun, they had moved out by early 2023, before the request to vacate was made public.
Andrew came next in the reporting, though never with a key in hand. Accounts from 2023 and October 2025 say he was offered the cottage, and they disagree about whether he wanted it. One version says he turned it down as “not grand enough”. The Telegraph reported that he would leave Royal Lodge if he could move to Frogmore. He gave up use of the Duke of York title and his remaining honours on 17 October 2025, and People reported in March 2026 that he had recently moved out of Royal Lodge. No report confirms that he ever took Frogmore Cottage.
Royal Lodge puts the cottage’s numbers in proportion. Hello!, citing The Times, reported that Andrew paid £1m for his lease and at least £7.5m on refurbishment. His rent since 2003 was “one peppercorn (if demanded)” a year.
The cottage itself is reportedly empty. The 13 October Yahoo explainer says it “has remained empty”, a line it attributes to an older palace briefing reported by Hello!. In May, GB News cited The Sun as saying experts were assessing whether the building could revert to two semi-detached homes, which is how it began. According to the same report, no work has started, and neither the palace nor the Crown Estate has confirmed the plan. If the plan goes ahead, it would undo much of the 2018–19 refit and return the building to something like its original layout.
Where will the Sussexes spend Christmas?
Nobody has said so on the record. People reports that the family is expected to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who lives in California, rather than at Sandringham. The Sunday Times, as cited by InStyle, says the couple do not expect an invitation to the royal Christmas. IBTimes AU has flagged one version of the story as an unverified tabloid report and notes that the Sussexes have not confirmed their plans.
The details that are on record are smaller and more domestic. Woman & Home says the children are said to be enrolled at a British school from September. Hello! reports that they are expected in class during Thanksgiving week, and that it remains unclear whether Doria would fly to England or the family would fly to California. The same outlet reported that six weeks after landing, the couple had not yet seen the King in person, although Harry and his father spoke by phone during the first week.
The royal family has spent Christmas at Sandringham since 1988, according to News24. Parade notes when the Sussexes last joined them. Their last Sandringham Christmas was 2018, while the builders were still at Frogmore.
