Where will King Charles live? He has to pick a palace or two. Or three... (2024)

After years of waiting, Charles has finally got the top job; but does he have to move home too?

Now that he is King, he is facing some tough choices about what to do about the many residences at his disposal, according to a well-informed source.

“He is going to have to weigh up the cost against the importance of keeping these palaces and castles and residences truly royal by using them,” they said.

The question of where the King chooses to spend his time is not as straightforward as it might seem.

The obvious assumption would be that, like his mother, he will divide his time between Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, with Sandringham and Balmoral for the holidays.

However, he already has a perfectly good country home of his own for weekends, in the form of Highgrove House. And Charles does not even like Buckingham Palace — but then, not many who have to live there do.

His antipathy to the place is such that it has even inspired a number of reports over the years that he is considering just using it for official royal business, but not as a home.

A source who knows him well said that over the years the King has said that he would like to keep Clarence House — next door to St James’s Palace — as his London home. He would use Buckingham Palace for banquets, receptions and investitures, and as the headquarters of the monarchy. He is also interested in the idea of opening up the palace more to the public.

Andrew Marr, the broadcaster, said in his 2011 book The Diamond Queen that Charles was considering moving his court to Windsor Castle when he became King, and turning Buckingham Palace into a glorified function centre-cum-museum.

Marr wrote: “One of the more dramatic ideas that has been discussed is for the royal family in his reign to leave Buckingham Palace entirely, leaving it as a kind of grand official government hotel and centre for events. The King would base himself not in London but at Windsor Castle.”

However, a former courtier said that the King did not like Windsor Castle and was planning to let Prince William live there. However, that will not happen for some time, as the Prince of Wales and his family have only just moved to their new home in Windsor, Adelaide Cottage.

When the office of Prince Charles (as he was then) was asked about the situation in early 2017, officials insisted that Buckingham Palace would remain both the headquarters of the monarchy and the official home of the sovereign, and there were no plans to change this.

There is another factor supporting the idea that the King will move out of Clarence House: according to the former courtier, it was once earmarked — but, crucially, this was never agreed — for the Duke and duch*ess of Sussex.

The King could also delay his move to Buckingham Palace because of the reservicing works going on.

Even the late Queen was once reluctant to move into Buckingham Palace. When George VI died, Elizabeth and Philip were living at Clarence House, Philip suggested that they should live there and use the palace as an office.

The courtiers at Buckingham Palace told them that the palace was the traditional home of the monarchy (even though it was, of course, the London home of the sovereign only since Queen Victoria) and they had to go.

Penny Junor, the royal biographer, believes that for all his reluctance Charles will still end up moving down the Mall. “Buckingham Palace would be the office, the hub of entertainment and all that,” she said. “Not even the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh liked Buckingham Palace. It’s not a home.”

One of the places that Charles truly loves is Highgrove, his family home near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, which was bought from Maurice Macmillan on his behalf by the Duchy of Cornwall in 1980. Charles was subsequently appointed a tenant for life. In the early years of their marriage, Charles and Diana — and their sons — would spend the weekends there.

As the property is owned by the Duchy, it now passes to Prince William, along with all the Duchy estates: the King’s landlord is now his older son.

The Queen Consort, who has her own home in Wiltshire, is less attached to Highgrove. “She would not be sad to see Highgrove go,” Junor said. “She has no great fondness for it at all. Of course she loves the garden and everything. But it is Diana’s house. It is not hers.”

The source said that “what is more like a home is Birkhall, the Queen Mother’s former house on the Balmoral estate”. Balmoral, the former courtier suggests, could be used partly as a residence and partly as somewhere to celebrate the memory of the late Queen.

Will he use Sandringham? It is certainly possible, but assuming he hangs on to Highgrove he is unlikely to use Sandringham as much as the Queen.

There is also Charles’s Welsh cottage, Llwynywermod. However, as the source said: “When you add it all up that is a lot of buildings. He is going to have to find a balance . . . He is going to be deliberately cost-conscious, the whole slimmed-down monarchy thing . . . The answer might be to open more of them more often to the public and use that income to cover costs.”

The Queen was on the throne for so long that we have got used to certain things being set in stone: Buckingham Palace during the week, Windsor Castle for the weekend, Balmoral for the summer and Sandringham for Christmas. Now Charles is on the throne, he may do something else entirely. Tradition is on the march.

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