If Kate and William upsize, will an old pile with a tennis court be a curse?

Times

6 days ago

William and Kate are reported to be considering a move from their cosy four-bedroom home in the grounds of Windsor Castle for somewhere more expansive — and certainly grander. If it's true, they will be swapping their picturesque cottage for a gothic fort. Fort Belvedere, also in Windsor Great Park, and where King Edward VIII signed his abdication papers, has eight bedrooms, 59 acres, a swimming pool, tennis court and a walled garden. It's the upsizing equivalent of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle moving into Toad Hall.
The idea makes sense on many levels. William is the future king, has three children, presumably a number of staff, and needs a house where you can find room to store ceremonial robes as well as boxes of Lego. The idea of more space for a young family will certainly be enticing. But some aspects of the move to somewhere much larger will be challenging too. And I know. I've done it.
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Ten years ago, on a whim, I decided to sell my one-bedroom basement flat in north London for a grand eight-bedroom house with two staff cottages and an enormous walled garden set in 72 acres of Capability Brown parkland in Hertfordshire. We managed to get a hefty mortgage, some financial help from family, and a good price for my flat. Madness, of course, but the house and park, belonging to the youngest son of an earl, had fallen into slight disrepair, and my husband and I fancied a project. The house was so charming and so near London, had great potential, and was reached by a magical mile-long drive that took you into a stable-yard through the archway of a bell tower. Buying the property took every penny we had. There would be little spare each month to run and restore it.
The immensity of the task ahead was very apparent the day we moved in. With all the previous owner's grand furniture and metres-high family portraits removed the house looked bleak, shabby and even larger than before. We couldn't afford a proper removal company so had hired some men with a lorry that we had found online. They got lost while trying to find the property and didn't arrive with my modest amount of furniture until 4am. When they had finished unloading our possessions I was dismayed to discover that everything we owned fitted into one small room of the house.
Over the next few weeks I spent a lot of time on eBay searching for sofas and beds. When you upsize so dramatically it takes some time to adjust to the new proportions you now live within. A pretty three-seater sofa I bought online, which looked suitable in size and period for our Georgian house, appeared ridiculously small when I placed it in the drawing room, as if it had been stolen from a doll's house. Our bedroom was enormous too. It took about five minutes to cross it to reach the en suite bathroom. A few weeks after we moved in, the soles of my feet began to ache so much it hurt to walk. I went to see my GP because I thought I might have developed plantar fasciitis. The doctor asked me if I spent much time walking around in bare feet. Only to get to the bathroom each day, I told him. That was what had caused the problem. I would need to wear shoes to go for a wee in the future, he said.
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Slowly, we managed to populate areas of the house and buy mattresses to go with the eight beds we now owned; paint the giant walls; sand the endless wooden floors; pull up stained carpets, restore rotten window frames and replace the 1970s kitchen units. It may still have looked more Bleak House than Downton Abbey, but it did at least look like people lived there.
When you upsize so dramatically, it also takes a period of adjustment to use the extensive space you now have. We were used to living in an open-plan flat where everything was within easy reach of the sofa. So initially we tended to live within only three of the property's many rooms. It was hard to think of a reason to leave the sitting room you were in to sit in another sitting room instead just because you could. I became obsessed that it was a waste to have so many rooms that were unused, even unseen. So every evening when I got back from work I would wander round the house, and the two empty cottages, and peer into every room we owned. It seemed unappreciative not to do so. By the time I had done this each night it was time for bed.
And, first world problem, I know, but losing your glasses or misplacing the house keys in a property this size is a monumental disaster. A whole weekend can be spent searching every room and garden bench to find them. Eventually, keys and spectacles were fixed with electronic trackers to help us locate them more speedily. And thank God for the Find My function on iPhones.
Cash to cover his new home's running costs is unlikely to be a problem for the Prince of Wales. His income from the Duchy of Cornwall will more than cover the heating bills and the costs of a gardener or two at Fort Belvedere. We weren't quite so prosperous, so winters were chilly, parts of the house would effectively be closed until spring, and the walled garden looked a little underwhelming populated with only a couple of small vegetable beds and a row of dahlias. You needed a sat-nav to locate them they looked so minuscule. And it was three years before we could afford to renovate and use the overgrown tennis court. It looked more like an allotment than a Wimbledon lawn.
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Eventually, we rented out the house for film and shoot locations to fund further renovations. Sometimes this was quite fun. We watched them film a scene from The Crown on our staircase (when Princess Margaret meets Antony Armstrong-Jones) and witnessed a gruesome murder take place in the cellar for a horror film. But it had it's drawbacks too: you would get shouted at for flushing the loo upstairs when they were filming an emotional scene downstairs; objects you cherished would never be seen again unless you watched the film they had been borrowed for; and sometimes I'd get home from work, desperate to flop in front of the TV, only to discover the sitting room had been turned into a bathroom and the sofa had been replaced by a bidet. One July evening I returned to find reindeer and snow in the garden and a bunch of small children running round a dining room laden with festive food and tinsel. A department store was filming its Christmas ad campaign at our house.
After five years of extraordinary adventures, cashflow challenges and unforgettable house parties — one New Year's Eve all 32 guests stayed overnight with us — we were made an offer we couldn't refuse to sell the house. The family who brought it from us renovated it for seven years before moving in. In that time, we've already bought and sold three times. We now live in a four-bedroom farmhouse in Cumbria, a house more appropriate to the income I receive from the Duchy of Langmead. It's probably the house that I've been happiest in. I quite like being downwardly mobile. My upsize days are over. William and Kate's are only just beginning.