--- title: "Prince William and Kate mark a year at Forest Lodge, the eight-bedroom house in Windsor’s 5,000-acre park" url: https://badiyaa.com/william-kate-forest-lodge-windsor-great-park-one-year/ published: 2026-11-03T06:10:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-03T06:10:00+00:00 section: Entertainment publisher: Badiyaa --- # Prince William and Kate mark a year at Forest Lodge, the eight-bedroom house in Windsor’s 5,000-acre park The Wales family moved from Adelaide Cottage to the Grade II-listed lodge over half term in November 2025; the Crown Estate park around it is free to walk from dawn to dusk and holds a 2.64-mile avenue to the castle. Prince William and Kate have now spent a full year at Forest Lodge, the Grade II-listed, eight-bedroom house inside Windsor Great Park that Kensington Palace confirmed as the family’s new home in August 2025. The move itself happened over the children’s half-term break at the start of November 2025, after the family set themselves a target of being in by Bonfire Night. The story is circulating again this week in the US, so this is a check of what has actually been confirmed, plus a walk through the park around the house. ## What the palace and the council confirmed Kensington Palace’s whole announcement in August 2025 ran to one sentence: “The Wales family will move house later this year.” Everything else came from planning papers and from the move itself. Redacted applications to the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead showed that permission for minor internal and external changes at Forest Lodge was granted that month; the council’s decision notice mentioned removing a window and work to a fireplace. The couple were understood to be paying for the property and the renovation themselves and to be paying market rent on the house, with no live-in staff, as at Adelaide Cottage. Forest Lodge had a 1.5 million pound restoration in 2001, after which it was offered for rent at 15,000 pounds a month. Photographs from that time showed original stonework, elaborate plaster cornices and a half-barrel vaulted hallway ceiling. In September 2025, ahead of the move, a protected zone of about 150 acres with a 2.3-mile perimeter was set up around the house. Cranbourne Gate and its car park were closed permanently, which annoyed some locals who had paid 110 pounds a year for a key to the gate. ## The park: 5,000 acres, free from dawn to dusk Windsor Great Park covers 2,020 hectares, or about 5,000 acres, south of the town of Windsor on the Berkshire-Surrey border. That is roughly five and a half times the size of New York’s Central Park. It sits next to the smaller, private Home Park of around 650 acres, which is the part closer to the castle and where Adelaide Cottage stands. The land was William the Conqueror’s hunting ground after he began Windsor Castle in the 11th century; Henry III formally set out the park’s boundaries in 1240. It stayed the monarch’s personal property, apart from a short spell under Oliver Cromwell, until George III handed control of Crown lands to Parliament. Today the Crown Estate owns and runs it, and, unusually, The Royal Parks agency has no role in it. Most of it is open to the public free of charge from dawn to dusk; the Savill Garden charges admission. Strictly speaking, Forest Lodge is one of several properties associated with the Great Park rather than inside its formal boundary. The park’s showpiece is the Long Walk, a 2.64-mile tree-lined avenue from the castle’s George IV Gateway to Snow Hill. Charles II had double rows of elms planted along it after the Restoration in 1660, having been inspired by Versailles during his exile. Queen Anne replaced the central path with a carriage road in 1710, and the Copper Horse statue of George III was put up on Snow Hill in 1829. The park also holds one of Western Europe’s largest collections of ancient oaks, including King Offa’s Oak, estimated at 1,300 to 1,500 years old, and a herd of semi-wild red deer. ## Previous royal neighbors The Waleses are far from the first royals to live in the park. Royal Lodge, built as the deputy ranger’s house and made a retreat for the Prince Regent from 1812, was rebuilt in the 1930s as the home of the Duke and Duchess of York before they became George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Cumberland Lodge, dating from 1652, became the Ranger’s home after 1660 and later housed Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Helena for more than fifty years; it is now an educational charity. King Charles III holds the title of Ranger of the park. ## Forest Lodge versus Adelaide Cottage and Anmer Hall - **Adelaide Cottage**, Home Park: the family’s base from 2022, close to the castle and to the children’s school, Lambrook. Intended, by the family’s own account, as a test of whether Windsor would work for them. - **Forest Lodge**, Windsor Great Park: eight bedrooms, Grade II listed, now their main home since November 2025, described as a “forever home.” - **Anmer Hall**, Sandringham estate, Norfolk: a ten-bedroom house the family keeps as a country base, alongside Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace in London. Forest Lodge therefore sits between the two in size, with more rooms than the cottage and fewer than Anmer Hall, and in a far larger landscape than either: 5,000 acres of park at the door versus Home Park’s 650. The move began a year ago, over the half-term weekend of Saturday, November 1, 2025. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Windsor Great Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Great_Park) *Image: Lauren, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*