We’re just halfway into 2018, but the royals have already clocked up their fair share of property moves.
Kensington Palace has welcomed Harry and Meghan and Princess Eugenie and her fiancé Jack Brooksbank as its latest residents in recent months, and Duke and Duchess of Sussex have also added York Cottage – a royal stately home in the grounds of the Sandringham Estate – to their collection of royal homes after the Queen generously gifted it to them as a wedding present.
And now it seems that Princess Anne could be the latest royal to be considering a property change.
According to Gloucester Live a planning application has been submitted with Stroud District Council for a two-story extension for a lodge on the grounds of Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park estate.
While the application does not detail who lives there, it does reveal that a larger kitchen, new bathroom and additional bedroom all form part of the proposed expansion to the dwelling.
Who lives on the Gatcombe Park estate?
The entrance to the Gatcombe Park Estate.
Located between the charming Gloucestershire villages of Minchinhampton and Avening, the estate was originally purchased by the Queen for Princess Anne and her first husband Captain Mark Phillips – who divorced in 1992 after 19 years of marriage.
Princess Anne Princess Royal Looks 1989 – Princess Anne looks at then husband Captain Mark Phillips as they throw open the doors of Gatcombe Park to a host of celebrities.
Princess Anne married her second husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, in 1992, and the couple live in a large manor house on the estate. As well as the manor house Gatcombe – located roughly 10 km north of Highgrove House, Prince Charles’s country residence – boasts a farmhouse, cottages, extensive stabling facilities, a lake containing brown trout and the underlying land of an airstrip.
In 2013 Anne’s daughter Zara moved to Gatcombe with her rugby player husband Mike Tindall, after selling her sprawling Cheltenham home for £1.2m. Zara’s brother Peter Phillips, his wife Autumn and their two daughters also call Gatcombe home.
Zara – who is already mum to four-year-old daughter Mia – welcomed her second baby daughter weighing 9lbs 3oz today (19th June), with the palace confirming that, ‘The baby’s name will be confirmed in due course.’
With another grandchild to spoil, could proud grandmother Anne be making more room for the now family of four?
Or could the newly expanded lodge act as the ultimate play/sleepover den for Mia, her new sibling and cousins Isla Phillips, 6, and Savannah Phillips, 7?
We won’t know for certain until the planning department gives the project the green light, but watch this space…
