The Cambridges will likely give up Anmer Hall when they get a place in Windsor?

Rebecca English at the Daily Mail had an interesting update on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s plans to relocate permanently to Windsor/Berkshire. They still haven’t firmed up a place to live, but William and Kate have apparently been looking all over Berkshire for schools for Prince George. What’s curious is that while George will need a new school this year (once his term ends at Thomas’s Battersea), it sounds like Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis will still be going to Thomas’s Battersea, even when the family moves to Windsor. Rebecca English claims that contrary to every report previous to this which made the Keens’ move to Windsor sound like a full-time arrangement, William and Kate will still be London-based throughout the week. Which is how they’re explaining keeping Charlotte and Louis in school in London. Some highlights from this Mail story:

George will likely go to Lambrook prep school: The couple are understood to be finalising arrangements to move Prince George to a new prep school in Berkshire this September, with co-educational Lambrook, near Ascot, thought to be the front runner. But Princess Charlotte, six, is more likely to remain at Thomas’s Battersea for the time being where she is ‘super happy and settled’ and is expected to be joined by her brother, Prince Louis, who turns four this spring.

Oh, now the Cambridges will only live in Berkshire on the weekends: The couple are also still eyeing up properties in the Windsor area – having looked at several potential family homes on the Queen’s Berkshire estate – with a view to living in the Royal Borough at weekends and holidays. Handily, Windsor is only a short drive from Kate’s family home in Bucklebury. Her parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, are doting and very hands-on grandparents. However Kensington Palace, where they live in Apartment 1A, and have their offices and their charitable Royal Foundation, will remain their weekday base.

Giving up Anmer Hall? It means that in the near future Anmer Hall, their Norfolk home, may revert back to the Queen to pass on to another family member or rented out privately. Sources say they adore Norfolk and, if their circumstances had been different, would have loved to bring their children up on the Queen’s Sandringham estate. But they took the house on when William was based in Cambridge working for East Anglian Air Ambulance and their lives are very different now. Anmer is a long commute from London, often requiring them to travel by helicopter, and simply isn’t a practical option.

Twenty years before William sees the throne? It could, of course, be another 20 years before the couple accede to the throne and they are keen to afford their offspring as normal childhoods as possible before then.

Acutely aware of how much money they spent on the Kensington Palace renovation: They have a comfortable home-office arrangement at Kensington Palace and are acutely conscious of the £4.5million cost to taxpayers of renovating their 20-room family apartment, in addition to creating new working space. And their roles require them to be in London more often than not. As a result they have decided to continue living there, even when they become Prince and Princess of Wales, in term-time at least.

Country Keens: But both William and Kate are country people at heart, a love that has been inherited by their children. Although George, who will turn nine in July, is also extremely happy at Thomas’s in London, his parents believe it is time for him to transfer to an out-of-town school, where all the facilities are on one campus, the Daily Mail understands from multiple, well-placed sources. Weekly or ‘flexi’ boarding is on the cards. Both William and Kate were boarders from a young age.

The schools they’re considering for George: Ludgrove, the all-boys Berkshire boarding-only school where Prince William and his brother, Prince Harry, went from the ages of eight to 13, is being considered. And the couple have been spotted at both St Andrew’s in Pangbourne, where Kate was a pupil – and some insiders think is a good contender – as well as Papplewick, another boys’ school in Ascot. Sources do tell the Mail, however, that the couple have been seen visiting Lambrook ‘multiple times’ – where William is even said to have chatted with a pupil about Latin lessons. As a co-educational establishment, it would allow the Cambridges to send all three children to the same school when Charlotte and Louis, who currently attends Wilcocks Nursery, are older.

A chatty source: A source said: ‘It’s an open secret the Cambridges are looking to settle in Berkshire and George is set to leave Thomas’s this summer, unless circumstances suddenly change. It’s the talk of the county and they will, of course, be made extremely welcome. They always put their children front and centre of everything they do, so finding the right school has been a priority. It’s about what works for them as a family.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I genuinely wonder what kind of haggling, tantruming, bullying and bargaining is happening behind-the-scenes. If I was in Charles’s shoes, I would be happy enough to have the Cambridges exiled to Berkshire, but I would put up a fight about it and make William sweat. Same with the Queen, I hope she keeps kicking the decision down the road to make William and Kate especially nervous. They so badly want some big, fancy mansion, fort, castle or palace of their own, given to them free of charge. And I also wonder if, at the end of the day, they’ll end up keeping Anmer Hall too. It wasn’t like the Queen gave them Anmer Hall as a place to live full-time because of William’s fake co-piloting job. She gave them Anmer Hall as a country-home gift after Kate had George. The Queen and Charles were shocked when Will and Kate moved there full-time for years.

As for the stuff about schools for George… he’s awfully young to be in a boarding school, but I’m not British or aristocratic, so what do I know.

Photos courtesy of Instar and Backgrid.

Source: Read Full Article

Previous post Britney Spears Bares Glorious Body Again on Steamy Beach Vacation
Next post Putin outsmarted as EU poised to slash dependency on Russian gas