Home sweet home ...a comfy cottage (next door to Wills)
THE newlyweds’ starter home will be a cosy cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.
Nottingham Cottage has two bedrooms, a small living room, a kitchen and a bathroom.
Prince Harry has been living at the chocolate-box home for the past few months. Meghan Markle has effectively moved in with him. The cottage was previously home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge while their 20-room apartment inside the palace was refurbished.
While the cottage may be one of the smaller properties dotted around the palace grounds, it does have rooms designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
Miss Markle has increasingly been making herself at home there during the couple’s 18-month romance. And when she moved one of her two beloved rescue dogs, Guy the beagle, to the UK from her Toronto home, it was the clearest indication that she was serious about Harry. Labrador-shepherd Bogart is still in Canada.
Yesterday she said of the dogs: ‘One is staying with very close friends and my other little guy is – yes he’s in the UK, he’s been here for a while. He’s doing just fine.’
The couple will almost certainly seek out a country pile to call their own. They are said to be interested in Oxfordshire, and especially on finding somewhere tucked away in the Cotswold hills. Harry, whose father’s country residence Highgrove House is in the Cotswolds, has long had an affection for the area. Another possibility is Norfolk, where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have a home.
Miss Markle will be protected around the clock by armed Scotland Yard officers. She has already been assessed to face a similar level of threat from terrorists, stalkers and other fixated individuals as Harry who is always accompanied by a minimum of four plainclothes bodyguards.
The cost of safeguarding Miss Markle will come out of the taxpayer-funded £125million protection bill for senior royals, VIPs and diplomats.