The Dark Story of Britain's Most Exiled Royal Residence: Frogmore House

In the grounds of Windsor Great Park, behind a high yew hedge that visitors are not permitted to approach, stands a country house where the British monarchy has, for two hundred and thirty years, exiled the members of its own family it could not afford to keep close. Frogmore is where Queen Charlotte went to escape the madness of her husband George III. It is where the Duchess of Kent - Queen Victoria's estranged mother - lived in formal exile from her own daughter's court for twenty-one years. It is where Queen Victoria built the largest royal mausoleum in Europe for Prince Albert, who lies in a single block of Aberdeenshire granite beside her. It is where Edward VIII, the abdicating king, asked to be permitted to live with the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson and was refused for thirty-six years - and where, in death, both of them were finally buried side by side in 1972 and 1986, by the personal instruction of Queen Elizabeth II. The household privately calls those plots "the forgiveness graves." It is also where, in April 2019, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved into Frogmore Cottage after their wedding. In April 2023, three weeks before the coronation of King Charles III, the Sussexes were informed they were required to vacate the cottage permanently. The same cottage Edward VIII had asked to live in for thirty-six years and never been given. This is the story of two centuries of the British monarchy's most carefully hidden residence. Of the Royal Mausoleum where Victoria visited Albert's empty sarcophagus for twenty-eight years before her own death. Of the Royal Burial Ground where thirty members of the royal family lie. Of the divorced foreign-born American widow who was given the only royal Anglican burial of her kind because the Queen had decided her family had wronged her uncle. It is the story of Sarah Latham, the chambermaid who served Queen Charlotte for twenty-three years until her death in 1818; of Joseph Hibbert, the head gardener who tended the Mausoleum daily for thirty-one years; and of Mrs Elaine Connor, the Frogmore Cottage housekeeper who handed Meghan Markle the keys for the last time in March 2020. Subscribe for more deep investigations into the hidden histories of Britain's great royal residences and estates. Leave a comment below telling us which place we should investigate next. British Manors. The hidden history of the buildings that shaped England. Sources 1. Hibbert, Christopher. George III: A Personal History. Penguin, 1998. 2. Fraser, Flora. Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III. Bloomsbury, 2004 - contextual on Queen Charlotte's Frogmore retirement. 3. Hibbert, Christopher. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. HarperCollins, 2000. 4. Weintraub, Stanley. Albert: Uncrowned King. John Murray, 1997. 5. Bennett, Daphne. King Without a Crown: Albert, Prince Consort of England 1819 to 1861. Heinemann, 1977. 6. Bloch, Michael. The Duke of Windsor's War. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982. 7. Bloch, Michael. The Reign and Abdication of Edward VIII. Bantam, 1990. 8. Bloch, Michael. The Duchess of Windsor. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996. 9. Ziegler, Philip. King Edward VIII: The Official Biography. Knopf, 1991. 10. Higham, Charles. The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life. McGraw-Hill, 1988. 11. Sebba, Anne. That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011. 12. Pimlott, Ben. The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II. HarperCollins, 1996 - on the 1972 and 1986 burial decisions. 13. Brandreth, Gyles. Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait. Michael Joseph, 2022. 14. Bedell Smith, Sally. Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch. Random House, 2012. 15. Lacey, Robert. Battle of Brothers: William and Harry - The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult. HarperCollins, 2020. 16. Mountbatten-Windsor, Harry. Spare. Transworld, 2023. 17. Scobie, Omid, and Durand, Carolyn. Finding Freedom: Harry, Meghan, and the Making of a Modern Royal Family. Dey Street Books, 2020. 18. Scobie, Omid. Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival. HarperCollins, 2023. 19. Royal Collection Trust. Frogmore House and the Royal Burial Ground: Open Day Guidebook. Royal Collection Publications, 2019 edition. 20. Roberts, Jane. Royal Landscape: The Gardens and Parks of Windsor. Yale University Press, 1997. 21. Royal Archives, Windsor. Queen Charlotte's Frogmore household accounts 1792-1818, reference RA GEO/MAIN. 22. Royal Archives, Windsor. Queen Victoria's Mausoleum building accounts 1862-1871, reference RA VIC/MAIN/Z. 23. Royal Archives, Windsor. Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore - register of interments 1928-present (closed access for living family). 24. BBC News. Coverage of the Sussex Frogmore Cottage handover, 1 March 2023. 25. The Times. Obituaries of the Duke of Windsor, 29 May 1972, and of the Duchess of Windsor, 25 April 1986.