Prince Edward and Duchess Sophie's regal residence in Surrey, Bagshot Park, has famously been called "ugly" but a poll of HELLO! readers disagree.
Nicholas Pevsner, an architectural historian, once called the property "bad, purposeless, ugly," referring to its design, but when polled about whether they thought Bagshot Park was, in fact, ugly, a landslide vote saw 90.2% of our readers say otherwise.
The property has had a few renovations over the years. The most recent one was initiated by Prince Edward in 1998 ahead of moving in with his new wife Duchess Sophie. The changes cost £2.98 million and £1.38 million of the total was paid for by Prince Edward.
In 2021, reports surfaced that Edward had renewed the lease from The Crown Estate for another 150 years. This would have been at a cost of £5 million, and the rent is £90,000 per year, but the property itself is reported to be worth a staggering £30 million should it be listed on the open market.
Edward and Sophie live with their son James, Viscount Severn and their daughter Lady Louise visits when she's home from university in Scotland.
Renovation restrictions
The Grade-II building comes with a few restrictions due to its age, limiting what the royals can easily change. Plus, the surrounding woodland is not their remit. In the Crown Estate agreement, it is made clear that the lease terms do not include "commercial farmland or woodland as part of the property," therefore, it would not be up to the Prince what can be changed on these grounds.
The Wessexes are only a short drive away from Prince William and his family, who now live at Adelaide Cottage, where they have a beautiful garden for their three children to roam freely away from the hustle and bustle of London, where they used to reside at Apartment 1A inside Kensington Palace.
Since moving to Adelaide Cottage in Windsor, Prince William, his wife Princess Kate and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, have less live-in staff as they considerably downsized, and the property only has four bedrooms.
William and Kate prefer to keep their private home out of the limelight and such we've only had rare glimpses inside the estate.
© Getty, ShutterstockThe cottage, with pink exterior, underwent a full refurbishment in 2015, and it is thought to boast a beautiful garden, a cosy study, and a master bedroom formerly decorated with golden dolphins and a ceiling rope recycled from a 19th-century royal yacht, according to The Sun.
