In October, there were weeks of royal scandal due to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) and his multiple fiascoes involving Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Virginia Giuffre, Royal Lodge and, as always, money. The situation around Andrew’s lease on Royal Lodge got so heated that the British papers began to investigate other royal leases. In late October, the Times of London looked into the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s longterm lease on Bagshot Park, the 30-room mansion with extensive grounds. Edward was “given” Bagshot by QEII, but it remained part of the Crown Estates, and that means Edward and Sophie have some kind of makeshift lease agreement with the Crown Estates (as opposed to owning Bagshot outright). While Edward first leased Bagshot in the 1990s, Edward renegotiated in 2007 and ended up signing a 150-year lease for £5 million. We were told, in October, that Edward and Sophie were paying market rate. That turned out to be a giant lie.
The King’s brother, Prince Edward, enjoys his Surrey mansion at a peppercorn rent, it can be revealed, after The Times forced the disclosure of documents held by the Crown Estate. The Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth’s youngest child, has leased the 51-acre Bagshot Park near Bracknell with his wife, the Duchess of Edinburgh, from the Crown Estate for the last 25 years.
According to the terms of Edward’s lease extension, signed in 2007 with his company, Eclipse Nominees Limited, he paid £5 million upfront for a lease of 150 years, but pays only a peppercorn rent. There are no conditions on the further sale of Edward’s lease, beyond that the new tenant could afford the property’s maintenance, leaving open the possibility that Edward could profit from its sale.
It is understood that the premium paid for the 2007 lease extension and as a down payment on future rent was “market tested” by the Crown Estate before the price was agreed, and there are restrictions on the way the property can be used in line with the historical nature of the park and property.
As a working member of the royal family who is often seen representing the Windsors at official engagements both in the UK and overseas, Edward has several charitable patronages, including the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, which promotes outdoor activities for young people. Campaigners have questioned whether Edward, 15th in line to the throne, can justify his occupation of a property that could otherwise be leased by the Crown Estate for taxpayer benefit.
Edward, who was granted the title Duke of Edinburgh by the King after the death of his father, Prince Philip, initially leased the property for 50 years for £5,000 a year in March 1998. The sum later went up to £90,000 a year — described by the National Audit Office as “market value” — after Edward paid £1.36 million to help renovate the property, with the Crown Estate covering the rest of the £3 million refurbishment costs.
Unlike Royal Lodge, the Crown Estate received two alternative offers for Bagshot Park, one for the establishment of a conference centre and another to convert the property into a hotel, after the Ministry of Defence handed back its lease on the site in 1996.
This lease was extended under the 2007 deal. While some of the details about that deal were reported through briefings, the full lease itself was not published. The heavily redacted version on the Land Registry made it impossible to establish whether he continued to pay a market rent. Despite releasing an unredacted copy of Andrew’s lease to reporters, the Crown Estate had initially declined to disclose a copy of Edward’s Bagshot Park lease, forcing The Times to request the full lease under freedom of information laws.
Part of me wishes that British people would all just collectively agree that home ownership should be prioritized by the royal family, and that these various “crown-owned” properties should simply be put up for sale and sold at genuine market rates. Because this half-assed property-management style is really pissing me off. How in the world did Edward score this kind of generous deal? Even crazier is that I’m sure Edward wasn’t paying out of pocket for anything at any time, because where would he even get £5 million to pay upfront? Please, this whole thing was always subsidized by his mother. Which explains why Sophie has been sucking up to William, Charles and Camilla so much in recent years too – Sophie and Edward, more than anyone else in that family, really have their entire lifestyles funded by the monarch alone (even Princess Anne owns her home outright, after it was gifted to her by her mother).
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
