Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has left Royal Lodge in Windsor and is now staying in a temporary property on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, the BBC understands. He departed Royal Lodge on Monday night while his intended home on the estate is being renovated.
Buckingham Palace said in October that he would vacate Royal Lodge when changes to his royal status took effect, and a formal notice to surrender the lease has been issued. The move follows controversy over the arrangements for the Royal Lodge lease and the payments made to the Crown Estate.
It is believed he will ultimately live at Marsh Farm on the Sandringham Estate. Sandringham is privately owned by the King, who will meet the costs of preparing his brother’s new residence. Royal sources said the relocation was delayed previously to avoid the awkwardness of him being at Sandringham over the Christmas period, when the family traditionally gathers.
Mountbatten-Windsor is expected to return to Windsor in the coming weeks to collect remaining belongings, but his permanent base is now officially in Norfolk. He was photographed in Windsor on Monday riding a horse near Royal Lodge and later driving away from Windsor Castle, waving to passers-by.
A National Audit Office report sets out the background to the lease dispute. When he took on the Royal Lodge lease in 2003 he agreed to pay more than £8 million, covering repairs and effectively buying out future rent obligations for the 75-year term. That arrangement was calculated on a notional annual rent of £260,000. In theory he could have been entitled to about £488,000 for an early surrender of the lease, but a Crown Estate report for MPs concluded that the property requires so many repairs that it is unlikely he will be owed any compensation.
The move occurs amid continuing scrutiny of his links to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has faced pressure to give evidence in the United States about his relationship with Epstein; he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Among the allegations under public scrutiny is an account from a woman who says an encounter took place at Royal Lodge in 2010. The woman, described as not British and then in her 20s, has been represented by US lawyer Brad Edwards, who said she alleges she spent the night with Mountbatten-Windsor, was given tea and shown around Buckingham Palace. The BBC asked Mountbatten-Windsor for comment when the allegation was first reported; he has not responded to this specific claim and has previously denied wrongdoing.
In 2014 Virginia Giuffre became the first woman to publicly accuse Mountbatten-Windsor of similar encounters. She said she was trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as a 17-year-old and forced to have sex with him, an allegation he has denied. Giuffre filed a civil suit in the US in 2021 and settled that case in February 2022 for an estimated £12 million. She took her own life last year.
Interest in the prince’s relationship with Epstein intensified after the US Department of Justice released millions of pages of material, including email exchanges between Epstein and Mountbatten-Windsor from years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor. Jeffrey Epstein died in a New York prison cell on 10 August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Sandringham, purchased in 1862 by the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), comprises roughly 31 square miles (about 80 square kilometres) of grounds and gardens, approximately the size of the city of Nottingham.
