At a later date I will be posting about the renovations that have occurred at both Apartment A1 in Kensington Palace & Anmer Hall and interior decor choices Catherine has made for each home but first, here is my post about the Cambridges decision to make their home in Norfolk their main home base for at least the next year or so. xo lulu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kensington Palace, with its secluded yet central location, elegant grounds and distinguished history, is, you might think, the perfect Royal Family home. Add to that a Peter Rabbit-themed nursery and a £4.5million recent refurbishment and Kensington Palace would appear to be the ideal place for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to bring up baby George. However, despite a private drive, courtyard and spacious walled garden, the Palace overlooks Kensington Park Gardens – a public space – and William and Catherine often find themselves being photographed going about their daily lives. And so the Cambridge’s have decided that they would rather be in Norfolk. But there is another reason. After leaving the military last September, the Duke announced a “transitional year”. Seasoned royal watchers assumed this was palace jargon for a brief intermission before succumbing to an endless schedule of official engagements. In January, Buckingham Palace courtiers were quoted privately conceding that the Queen, 88, and the Duke of Edinburgh, 93, were on a “gradual downward trajectory” in the number of engagements they can carry out. The Duke, it was thought, would pick up some of the slack after going on a tour of Australia with his wife and taking a short agricultural course at Cambridge University. The Duke, it is clear now, had other ideas. He announced a new job as a pilot for the East Anglian Air Ambulance. In a major departure from royal precedent, the role makes him the first future king to work in a civilian job. He has signed up for two years and will work four days a week, with four days off in between shifts, leaving much less time for his official duties. A move out of the city & into the country makes sense. Anmer Hall, situated on the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, is in the last stages of a two-year, £1.5million refurbishment, which has been paid for privately, and the couple intend to spend most of August there to oversee the final details. They are expected to stay at Wood Farm, a cottage on the Royal estate, while works are completed. Norfolk has always been a special part of the world to William, and Anmer Hall, a 200-year-old, Grade II listed property, was a 30th birthday present to him from the Queen. The ten-bedroom mansion has a swimming pool and tennis court and its refurbishment includes a new kitchen and garden room, rerouting the driveway to the property to make it more private, converting a garage block into accommodation for their team of protection officers and converting an outhouse into a space for George’s nanny. William and Catherine know North Norfolk well. They have been seen shopping at local stores such as the Mews Antiques Emporium and Shirehall Plain Antiques in nearby Holt. William is fond of the Dabbling Duck Pub in Great Massingham and the bakery in Great Bircham, both a short drive from the Hall. And recently the Cambridges were made honorary members at the prestigious Royal West Norfolk Golf Club. The move also moves the young couple closer to a group of close friends – dubbed the ‘Turnip Toffs’ – who are moving back to run family estates in the county. “A lot of their age group are returning to Norfolk,” says Sir Jeremy Bagge, a former high sheriff of Norfolk whose ancestors first encouraged a former Prince of Wales to buy Sandringham, and who remains close to the Royal family. “Most of them are married and some of them have young children, so it will be a very happy atmosphere. They have got friends in Norfolk already and they will be introduced to others. It is all very relaxed.” Sir Jeremy, whose family arrived in Norfolk “with the Vikings” and own Stradsett Hall near Downham Market, says the families swim and play tennis at each other’s houses, and shoot together. “It won’t take long before Prince George is given his first gun,” he says. “There are an awful lot of private estates and they have their little walkabout shoots for the young - nothing smart.” The royal couple, he says, will relish the locals’ respect for privacy. “People are not pushy in Norfolk,” he explains. “They never have been. In the main, these are old, old families.” The Duke had often visited Anmer Hall as a child because it was leased by the late Hugh van Cutsem, a close friend of the Prince of Wales who retained a large estate in Norfolk. Mr. van Cutsem’s sons Hugh, Edward and William, are friends of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, with William named as godfather to Prince George before his christening last year. Hugh’s daughter, Grace, was one of the bridesmaids at the couple’s wedding in 2011. Other members of the circle who live close by include the Duke’s cousin (on his mother’s side) Laura Fellowes, with her husband Nick Pettman, and Viscount Thomas Coke, who owns Holkham Hall, a Palladian pile near the coast. Landowner Anthony Duckworth-Chad’s daughter Davina is an old friend of William and has six-year-old twins – India Honor and Siena Beatrice. The couple can also count Baron Howard of Rising and his family as friends in the area. William and Harry play in an annual football match close to the famous castle ruins of Castle Rising and are regular guests at the grand stately pile. Baron Howard’s children Annabel, Charlie and Tom, are close in age to William and Catherine. Further along the coast at Holkham, where William and Harry played on the beach as children, is Viscount Thomas Coke and his family, who run Holkham Hall. William’s friend, Etonian Archie Soames, is also a Norfolk boy. His father, Jerry Soames, brother of Tory MP Nicholas Soames, lives at the family seat, West Barsham Hall in Fakenham, less than an hour from Anmer Hall. The Cambridge’s will also be within easy reach of the Queen’s close friend and Lord Great Chamberlain of England, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, and his young wife Rose Hanbury, who is close to William and Catherine’s age and recently had twins. They live at Houghton Hall near Sandringham. ‘The North Norfolk scene is incredibly tight and very posh. William and Catherine will fit right in,’ says a local. ‘They know the area very well already. They will be very well protected here and they will be able to come and go without being worried about the paparazzi. ‘Historically the Royals are very social with their neighbors and that’s largely because most of them are aristocrats and wealthy landowners.’ The Union flag bunting flapped against the stone facade of the craft shop in Swaffham’s market square yesterday. It is a weather-beaten gesture of permanent patriotism, though, not a rapid response to this week’s headline; round here members of the Royal family are nearly as common as turnip fields. “It makes no odds to me whether I see them or not,” says Kevin Pitt, who runs the tackle shop, about a half-hour drive from their new place, Anmer Hall. “Sandringham has always been just up the road. Just the other day, my son-in-law was in the garage at the same time as Prince Harry. People don’t take so much notice of them up here.” This is precisely the reaction that the couple crave. They cherish any remaining vestiges of normality, and are happiest not in a palace or grand apartment but in a cozy home such as the farmhouse in Anglesey that they rented for two years after their wedding, while the Duke worked as a search-and-rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force. Yet the Duke is unlikely to have much time for socializing. As Flight Lieutenant Wales, he was used to challenging sea rescues in Sea King helicopters. Now, he will work nine-and-a-half hour shifts piloting an air ambulance, picking up heart-attack victims in busy town centers and attending traffic accidents, as well as ferrying folk from isolated rural areas to hospital. “I can recall a day not so long ago when we flew 18 flights in 10 hours,” says Jeff James, who has been an air ambulance pilot in Leicestershire and Derbyshire for 16 years. “You might get enough time to put fuel in the aircraft, then the phone rings and you are out on the next job straight away.” None of his team hold down second jobs. “There is little capacity for doing anything else – and, to be honest, after doing a five-day stint, you need a couple of days off.” Yet the Duke will have to fit some public engagements around his flying schedule and a Kensington Palace spokesman says his roster will “take into account” his official duties. Penny Junor, the royal biographer, believes the Duke will consider a little tiredness a reasonable price for a better lifestyle. “I think he was going stir-crazy at Kensington Palace,” she says. “He was trapped there, not having the freedom he had in Anglesey and at university in St Andrews. He has got a lifetime of royal duties and charity work ahead of him. This allows him to do something slightly more stimulating that tests his skills. They can live a normal life, more or less.” “He doesn’t want to be useful just because he is a prince,” says Junor. “If he is rescuing someone, there is no formality or protocol involved. In that situation, he can be what he wants to be - just a man doing a job.” The Duke and Duchess’s decision to base themselves in East Anglia is apparently supported by Prince Charles. A source confirmed: ‘Charles is very much behind it. He wants William to have as ordinary a family life as he can before he becomes a full-time Royal.’ It is anticipated that Prince George will go to nursery and primary school in London, when the time comes. William and Catherine’s aides and private office will remain at Kensington Palace and the couple will be based there when they carry out engagements and need to be in London. Aides say their diaries will remain busy and they will frequently be in the capital. It is hard to begrudge the Duke a few more years of relative normality. As the Queen shows few signs of ill health, his father continues to serve his six-decade long apprenticeship. Two years of country life will only postpone his vocation, of course, but it will buy him time to concentrate on his family – and perhaps add to it – and enjoy the company of trusted friends. It may be as close to normality as he will ever get.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 05:15:15 +0000
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