From Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle to the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Camilla, the royal spouses have changed the royal family forever. While Kate has slowly but surely become one of its greatest stars, the Queen has proved herself a strong and steady support to her husband, King Charles III. But what prepared them for these important roles in life and – more importantly – where did they live before they moved into their regal residences?
Click or scroll through and let's take a look...
Before her 2018 marriage to Prince Harry, Meghan Markle spent much of her adult life in Toronto, where she spent seven years filming hot TV show Suits.
However, fittingly enough for a Hollywood royal, Meghan is an LA girl through and through. She was born in Los Angeles on 4 August 1981 and spent her childhood living in the heart of the city.
Let's take a look at where it all began...
After her parents separated when she was just two years old, Meghan and her mother, Doria, went to live in an apartment over a garage behind this very overgrown house in the central Mid-Wiltshire neighbourhood of LA.
Meghan attended preschool at the Little Red Schoolhouse, now the Hollywood Schoolhouse, which was a short walk from the TV studios where her father worked as a lighting director and the two shops her mother owned.
In 1991, Meghan started at the almost $24,000-a-year Immaculate Heart High School – equivalent to £42,900 ($57.2k) in today's money. She began staying with her father during the week at his two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in this building on Vista Del Mar Avenue, behind the Hollywood strip.
After graduating, Meghan went to Northwestern University in Illinois to study theatre and international studies before returning to LA to launch her acting career.
Meghan began to land small TV and film roles, and in 2011, she won the part she's best known for, playing Rachel Zane in Suits.
That same year, she married film producer Trevor Engelson, whom she'd been dating since 2004. Although the couple divorced two years later, this Colonial-style property in Hancock Park, LA, as seen on TopTenRealEstateDeals.com, was their marital home. Meghan also rented a cosy two-storey home in Toronto while filming Suits.
Meghan began dating Prince Harry in 2015, and the pair later moved into Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where Harry proposed in 2017.
The 10-bedroom Grade II-listed Frogmore Cottage in the grounds of Windsor Castle had been a gift to the royal couple from the late Queen on their marriage in 2018.
Following the release of Harry’s memoir, Spare, in January 2023, their connection to the family became strained, and the pair were “requested to vacate” the property, their only UK base. At the time, the stunning house was reportedly offered to the then-prince Andrew, but he was reluctant to leave his longtime home at Royal Lodge.
Today, the couple live with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, in an £11 million ($14.7m) mansion in Montecito, California, where they have launched various commercial ventures. The couple gave a glimpse into their home life in May 2021 when Prince Harry released a trailer for his series The Me You Can't See.
While Harry was present at the King's coronation in 2023, he did not appear with his family on the balcony following the ceremony, and Meghan remained at home in California.
She kick-started 2025 with a flurry of activity, however, by returning to Instagram. She also launched her first lifestyle cooking show, With Love, Meghan, on Netflix, which was reportedly filmed in the gloriously chic kitchen of her neighbour's house in Montecito.
As future Queen, Catherine, Princess of Wales, will have her pick of palaces and castles. However, she started life in a relatively humble home before her parents' business took off and they set their sights on more impressive digs.
Born on 9 January 1982, Kate Middleton married into the royal family in April 2011, when she and Prince William tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in front of millions.
Kate is the eldest child of Michael and Carole Middleton, who bought this four-bedroom semi-detached house on a quiet lane in Bradfield Southend, Berkshire, in 1979 for £34,700 (equivalent to just £172k/$230k in today's money).
The late-Victorian Grade II-listed building was a 10-minute drive from Kate's private prep school in Pangbourne, and the large garden was the perfect spot for Carole and Michael to build a shed from which they launched their business, Party Pieces.
As the company flourished, the Middletons sold their cottage in 1995, when Kate was 13, for £158,000 (£328k/$437k in today's money). It last sold at auction in 2011 for £485,000 ($647k).
The Middletons and their three children moved to the village of Bucklebury in West Berkshire. Oak Acre, a six-bedroom detached house, cost them £250,000 – around £518,900 ($692k) today – and was set on one-and-a-half acres (0.6ha) of land. Memorably, it was on the driveway of Oak Acre that Carole and Michael met the press to comment on the engagement of Kate to Prince William.
However, one year after their eldest daughter's royal wedding in 2011, they moved to a larger house nearby, which they felt offered their family more privacy.
The Middletons snapped up Bucklebury Manor in 2012. The seven-bedroom Grade II-listed Georgian home is currently estimated to be worth around £4.7 million ($6.3m).
After the birth of their first child, Prince George, Kate and William drove straight from the hospital to Bucklebury Manor so Carole could help the new parents settle into family life.
Kate's brother, James Middleton, shared several videos of the house during the Covid pandemic, when he spent time in lockdown there with his parents and then-fiancée Alizée Thevenet.
For three years, the family lived in the Grade II-listed Adelaide Cottage, a short walk from St George's Chapel on the Windsor Estate.
The four-bedroom property, built in 1831 for King William IV's wife, Queen Adelaide, was renovated in 2015 and did not require a refurbishment when they relocated in 2022, which was important to the couple.
The property was also conveniently close to Kate's parents, who live a 45-minute drive away, as well as her sister Pippa.
In late 2025, the Prince and Princess of Wales relocated to Forest Lodge, also within Windsor's Home Park. The Georgian mansion is reported to be worth £16 million ($21m) and has double the number of bedrooms as Adelaide Cottage, providing plenty of space for their family to grow.
In 2001, the home underwent a £1.5 million ($2m) renovation, but has retained beautiful period details such as original stonework, plaster cornices and ceiling decorations, and marble fireplaces. William and Catherine will pay rent to the Crown Estate and fund future updates to their "forever home" as required.
Queen Camilla had been in the public eye for decades before she became the wife of King Charles III, infamously as his mistress of many years.
Prevented from marrying in the 1970s, the couple went on to marry other partners before reuniting and eventually marrying in February 2005.
But while their romance is an oft-told story, how much do we know about Camilla's childhood?
Born Camilla Rosemary Shand on 17 July 1947, Queen Camilla grew up between her parents' South Kensington townhouse and a country home called The Laines in Plumpton, East Sussex.
She has described her childhood as "perfect in every way", and certainly growing up in the charming 18th-century rectory would have felt like being raised in a fairytale, with its gothic-style orangery, swimming pool, and five acres (2ha) of gardens and paddocks.
The four-year-old Camilla is seen here with her sister Annabelle when they were bridesmaids in 1952.
The Grade II-listed building was her father's home for 45 years, and it was from here that Camilla attended her first school, Dumbrells, before moving on to Queen's Gate School in Kensington, London, and later, a finishing school in Switzerland.
The Laines last sold in 2016 for only the second time in 63 years. Actor James Wilby, best known for playing aristocratic roles in films including Gosford Park, let go of the beautiful abode for £2.3 million ($3.1m) in 2016. He is pictured here in the garden of the house in 1999.
According to Camilla's biographer, she met Andrew Parker Bowles in the late 1960s and the pair married in 1973, after an on-off relationship during which time Camilla was also courted by the then-Prince Charles.
The newlyweds bought Bolehyde Manor, this stunning 17th-century house in Allington, Wiltshire, shortly after their marriage. They left the charming eight-bedroom home, which is set on 80 acres (32ha), in 1986 when they moved to the equally lovely Middlewick House, which they sold in 1995 to Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. The couple divorced that same year.
After her divorce, she withdrew to Ray Mill House in Reybridge, Wiltshire, which she bought for £850,000 in 1995 – equal to £1.8 million ($2.4m) in today's money.
The secluded Grade II-listed home, with a pool, stables, and large vegetable garden, is conveniently close to Charles's country residence, Highgrove, which is now the couple's private residence
Camilla still owns the six-bedroom property, and according to friends, it’s the place where she can shed the trappings of royal life and be herself.
The previous occupants, Worthy and Gillian Gilson, excavated the old mill pond and transformed the surrounding 17 acres (6.9ha) into a sanctuary for wildfowl.
The Queen chose the scenic spot as a backdrop for her 75th birthday portraits, taken by her daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, in 2022. It’s also where her daughter, Laura, held her wedding reception when she married Harry Lopes in 2006.
However, since King Charles III and Queen Camilla were crowned in May 2023, they now have a multitude of grand homes to choose from, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and Balmoral.
On 23 July 1986, 27-year-old Sarah Ferguson married the then-prince Andrew, the late Queen's favourite son, at Westminster Abbey.
Her father, Major Ronald Ferguson, was the Duke of Edinburgh's polo manager, a position he later took up for King (then Prince) Charles.
According to their parents, Fergie and Andrew first met aged three, beside the polo field. "Doesn't everybody?" her mother, Susan, famously asked many years later. The couple met again at a party in 1985 and were engaged a year later.
As a child, the Duchess of York lived at the 480-acre (194 ha) Dummer Down Farm in Hampshire, which has been owned by the Ferguson family since 1953.
Her parents divorced when she was 15, and her mother, Susan, married an Argentinian polo player and moved to South America. Her father, Major Ferguson, remarried in 1976, and the couple had three children, Andrew, Alice, both of whom played roles in their half-sister's royal wedding, and Eliza.
Today, Dummer Down is a working farm with a microbrewery, café and shop – it even hosts festivals on the land – and is owned and managed by Sarah's half-brother Andrew.
After taking a secretarial course in London, Fergie started a job in publishing and lived in a relatively modest flat in Lavender Gardens, Clapham, which was worth roughly £185,000 back in 1985, or about £578,500 ($772k) today.
She reportedly paid just £30 a week in rent, which is about £94 ($125) today. Branded 'South Chelsea' in the 80s, Fergie reportedly held society soirees at the garden flat, and it was while living here that she began dating Andrew.
He "couldn't believe my bathroom and my bedroom and everything was all in one room," she recalled. “And I didn’t have a wardrobe, I just had a laundry rail and hung everything on the laundry rail. I was a single working girl!”
After their marriage, Fergie and Andrew rented Castlewood House near Windsor from 1986 to 1988, while they built their dream home nearby.
Castlewood House was the English home of King Hussein of Jordan, who left it to his daughter, Princess Haya. The 12-bedroom mansion has a swimming pool, tennis court, and private woods.
The late Queen Elizabeth II gifted her now-disgraced son and his wife a 665-acre (269 ha) parcel of land on the Sunninghill Park Estate in Berkshire following their wedding.
When completed in 1990, the flash property was dubbed 'Southyork' and 'Dallas Palace.' Andrew and Fergie divorced in 1996, yet the duo continued to live under the same roof with their two daughters.
In 2002, the Duke decamped to the Royal Lodge in Windsor, and Sunninghill was put on the market. The Duchess and their daughters followed in 2006, leaving the property vacant and soon to fall into disrepair. Although it was sold to Kazakh billionaire oligarch Timur Kulibayev in 2007 for £15 million ($20m), it wasn't until 2016 that it was demolished and a new mansion built in its place.
Following the King's decision to strip Andrew of his royal titles and honours in October 2025, the former Duke and Duchess of York have been instructed to vacate the Royal Lodge. While Andrew will move to the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, it's unclear what will happen to Fergie, who has remained living with her ex-husband since their divorce.
A leaked email from 2011 to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has led to several charities dropping Sarah as patron or ambassador. With her reputation in disrepair, it's rumoured the author may move to Portugal to be close to her youngest daughter, Princess Eugenie, and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, who works at the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club.
Sophie Rhys-Jones married Prince Edward on 19 June 1999 at St George's Chapel, Windsor. They became the Earl and Countess of Wessex, and are now styled the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, following the deaths of Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth.
Born in Oxford to a middle-class family, Sophie was known for being a career girl when she joined the royal clan. Let's take a look at a few of her homes...
Sophie grew up in the four-bedroom 17th-century Homestead Farmhouse in Brenchley, Kent.
Although she was born into a solidly middle-class family, she flitted around the edges of high society, once dancing with Prince Philip at a ball, long before she met his son, Prince Edward.
Sophie was an energetic, sporty child. Her prep school head, Robin Peverett, said: "My memory of her is very much as a happy, popular, natural girl with lots of common sense, conscientious at her school work, and good at sport."
Sophie attended Kent College, Pembury, where she was friends with Sarah Sienesi, with whom she later shared a flat in Fulham and who became her lady-in-waiting.
Their flat, shown here, was made famous in the early 1990s when Sophie began dating Prince Edward after meeting him through her PR work. Photographers would excitedly snap the "PR girl-turned-princess" as she left her home on her way to and from the office.
Sophie then moved to a flat in Coleherne Court, Earl's Court, shortly before her marriage to Edward. Diana had moved into the same building following her engagement to Prince Charles years earlier, and the press were quick to look for similarities between the two.
However, while Diana had married at the age of 20 to a man 12 years her senior, Sophie was a career woman in her mid-thirties by the time she married.
At the time of her engagement, Sophie said of joining the royal family: "It is slightly nerve-wracking in many ways. But I am ready for it now, and I am fully aware of the responsibilities."
These days, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh live with their son and daughter in the enormous Bagshot Park.
Built in 1879 on the site of an earlier mansion, the sprawling red brick house is built in the Tudor Gothic style and has an impressive 120 rooms.
The couple leased it from the Crown Estate in 1998 and spent £2.9 million (that's £5.7m/$7.6m in today's money) on renovations. In 2021, Prince Edward paid £5 million ($6.7m) to extend the lease to 150 years, meaning his children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren should be able to live there in the future.
The Duchess of Edinburgh played a prominent role in the coronation of her brother-in-law, King Charles III.
In fact, in the years since her marriage, she has become a royal stalwart. She is a patron of over 70 charities, and she and Prince Edward are consistently ranked among the hardest-working members of the royal family, according to British newspaper the Daily Express.
In recognition, in 2010, the late Queen appointed Sophie Dame Grand Cross of the Victorian Order, the highest honour a monarch can bestow.
As with all things royal, the absence of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, loomed large over the coronation of her former husband, whom she married in July 1981.
Diana's tumultuous and ultimately tragic adult life is well-known across the world, but her teenage years were some of the happiest of her life. Let's take a look at where she spent them...
Lady Diana Spencer was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House in Sandringham, a rented property on the Royal Family's private estate.
The Spencer family came from a long line of aristocrats, and Diana’s grandmother, Baroness Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II.
Diana lived at Park House until she was 14, so she spent most of her childhood there. Even Diana’s mother, the Hon. Frances Burke Roche, was born at Park House in 1936.
Diana moved to Althorp after her father, Viscount Althorp, divorced her mother and won custody of their children.
Despite having a troubled relationship with her stepmother, Raine McCorquodale, the daughter of romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, she was said to have loved living at the Grade I-listed stately home.
A former Althorp cook, Betty Andrews, told the BBC after Diana's death in 1997: "Looking back, it was probably the happiest time of her life.”
The grand stately home has been in Diana’s family for more than 500 years, with 20 generations having lived there.
As well as the 90-room house built in 1508, there is also a beautiful estate covering over 500 acres (202ha). Set in the grounds, there are cottages, farms, woodland, and entire villages.
The King William bedroom, adorned in blues and sunny yellows, was Diana's favourite place to sleep whenever she'd return to visit Althorp after she was married. It was named after King William III, who is said to have slept there when he stayed in 1695.
In July 1979, Diana bought a flat at Coleherne Court in Earl's Court on her 18th birthday, using a reported £50,000 (roughly £249k/$331k today) inheritance from her great-grandmother, reported British newspaper The Evening Standard. Although it was priced at £3.1 million ($4.1m) when it was listed in 2022.
In the documentary Diana, In Her Own Words, she called her days there "the happiest time of her life... It was juvenile, innocent, uncomplicated and, above all, fun." She lived there with three flatmates until 25 February 1981, when she accepted the proposal of a 31-year-old Prince Charles.
Following their official engagement, Diana left her job as a nursery worker and moved into Clarence House to prepare for their wedding that summer.
Their happiness was not to last. In 1992, Charles and Diana separated; soon afterwards, Charles gave an interview in which he admitted he had been unfaithful.
In 1995, Diana gave an interview of her own, admitting to adultery and mental health issues. Referring to Camilla, she famously said: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
Charles and Diana formally divorced in August 1996; Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in August 1997.
When the royal family celebrated King Charles's coronation, they would no doubt have also been remembering the late Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Philip married into 'The Firm', as the family is affectionately known, on 20 November 1947, and at the time of his death, he was the longest-serving royal consort in history.
Let's find out a little more about his royal lineage and the grand buildings he called home...
Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was born on 10 June 1921 on the dining room table of Mon Repos villa on the Greek island of Corfu, as the Greco-Turkish War raged on.
After the Greeks suffered several heavy defeats, Philip's father, Prince Andrew, was banished from Greece for life. The family was evacuated by a British naval vessel, and the 18-month-old Philip was famously carried onboard in a fruit box.
The villa was built between 1826 and 1828 as a summer residence for a British High Commissioner, but was rarely used. It was subsequently gifted to King George I of Greece, and he named it "Mon Repos" (French for "My Rest").
The royal family used it as a summer residence until King Constantine II fled the country in 1967. The neoclassical villa subsequently became derelict, but was restored in the 1990s and is now a museum.
In 1934, the young prince started at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, which is today a mixed boarding school with fees of almost £57,500 ($77k) per year.
Philip's former headmaster said of him that "his marked trait was his undefeatable spirit. He enjoyed life, his laughter was heard everywhere and created merriness around him...In work, he showed lively intelligence."
The school (and particularly the dormitories) were sparse in Philip's day and were probably not much better when a young King Charles III followed his father's footsteps there in 1962.
Although Philip had enjoyed his time at Gordonstoun, Charles was less keen, describing it as "Colditz in kilts". However, he spoke more fondly of the school in later years, saying it had taught him "to accept challenges and take the initiative".
After Gordonstoun, Philip attended the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and served the Royal Navy throughout World War II. After marrying in 1947, Prince Philip and the then Princess Elizabeth lived in Clarence House until her accession in 1952.
Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth had four children and were married for 73 years, until Philip's death in April 2021 at the age of 99.
Queen Elizabeth died aged 96 on 8 September 2022 at Balmoral Castle. King Charles III said her death was a moment of the "greatest sadness", declaring her a "cherished Sovereign and a much-loved mother".
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