Fences, a warm welcome, and a ‘forever home’
Two things are happening at once on the quiet edge of Windsor Great Park: neighbors say they’re ready to put the kettle on, and new security fences are going up. That’s the backdrop as the Prince and Princess of Wales prepare to move their family into Forest Lodge, an eight-bedroom property inside the Crown Estate, before Christmas. The plan, according to people familiar with the move, is simple but bold: make this their long-term base — a “forever home” — rather than defaulting to Buckingham Palace when the time comes.
The shift is big for the Wales family. They’re leaving Adelaide Cottage, a compact four-bedroom home inside the Windsor estate where they’ve lived since 2022, for a larger address with the space and privacy that comes with it. The couple’s priorities haven’t changed, though. Friends say they want to keep doing the school run and build daily life around their three children — Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7 — without turning their routine into a royal spectacle.
Locals around Cranbourne Hall Residential Park, the nearest community to Forest Lodge, are already sizing up their new neighbors. Some are delighted. Others are cautious, worried the quiet rhythm of their street could shift under the weight of royal attention. Most seem to land somewhere in the middle: hopeful for normality, but realistic about what comes with a move like this.
Jean Reeve, 87, who lives nearby, captured that mood when she said she’s ready to welcome the family but hopes the public lets them live quietly. She likes the way the couple parent — present, hands-on, and unshowy — and hopes the area gives them the chance to keep it that way. Her only fear? Curious visitors turning a family home into a landmark. It’s a fair worry when the address belongs to the best-known young family in Britain.
Those concerns have helped shape the move. Privacy is a recurring theme in every decision. Adelaide Cottage offered charm and a tight footprint, but not much buffer. Forest Lodge adds the buffer — more land, more controlled boundaries, and the built-in advantage of sitting within the 4,800-acre Great Park. Even so, parts of the house are closer to lived-in areas than some might expect, which explains the flurry of new barriers, screening, and landscaping.
Security teams have already installed metal fencing with black mesh privacy panels along the front, and fresh shrubs have gone in to thicken the line of sight. More is coming, according to people briefed on the plans. The goal is straightforward: reduce visibility, control access, and keep passersby from turning a corner and spotting a royal garden through a gap in the hedge. It’s practical and, for parents of three school-age kids, non-negotiable.
One of the tougher steps has been managing the immediate surroundings. Earlier in the summer, two families living in properties near Forest Lodge were asked to move. The message, delivered with little warning, was that the homes were too close for comfort with a royal household moving in. No formal eviction notices were issued, and those families were offered comparable or better houses within the Crown Estate. Even so, the requests were jarring for the people involved, who hadn’t planned to pack up this year.
Royal watchers say this kind of shuffle isn’t unusual when security teams draw a tighter ring around a residence. The Crown Estate, which operates independently and returns its profits to the Treasury, has a large pool of properties and can relocate tenants relatively quickly. Still, it’s a reminder that when a royal family chooses a neighborhood, the neighborhood changes — not just the house at the center of it.
Money adds another layer of interest. Forest Lodge has been valued at around $5.5 million, a figure that reflects location as much as bricks and mortar. Properties within the Great Park aren’t ordinary suburban homes; they come with controlled access, dedicated patrols, and the sense of being tucked inside a historic landscape that millions visit each year. The Wales family won’t be buying the estate. Like other royal residences on Crown Estate land, it’s typically held under agreements that balance official roles with personal privacy. Security costs, as usual, are handled by the police and palace budgets, a setup that always draws scrutiny but is standard for working royals.
What makes this move different isn’t the walls or the gates. It’s the long-term plan. The couple’s friends have been plain about it: they want to root their family life in Windsor and keep their children’s days as normal as possible, even if their titles change. That mindset aligns with how they’ve lived for years — one foot in the public square, the other firmly in school runs, after-school clubs, and weekend routines that look like anyone else’s in Berkshire.
For locals, that can be both reassuring and disruptive. Reassuring, because it suggests the family won’t turn the area into a permanent media circus. Disruptive, because “normal” for a royal household still includes police patrols, security cameras, and the occasional rolling road closure if a high-profile event is on the calendar. People living near Cranbourne Gate and the smaller roads that feed into the Great Park could see more uniforms and more traffic on busy days, especially around school start and finish times.
All of this feeds into a broader reset in how the younger generation of royals sees home life. The old assumption was that the family center of gravity would eventually swing back toward Buckingham Palace. Not here. The plan — at least for now — is to keep Windsor as the family’s anchor and treat ceremonial London addresses as work spaces rather than home. That choice reflects two things: how they want to raise their children, and how comfortable the family has become in the Berkshire bubble, close to school and close to Kate’s parents in the county.
Adelaide Cottage was the right fit when the family first moved from Kensington. It let them slip into Windsor life with minimal fuss. But four bedrooms for a five-person family comes with trade-offs. Forest Lodge offers room to breathe: separate bedrooms for everyone, guest space for visiting family, and enough square footage to handle the quiet reality of a royal household — private staff areas, security briefings, and the steady tide of official paperwork that comes with public roles.
The neighbors’ mixed feelings echo what happens whenever a high-profile family moves into a familiar area. The upside is clear: better patrols, tidier boundaries, and a sense that the state is watching over your street. The trade-off is also clear: more rules, more attention, and sometimes the uneasy feeling that your road has become somebody else’s perimeter.
Here’s what locals and visitors around Windsor can likely expect once the family settles in:
- More visible security: marked and unmarked patrols on nearby roads, plus occasional spot checks at gates and side entrances to the Park.
- Seasonal peaks: busier periods during school terms, holidays, and major royal events, though the family tends to keep private dates discreet.
- Landscape changes: thicker hedging and screening around Forest Lodge, and possible adjustments to footpaths or desire lines if they skirt too close to the house.
- Media bursts: occasional spikes in photographers or TV crews, mostly around milestones or school term changes, followed by long stretches of quiet.
Forest Lodge itself sits in a sweet spot: close enough to Windsor and Ascot for daily life, but far enough inside the estate to benefit from layers of oversight that suburban streets don’t have. That helps with the family’s aim to be seen when they choose — at official engagements, at national moments — and largely invisible the rest of the time.
The neighbors’ voices matter here because the arrangement only works if daily life remains bearable on both sides of the fence. People like Reeve are not saying “stay out.” They’re saying: be good neighbors and give the family the same courtesy you’d give any family with kids. Don’t treat their front hedge like a film set. Don’t turn a school run into a spectator sport.
The couple’s team knows this. That’s why the screening went in early and why more adjustments are expected before moving day. Early groundwork reduces the shock to the neighborhood and sets boundaries from the start. It also signals to sightseers that this is not a public attraction. It’s a family home.
There’s also the question of rhythm. The family’s schedule, even as working royals, tends to bunch public engagements into blocks. That means weeks can go by with almost no visible change around a royal residence, followed by a couple of days when cars come and go and plain-clothes officers hover near gates. Residents learn the pattern. After a few months, the novelty fades — the palace Range Rover becomes just another dark SUV that slips through at dawn and returns at school pick-up time.
One reason this move resonates far beyond Windsor is that it captures a wider shift in how younger royals balance duty and privacy. The choice of a “forever home” in Windsor suggests a strategy that starts with the children and works outward. The message is subtle but clear: public life is the job; family life is the point. And if that means building taller hedges and asking a couple of neighbors to swap houses, the palace will do it early rather than late.
For all the planning, there’s still a human side to this. New house, new routines, new neighbors. The Wales children are old enough to feel these changes and young enough to turn them into new habits quickly. The local coffee shops and corner stores will see a few more familiar faces come and go. Dog walkers will swap notes when the fencing crews finish and the footpaths open up again. It’s a small town feel pressed up against a global name, which is pretty much Windsor in a nutshell.
There’s a bright, slightly cheeky thread running through the neighborhood chatter too: the open invitation. Several residents have joked that the family is welcome for a cuppa anytime. That’s partly British humor and partly a real instinct to be friendly. It’s also a useful cue for onlookers. If the people who live closest want normal neighborly civility, the rest of us can probably follow their lead.
As for the timing, the goal is to move in before Christmas. That lines up with school calendars and the usual winter slowdown, when it’s easier to adjust routines out of the public eye. By then, the planting will have had a few months to thicken, the new screens will blend into the hedgerows, and the house will feel less like a project and more like a home.
None of this changes the public role that defines the couple’s lives. It changes where they sleep, where homework gets done, and where birthdays are celebrated. In other words, it changes the part that most parents care about most. Which is why the move has a different energy from a typical royal reshuffle. It’s not about grandeur. It’s about getting the basics right for the long haul.
So yes, the fences are higher. Yes, two families had to move. Yes, there will be more police cars on quiet roads. But there’s also a family trying to set up a safe, steady life in a place that can handle both attention and anonymity. If that balance holds, Forest Lodge could become the rare royal address that looks ordinary on most days — and that might be exactly what Kate and William have been working toward.
What this means for Windsor — and what comes next
Zoom out, and the move fits the map. Windsor has always been a working hub for the monarchy, but it’s also an easy place to disappear into everyday routines. Schools are nearby. Grandparents are a drive away. London is close enough for official business and far enough to keep evenings quiet. That mix is hard to beat, and it’s why the couple’s friends describe the decision as practical rather than symbolic.
Expect a few early bumps. The estate will fine-tune access around Forest Lodge. Security will test routes and timings. Neighbors will test how close is too close on footpaths. The press will have a flurry of interest, then move on. And when winter hits and the real move-in happens, the house will light up at dusk, the school run will start, and a new routine will settle into Windsor’s old trees.
If you live nearby, the best guide to what changes is simple: what you see. If there are new cones on a roadside one morning, it may be a temporary control for a delivery or a drill. If a footpath shifts a few feet into the hedge, it’s likely to keep a private garden private. Most of it will be small and steady, not sweeping. That’s the point. Avoid disruption, discourage sightseeing, and keep family life off the front page unless there’s a reason to put it there.
For the royal family, locking in a “forever home” now also reduces the pressure later. When roles evolve, moving house at the same time makes everything harder — for the family, the staff, and the people who live around them. By getting settled in Windsor ahead of time, they’re banking calm for the years ahead.
It’s a tidy plan on paper. The real proof will be the school mornings that look like any other family’s school mornings, the weekends that pass without a headline, and the neighbors who still mean it when they say: you’re welcome for a cuppa anytime.