Nottingham Cottage: Once a Royal Nanny’s Abode, Now a Cosy Royal Starter Home

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Nottingham Cottage inside the Kensington Palace grounds is not your ordinary cottage.  Yes, it is the smallest royal residence you could imagine, but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex lived here while the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge once called this their home until they moved to the palace's more spacious Apartment 1A. By royal standards, Nottingham Cottage is quaint, a far cry from the usual, grand residence afforded to a royal of Prince Harry’s standing. But with two successive princes moving in, this cottage, once given to Queen Elizabeth II's nanny, is the ultimate royal starter home. When Marion Crawford, the Queen's Scottish governess, retired in 1948, King George VI gave this to her as her grace and favour home for life.

Designed by Christopher Wren, the cottage was home to a success of royal servants. Crawford wrote that “it had got to London quite by mistake from some distant country place.” The red brick home “with a tiled roof and roses round the door” has “a little square garden behind a low white paling, where snapdragons, and lavender, and scented white Mrs. Simpkins border carnations grow….”

Crawford writes that Princess Elizabeth shared with her the linens she received as wedding gifts, as well as cloth which Crawfie made into curtains. Princess Margaret lent her a hand in arranging things. Queen Mary gave her a handful of old Victorian furniture and watercolor paintings of flowers that hung on the walls. The aged Queen Mother even sent along a man to hang the pictures and wrote out the name of a fellow on Fulham Road who was “most helpful” with repairs.

It was these intimate details of her life with the royals, which she shared in her memoirs, that stirred trouble for Crawfie. But we have to thank her for offering readers a refreshing take on the humanity of Royal Family and how were Elizabeth and Philip when they started out with their family. 

When Prince William and the Kate Middleton married in 2011, they started their family at Nottingham Cottage until they moved to their bigger apartment in 2013. Prince Harry moved in and it was here, while roasting chicken, where he proposed marriage to American actress Meghan Markle. The couple married in May 2018 and spent the first months of their married life at the cottage. They finally moved to Frogmore Cottage in the Windsor Castle grounds in the spring of 2019, shortly before she gave birth.