With its white picket fence and climbing roses, Ivy Cottage is by any standards a charming pied-à-terre for anyone looking to combine a prime central London location with a rare corner of quietude in one of the capital’s most expensive neighbourhoods.
Perhaps even more attractive for the three-bedroom property’s current lead tenant, Princess Eugenie of York, is the fact that the annual bill for renting the cottage nestled in the imperious grounds of Kensington Palace is being paid by her uncle, King Charles III.
An investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO), the UK’s public spending watchdog, has disclosed that both Eugenie and her sister, Princess Beatrice of York, are living in luxurious royal properties in central London where the cost of the lease is being met directly from the Privy Purse – the monarch’s private income derived from his Duchy of Lancaster estate, which last year netted the King some £27.4m to spend at his own discretion.
Shorts
In the case of Beatrice, who is married to millionaire property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, the Sovereign is funding her use of a four-bedroom apartment in the private quarters of St James’s Palace, the 500-year-old residence built by Henry VIII which is considered the most senior of the royal palaces and the formal seat of the Royal Court.
