First published: August 18, 2011 by The Laird o’Thistle (Ken Cuthbertson)
Revised: by Susan Flantzer 2017 and 2023

© Unofficial Royalty 2011

Photo Credit – Daily Mail, Camera Press Digital

Before his marriage in 2018, Prince Harry lived in Nottingham Cottage adjacent to Kensington Palace for five years.  Previously, it was the London base for his brother and sister-in-law, The Prince and Princess of Wales, when they first married. It also became the first home for Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.  The cottage, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, has two bedrooms, two reception rooms,  a bathroom, and a small garden.

Given the location, Nottingham Cottage was already somewhat familiar to both Prince William and Prince Harry as they grew up at Kensington Palace. Nottingham Cottage had previously been assigned to their uncle and aunt, Lord Robert and Lady Jane (Spencer) Fellowes when the then Sir Robert served as the Queen’s Private Secretary. That may have made things a bit awkward at the time. Stories vary as to the strain between Diana, Princess of Wales and Lady Jane during Diana’s later years, even as they lived as Kensington neighbors.

Perhaps the most fascinating about Nottingham Cottage is that it also served for several years as the home of the late Marion Crawford, Queen Elizabeth II’s former governess. Before “Crawfie’s” break with the royal family after the publication of her book The Little Princesses (copyright 1950), she had been granted the life-use of Nottingham Cottage by King George VI. In her books (the second being Mother and Queen: The Story of Queen Mary, c. 1951) Miss Crawford tells about the cottage as it was sixty years ago, and of various visits by her former charges (Elizabeth and Margaret), Prince Philip, and even Queen Mary. Concerning the cottage itself she wrote:

“It is a small cottage, designed by Christopher Wren. It looks as if it had got to London quite by mistake from some distant country place. It is built of lovely seasoned red brick, with a tiled roof and roses round the door. It has a little square garden behind a low white paling, where snapdragons, and lavender, and scented white Mrs. Simpkins border carnations grow…. Queen Mary knew the place well, as she had been born in Kensington Palace and in other days had often been to have tea in the cottage. Sometimes a flock of sheep are put to graze in the field over the way, and at evening the lamplighter trudges round still lighting up the old-fashioned gas lamps. The roar of the traffic in Kensington High Street sounds thin and far-off and in springtime the voices of birds drown it altogether.” (LP, page 203)

Crawford continues at various interspersed points, telling how Princess Elizabeth shared some of the linens she received as wedding gifts with her, and some cloth for curtains. Princess Margaret came over to help arrange things. Queen Mary gifted the governess with a few useful pieces of old Victorian furniture, and with some watercolors of flowers that Crawfie chose to adorn 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.

Miss Crawford also tells of a time when she was caught out by the recently married Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip just as she was about to get into the bath. Explaining that she was bathing at such an odd hour because the old boiler was quite temperamental, Philip the sailor decided to have a look and tinkered a bit. (She did not report whether he fixed the problem.) Shortly before the birth of Prince Charles the quite pregnant Elizabeth called up and asked to come to tea, where she and “Crawfie” shared a favorite chocolate cake and a good chat about old times and the coming prospect of parenthood. The sharing of such personal stories is what got Crawfie into such trouble with her former employers, but they also provide wonderful vignettes of the basic humanity of the Queen and Prince Philip as young marrieds themselves.

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