Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Gifted Royal Home Has Some Creepy Things Wrong With It

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will tie the knot on May 19, and it seems the couple will receive quite a wedding present.

9 News report that the Queen will bestow the couple York Cottage, from her Sandringham Estate, which lines up with her “habit of giving property,” royal biographer Duncan Larcombe told Cosmopolitan UK. The monarch has previously gifted Sunninghill Park to Prince Andrew, Birkhall to Prince Charles, and Anmer Hall to Prince William and Kate Middleton.

While Markle and Harry currently live in Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace, it’s common for royals to have multiple homes. York Cottage has been home to four generations of British monarchs and was originally called the Bachelor’s Cottage. Today, it’s used as the estate office for Sandringham and is close to the Duke and Duchess’ country residence at Amner Hall.

York Cottage was occupied for 33 years by Queen Elizabeth II’s grandparents King George V and Queen Mary, after their marriage in 1893. As the pair were titled the Duke and Duchess of York, the cottage was renamed in their honor, the Telegraph reports. The couple lived there until George’s mother, Queen Alexandra, died at Sandringham in 1925.

In 2013, the Telegraph described the cottage as a “perfectly awful house” and “an assemblage resembling three Merrie England pubs joined together.”

In addition, Queen Mary reportedly wasn’t a fan of her husband’s decorating style.

“Longing to do the house up herself, poor Queen Mary had to put up with the ghastly Maples furniture he had purchased,” the publication wrote. “Frances Donaldson wrote of it: ‘Too large and too full of footmen to be unremarkable in Surbiton or Upper Norwood, York Cottage in its own context is a monument to the eccentricity of the family who lived there.’”

One visitor described the building as “a glum little villa surrounded by thickets of laurel and rhododendron [with] a pond, at the edge of which a leaden pelican gazes in dejection on the water beneath,” according to the Daily Mail.

York Cottage currently has narrow stairways winding corridors that lead to small rooms, with Queen Victoria reportedly referring to the home as “unlucky and sad.”

George and Mary had six children, and the family along with their staff reportedly made for a very crowded home and Christmases referred to as a “feast of acrimony” by David, later Edward VIII, who described “An atmosphere of restriction, killjoy pompousness, mystery, artificiality, and the most complete and utter boredom.”

Amner Hall was renovated before William and Kate moved in, so it’s possible the same will happen with York Cottage, should Harry and Markle actually receive the property.

Photo Credit: Getty / Chris Jackson