Prince Andrew’s mansion has fallen into disrepair, with cracks and mold on the outside walls.
Crumbling paintwork, cracks and black mold can be seen on the exterior walls where his beloved mother once roamed as a young Princess Elizabeth with her sister Margaret.
The plight of the Duke of York’s 30-room Windsor Royal Lodge comes just days after it emerged that King Charles had withdrawn his beleaguered younger brother’s annual personal allowance, believed to be £1 million.
Andrew, 64, who now lives in the £30million property with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, signed a 75-year lease with the Crown Estate when he moved in and made an initial payment of £1million.
The agreement included a notional rent of £260,000 per annum.
Prince Andrew’s mansion has fallen into disrepair, with cracks and mold on the outside walls
Crumbling paintwork, cracks and black mold can be seen on the exterior walls where his beloved mother once roamed with her sister Margaret as a young Princess Elizabeth
Prince Andrew and Charles attend a Thanksgiving service celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2012
Andrew, who remains an outcast from public life amid the fallout from his relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has spent almost £7million carrying out extensive renovations and repairs to the property.
He has rejected all his brother’s requests to move to the smaller Frogmore Cottage.
An updated biography by acclaimed royal writer Robert Hardman, published in the Mail this week, revealed that despite the Duke of York’s attempts to bluff the monarch, Charles acted decisively.
In recent weeks he has ordered his Keeper of the Privy Purse, the monarchy’s chief financial officer, to abolish his beleaguered younger brother’s annual personal allowance – believed to be around £1 million a year – and to stop paying for his seven-figure stipend. private security detail.
“The duke is no longer a financial burden on the king,” a source confirmed.
The King, who has also long made clear his desire to see Andrew leave his huge Windsor mansion, Royal Lodge, has now put the ball firmly back in his brother’s court.
In doing so, Hardman reveals for the first time, he has fulfilled his late mother’s determination to solve the ‘Andrew question’ once and for all.
The Emphatic reported last month that repair costs for Royal Lodge have exceeded £2 million.
A source told the newspaper that the duke had been given a deadline of the end of the year to prove he had the necessary resources to carry out the work.
“This is the closest we have come to Andrew’s expulsion since he was asked to step down as a working royal two years ago,” the source said.
The lease he signed in 2003 states that he has the responsibility to “repair, renew, maintain, clean and maintain the house and rebuild where necessary.”
This includes repainting the external walls every five years from 2008 with ‘two coats of paint’ and redecorating the inside every seven years from 2010.
Prince Andrew will take a morning tour of Windsor Castle on October 30. He has reportedly been given a deadline to prove he has the necessary funds to pay for Royal Lodge’s upkeep.
The shocking state of the Duke of York’s 30-room Windsor Royal Lodge comes just days after it emerged King Charles had broken his younger brother’s annual personal allowance, believed to be £1 million.
Andrew, 64, who now lives in the £30million property with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, signed a 75-year lease with the Crown Estate when he moved in, making an initial payment of £1million
The lease that Andrew signed in 2003 states that he has the responsibility to ‘repair, renovate, maintain, clean and maintain and rebuild where necessary’ the house.
This includes repainting the external walls every five years with ‘two coats of paint’ from 2008 and redecorating the inside every seven years from 2010
The document – seen by The Times – dictated that he must ‘paint with at least two coats of paint and paint, polish, decorate and otherwise treat the interior walls of the building in an appropriate manner’.
Andrew pictured with Charles on the first day of Royal Ascot in 2006. Andrew has rejected all his brother’s requests to move to the smaller Frogmore Cottage
This means that the exterior finishing should have been completed last year, while the interior work would take place this year.
The document – seen by The Times – dictated that he must ‘paint with at least two coats of paint and wallpaper, polish, decorate and otherwise treat appropriately the internal walls of the building’.
Andrew signed the lease, paying £250 a week and agreeing to maintain the huge property.
Last year, claims emerged that Andrew could not afford Royal Lodge’s £400,000-a-year upkeep.
Located on 98 acres in Windsor Great Park, the property was once known as King’s Lodge, but the name was changed by the Duke of Cumberland when he became King George IV in 1820.
In 1931, King George V gave permission to his son, Prince Albert, the Duke of York, and his wife to take over the property and they moved the following year.
They used the 30-room Royal Lodge as a private country house even after they became Duke and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1936.
After the death of George VI in 1952, the Queen Mother continued to live at the Royal Lodge at weekends until her death in 2002.
Her grandson Prince Andrew, the current Duke of York, has lived there since 2004.