Andrew sank more than £8m into the house when he took up the 75-year lease with his own private cast-iron arrangement, but for at least the past 18 months he has been under pressure from the Palace to move out.
In autumn 2024, the King added to that pressure by cutting off Andrew’s financial support, leaving Andrew with significant costs for security and maintenance. Those pressures will have been removed by his quitting Royal Lodge, but so has any independence.
And because of the dilapidated state of the property, it’s already been indicated that he won’t get any money back from his original investment.
Now that the move has finally happened it will also mark the end, at least so far, of what has seemed a remarkably durable double act, with Sarah Ferguson not making the move to Norfolk.
The pair had remained doggedly together, as she had said: “We’re divorced to each other, not from each other.”
While in news terms, Royal Lodge had become associated with Andrew’s scandals, from Epstein to the alleged Chinese spy, it was also where the former Duke and Duchess of York had raised their family.
It was where Sarah had re-invented her battered career multiple times, with Andrew’s biographer Andrew Lownie calling her the “Houdini” of the Royal Family.
Although perhaps, with the emails about her appetite for luxury and first-class travel, she didn’t expect that their escape vehicle would turn out to be a removals van.