Inside Highgrove, King Charles and Queen Camilla's Country Home

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While Clarence House serves as the main residence of King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort in London, Charles also has a country home, Highgrove House, which features prominently in season four of The Crown.

Here, what you need to know about the property.

First, is Highgrove House a real place?

Yes. Sometimes, The Crown plays fast and loose with the facts, but the inclusion of Highgrove House is accurate. Often referred to as Charles and Camilla's "family home," the Georgian neo-classical house dates back to the 1780s, but King Charles bought the home and grounds in 1980. Prior to the royal's arrival, the land belonged to Maurice Macmillan, a member of parliament, and the son of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

"When the Prince first arrived, Highgrove possessed little more than a neglected kitchen garden, an overgrown copse, some pastureland and a few hollow oaks," reads the estate's website.

"Today, after the hard work of scores of people, the garden unfolds in a series of highly personal and inspiring tableaux, each one reflecting the Prince’s interests and enthusiasms."

The gardens at Highgrove have been something of a passion project of King Charles's over the years.

"The garden at Highgrove really does spring from my heart and, strange as it may seem to some, creating it has been rather like a form of worship," the royal said in 1993. In addition, Charles has been running Home Farm from the estate's gardens.

In 2022, the gardens even inspired a fashion line that launched at Highgrove. "As an Italian I didn’t know want to expect [from Highgrove Gardens] but what I felt is that, apart from the obvious royal atmosphere, I felt a really strong sense of humanity while walking about," artisan Arianna Safayi told T&C. "It’s a place where nature collaborates with man-made tailoring of nature."

Charles wanted Diana to help decorate the house, even before they were engaged.

According to Andrew Morton's biography of the Princess of Wales, Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words, which was written with Diana's cooperation, Prince Charles asked her for help with decorating Highgrove early on in their relationship.

"During that first weekend Prince Charles showed Diana around Highgrove, the 353-acre Gloucestershire home he had bought in July—the same month he had started to woo her," writes Morton. "As he took her on a guided tour of the eight-bedroom mansion, the Prince asked her to organize the interior decoration. He liked her taste though she felt that it was a 'most improper' suggestion as they were not even engaged."

Prince Harry and Prince William loved hanging out in the Highgrove basement.

In their teen years, the princes would take over the basement at Highgrove, creating "Club H"—H stands for Highgrove. "I hid in the basement beneath Highgrove, usually with Willy. We called it Club H. Many assumed the H stood for Harry, but in fact it stood for Highgrove," Harry writes in his memoir, Spare. Harry describes Club H as his sanctuary: "Club H was the perfect hideout for a teenager, but especially this teenager. When I wanted peace, Club H provided. When I wanted mischief, Club H was the safest place to act out. When I wanted solitude, what better than a bomb shelter in the middle of the British countryside?"

Club H, Prince Harry writes, "was windowless, but the brick walls, painted bone white, kept it from feeling claustrophobic. Also, we kitted out the space with nice pieces from various royal residences. Persian rug, red Moroccan sofas, wooden table, electric dartboard. We also put in a huge stereo system. It didn't sound great, but it was loud. In a corner stood a drinks trolley..."

Harry also gives physical description of the Highgrove basement, which is filled with royal gifts. "To get down to its depths you went through a heavy white ground-level door, then down a steep flight of stone stairs, then groped your way along a damp stone floor, then descended three more stairs, then past several wine cellars, wherein Camilla kept her fanciest bottles, on past a freezer and several storerooms full of paintings, polo gear, and absurd gifts from foreign governments and potentates. (No one wanted them, but they couldn't be regifted or donated, or thrown out, so they'd been carefully logged and sealed away.) Beyond that final storeroom were two green doors with little brass handles, and on the other side of those was Club H."

The home's gardens are open to visitors on certain dates throughout the year.

In fact, King Charles enjoys sharing his estate with guests. “One of my great joys is to see the pleasure that the garden can bring to many of the visitors and that everybody seems to find some part of it that is special to them,” he said in 2019.

Typically, the gardens are regularly open for tours from April to October. Tickets for a two-hour guided garden tour are $36 per person, and are sold on a first-come first-serve basis, with all profits going to the Prince of Wales's Charitable Foundation, an organization which issues small grants in support of "community-based projects" in the UK.

But, as you plan your trip, head to highgrovegardens.com for the latest information. Also, don't plan on exploring the house. It's also always closed to the public, as it is a private residence of King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort.

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