It is well documented that the Prince and Princess of Wales found love at university, living together in their second and third years as students at St Andrews.
After moving out of their first-year halls of residence, St. Salvatore’s Hall, fondly known as Sallies, Prince William and Kate joined two of their friends in a rented Victorian terraced house located near the University.
It reportedly cost each of them £100 per week (a total rent of £1,600 per month), but it would now set tenants back £3,500 per month.
While their student home in Scotland would have been worlds away from their grand royal residence today, Kate made sure to decorate their modest student digs with furniture from her family to make it feel like a home from home.
According to the Princess’ brother, James Middleton, who wrote in his new memoir Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life, several pieces of furniture from his grandparents were given to Kate for her university home.
Recalling the moment he began unpacking at Hunter’s Moon Farm, the home he now shares with his wife Alizée Thevenet, and their son, Inigo, James wrote: “There are all kinds of heirlooms: pieces of furniture from my grandparent’s home that Catherine originally had at St Andrews University, then passed on to me; a chair that Dad made me; treasures from Alizée’s travels and her many childhood homes from across the world.”
The Princess of Wales shared a close relationship with her grandparents, and it wasn’t just heirlooms she treasured from them, but recipes, too.
In a BBC documentary Our Queen at Ninety, the Princess recalled the first time she was invited to spend Christmas with Prince William’s royal family at Sandringham – and how she struggled to think of an appropriate gift to give the late Queen Elizabeth II.
She said: “I can remember being at Sandringham, for the first time at Christmas, and I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present.”
The mother-of-three continued: “I thought back to what I would give my own grandparents. “And I thought, ‘I’ll make her something,’ which could have gone horribly wrong. But I decided to make my granny’s recipe of chutney.”
The Middleton family’s marrow chutney recipe wasn’t just loved by the Princess, but by her sister, Pippa too. The full recipe for ‘Granny’s chutney’ was published in Pippa Middleton’s entertaining book, Celebration.
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